Team Jinora rejoice! I mean, listen. From the very first season I was a big fan of Jinora, and how can you not be? I mean, odds are if you are reading this site you too are a fan of fantasy books with dragons in them, just like Jinora. When the previews for Book Two started airing, we started seeing her in the spirit world and well…yes please! It has taken us all season to get here, but finally we get to see Jinora in her element, winning the day, with crime and politics, family reconciliation and strife, and make-outs fraught with emotional peril along the way. All that and a creepy version of The Little Prince’s baobab tree, too.
Well, even more than before I think this season is going to end with Korra fusing with Vaatu as Wan did with Raava, bringing the two spirits back together. We see that an active Vaatu is actually pulling the strings this season—why and how he came to work with Unalaq and whether Varrick is a conspirator or an opportunist aside for now—as well as Korra using the spirit song technique to calm and transform spirits. As before, I want to remind everyone that Wan’s statue at the Southern Air Temple had the markings of both Vaatu and Raava on it. I think we can expect to see Unalaq’s technique in the finale, against Vaatu, but with Korra seeing farther than anyone and realizing that Vaatu and Raava need to be brought back together, rather than that Vaatu should be re-imprisoned or destroyed.
Really, Korra has already been a tremendously enlightened Avatar. Maybe she’s not psychologically there yet, and she’s certainly not done growing up, but check the score board. She brought knowledge of the first Avatar back—and told the scholarly minded, so they could place it in the record. Tenzin has studied his whole life to make contact with the spirit world, and remember what a mess Aang made of his first encounter there? Korra does have a dark side—a dark, frustrating, stubborn and foolish side—as well as a brighter side—a talented, brave, charismatic, stubborn and foolish side—which make her a good candidate for a “think outside the box” solution…just like Aang found.
On Unalaq being a bad guy…it really is starting to look that way unambiguously. Working for Vaatu, even that could be explained away—“I thought the world needed to be restored to balance!” or whatever—but the bad dad stuff, that is pretty kiss of death. I mean, I still hold out hope for a big family reunion? But maybe it will be the reverse of the Fire Nation’s kids; maybe Eska and Densa will turn against their father and their reconciliation with their uncle Tonraq will be the kernel of the reunification. It is hard to say, but it looks like we’re coming up on the end game.
Or you know—he could become the Anti-Avatar. I just doubt it.
Tenzin’s got a watershed moment, fueled by disappointment. Is it just me or did it seem like he wasn’t just being jealous or stubborn but was also in part afraid for Jinora? I thought it was going to be revealed in dialogue but it wasn’t, but that was my initial reading of the situation; not just that Tenzin was frustrated with his own inability to astral project, but also that sending his ten-year-old daughter into the dangerous and unknown spirit world is…well, scary.
I think there is still a big role for Tenzin to play—that he’ll end up visiting the spirit world after all, to rescue Korra and Jinora, or that he’ll be needed to protect their bodies in the physical world, or pull a Xander and the yellow crayon, what have you—besides the guy who saved the day by making a thorough itinerary. Jinora is in the exclusive club that only Uncle Iroh is in— people who can see spirits unaided—but Tenzin is sort of the Sokka of The Legend of Korra so be prepared for him to save the day. I’m not sure how but we should just ask Kya, who seeks to have it all figured out. Or Romance Detective Bolin. “Hm, these two seem weirdly lovey-dovey…” Nice work, Bolin!
Actually come to think of it; I just realized what a disadvantage Korra will have when she confronts Unalaq. After all, she won’t be able to bend. Unalaq is physically in the spirit world, and we do have it definitively established that being there in person lets you control the elements—it’s why Wan was able to bend. Korra is going in the old fashioned way; maybe we see her in previews confronting Wan Shi Tong because she’s trying to recruit a spirit army?
So in this book we’ve seen Water Tribe spirit techniques, like the calming song; we’ve seen Fire Nation crystal spirit caves (speaking as an aside, that un-named Fire Sage lady and the theory she’s Azula…well, Azula has experience with crystal caves, doesn’t she?), we’ve seen Air Nomad spirit projection meditations, all of which means that the question of “advanced airbending” remains unresolved; it seems every nation of benders has a spiritual tradition. Not that we need to have it resolved or need to have it resolved now; I’m just inclined to always be curious. Where did Guru Pathik come from? This is the Air Temple Aang met him at, but culturally and linguistically he’s distinct from the Air Nomads…so what is his story? I thought we might meet more Air Acolytes, styled Air Gurus, perhaps, but the mystery remains…
Mordicai Knode knows the voice actor for Varrick isn’t the same as Belethor’s from Skyrim but he can’t quit getting them confused. Mordicai’s Tumblr just turned two, or find him on Twitter!
I definitely felt that Tenzin was concerned for Jinora’s safety. He was obviously deeply disappointed with his own failure, but he’s consistently been depicted as a good father, and he has studied the spirit world. How could he *not* be concerned for Jinora’s safety?
This was a good episode, but I’m more and more annoyed with Unalaq and Varrick. I was hoping for some subtlety to them, and they just keep taking strides in the Big, Dumb Bad direction.
A little disappointed that you didn’t really have much to say about the Mako/Asami arc. It was pretty much as disappointing as the spirit world stuff was great. I mean, could we go any more clichéd? (Granted, Varrick’s “intimidation” scene was hilarious, but with such a great comedic actor voicing him, how could it not be? Did you see that guy in A Mighty Wind?) The big frameup? The sowing of reasonable doubt?
Sure was convenient how those two incompetent and/or corrupt (I’m leaning more toward “corrupt” now) cops knew just where to go to find the planted evidence, wasn’t it? Has Lin Bei Fong doubled her dose of stupid pills?
What bothers me isn’t so much where the plot is going as it is that, given the number of episodes left in the show and the necessity of splitting time between the Korra and Mako story arcs, I can’t help feeling like any resolution is necessarily going to have to seem rushed.
And it feels like more clichés might just be in the offing. My predictions:
* Asami decides to trust Mako after all, does some investigation of her own, and determines Varrick is the bad guy. Maybe she even breaks Mako out of prison. Maybe Varrick makes one of those slips where he accidentally cops to knowledge he shouldn’t have.
* Korra is going to be forced to open the Northern portal instead of closing the Southern one. Most probably Unalaq gets ahold of Jinora and uses her as a hostage. I mean, Chekhov’s Gun is in play here. They wouldn’t introduce a big bad just to have him defeated before he can bust out. He has to be the humongo threat at the climax. And another Chekhov’s Gun is that statue Jinora saw; Korra has to have a reason to go look at it. So she can’t solve the problem with this trip.
* The trouble twins are going to do a heel-face turn—if not now, then after the next provocation. Maybe even right at the climax when it becomes obvious what Unalaq is doing. You couldn’t telegraph that any more obviously if you were Western Union.
At first, when Unalaq told his kids he needed them to open the portal, I seriously thought he was going to sacrifice them to Vaatu or something.
Tenzin’s family continues to be one of the best parts of this season, you can hear the motherly pride seeping from Pema’s voice, how Tenzin’s failure has brought him a bit closer to his siblings’ own lingering issues with Aang, how comedically stubborn Tenzin can be, but how quickly he is able to admit to being wrong and correct course… a trait that Korra is learning from, fortunately.
Still… I agree that the Mako arc is being handled weirdly. That brief moment between Mako and Asami had me reacting like Bolin did (“Korra’s only been gone for a week!!!!”); Asami’s going through a rough patch, but Mako has no excuse, he should know better, because he had already refused Asami in “The Sting”, so why is he doing this now?
And I really, REALLY hope Lin is letting things get this far because she’s baiting Varrick and/or the mustache duo. She can’t be as awesome as she was in Book One and be such a stereotypically blind police chief in Book Two.
1. Tesh
I don’t mind them striding Varrick over in that direction but I would like at least one more big wrinkle with Unalaq, whether it is a face turn or a redemptive finale or what.
2. Robotech_Master
Yeah, missed opportunity to talk about that: so let’s talk about it here! Of your suggestions, the one I feel the most, & the one I was hoping for, is that Asami trusts Mako & gets to have a bad-ass takedown of Varrick. “I fought my father in a mecha battle for this company, did you really think I’d just let you take it!?”
I also think that yeah, opening both portals is where this is going– possible because she can’t bend in the spirit world– which is another reason I think that her merging with Vaatu & the spirits becoming more active in the world is where the show is going to go.
3. Al-X
I’m okay with a sting, but I’m also okay with Lin being just…well, wrong. She was almost too cool first season; she needs to fail occasionally to show dimension. Or you know, she could just be Spider-Lin/WolverLin, that’s fine too.
Err, the title of this episode is “The Guide,” not “The Return.”
And Raava and Vaatu have the exact same markings, just in negative of each other. The statue is of Wan standing before a single spirit with those markings and that kite-like shape, which presumably is Raava, since there are “energy ribbons” entwining the two of them. Here’s a comparison of the statue and an image of Raava.
As for Tenzin being the show’s Sokka, I sometimes forget that he’s not just Aang’s son, he’s Sokka’s nephew. Which shows in the shape of his head and his temperamental stubbornness. (Although Bumi seems to have inherited Sokka’s sense of humor along with Aang’s impulsiveness.)
5. ChristopherLBennett
Err, looks like some Tor web-gnome already fixed it but the fault it totally mine; I guess I just…would you believe “momentarily must have been distracted by spirits?”
Anyhow, huh! Must be that the patterns swirl? Because here is a picture of Raava without the little triangles that bracket the sides; oh & with the top & bottom incomplete. Maybe that is just a sign of “weakening” but I think that is how I came to think the markings were different.
What I like about thinking about Tenzin & Sokka is the parts of them that aren’t the obvious joker thing that Sokka had; it is in the planning, the map nerding, all that. It is fun. Looking for familial traits is almost as fun as looking for similar body language between the Avatars.
@6: Raava got smaller as she weakened, and so the patterns presumably had to be simplified in order to fit.
And good point about the shared Tenzin/Sokka attributes.
I thought this was a pretty good episode, and I think the first where Korra features for more than a few seconds and I don’t want to slap her at some point. I pretty much agree with you and Robotech on what’s going to happen…and I wonder as well how they want to properly finish all the threads in the storyline in just 3 episodes….
I hope (and think) Asami will trust Mako immediately, I don’t want this to be about mistrust between friends again, especially as she knows him for more than a season now, and the evidence against him is really sketchy….
I don’t think that’s supposed to be Vaatu’s mark on Wan’s Statue, it wouldn’t make sense anyway, since he was merged with Raava only. That doesn’t mean that they can’t have Vaatu merging into Korra though.
I have a feeling Bolin will be the one to get the Twins on Korra’s side somehow (to close off that storyline) but I can’t really think of a way to do that properly…
8. Jineapple
Oh man, just do SOMETHING Bolin!
I’m not really sure what to say about this. I’m disappointed, really, at the way they’ve made Unalaq such a two dimensional evil. It’s like he’s come right out of the handbook of evil characters. He’s bad and there’s nothing to back it up.
Vaatu, likewise, is kind of a flat and two dimensional bad guy.
Say what you want about Varrick, at least he’s interesting and complex. More than I can say about Unalaq and Vaatu at this point.
In the wake of Amon, I really expected different. Hell, considering this is the Avatar world, I seriously expected different. Even Ozi was a fully realized person, not just a flat villian character.
Then there was Azula. Whoa. Who, by the by, I don’t think is the old shaman lady. Her eyes were a different color and her fire bending was blue.
I do’t know. Maybe I just wanted there to be more complexity, something more than just Unalaq being a bland and pointless bad guy for Korra to beat.
Either they are pulling the biggest fake out ever, or they really dropped the ball. I’m not sure which at this point.
Though, I do wonder if the portals have to be open during the harmonic convergence to avoid some kind of catastrophe.
@10. What I’m wondering is, why should a villain in cahoots with the Big Bad be teaching Our Heroine what looks like a power of good, the transforming dark spirits bending?
Either that’s not what it appears to be, or there’s something else going on.
My pet theory at the moment is that Unalaq is actually out the save the world by removing evil and chaos from it, so his plan is to free Vaatu and then transform him, with Korra’s help. He’s rigid, obsessed, driven, and fixated on order, hence the occupation. His plan is a classic case of the road to Hell being paved with good intentions. Vaatu will prove too much for him, and his goal is philosophically flawed, anyway – Raava and Vaatu are part of the balance of the world.
@3 Am also hoping Mako’s working under orders.
@1 When I saw the episode, my first thought was how much Tenzin trusts Korra to send Jinora with her – and how probably Korra has no idea.
@11 alixsin
I keep wanting to hang on to that belief as well, but his treatment of his own son makes that hard to buy at this point. I mean, I get putting the good of the world first, but come on, that’s his son!
I’m really hoping they pull a fake out at the last moment and surprise us, but I’m begining to fear Unalaq is exactly what he appears.
As for Lin, the Mustache Duo, and Mako, I still say Lin is on to them, knows Mako is right, and is working an angle that will let her catch them and Varrick all at once. The reason she never clued Mako in is because he’s really bad at following her orders, as he has proven time and again.
That, and he would have said something to Bolin, who can’t keep his mouth shut.
As for making out with Asami… maybe he really has figured out he and Korra are a bad mix. I always thought so, anyway.
@8: There are five episodes left in the season. Book 1 was 12 episodes, Book 2 is 14, and Books 3 & 4 will be 13 each.
10. CainS.Latrani
I still think that flatness is the trick, I think there is going to be some twist behind it, some hidden third dimension…
11. alixsin
…yeah, I am not sure it is all as ambitious as you say but yeah, I think there’s another level here we’re not seeing…
12. CainS.Latrani
…oh but I really like the twist that maybe he was working under orders the whole time because it shows off that side of his character growth? Or if not that then I hope next time because…
13. ChristopherLBennett
CB is right, we’ve stil got five episodes left before even the season finale, let alone the series finale! Plenty of time to see what happens next.
I’ll concede that there’s room to grow, but I can’t help but be a bit annoyed with this sort of storytelling that relies on the characters being idiots or out of character, only to “make it all good again” in the end. It feels like suppression or regression of character development to artificially inflate the season finale into a “moment of awesome”.
…and I still don’t like the treatment of Varrick. Not only is it a lazy “rich=evil” angle, but it’s also “flattening” the character into a mobster stereotype with a couple of vaguely amusing quirks. He feels less like an integral and interesting part of the world and more like a fellow checking off the villain quota for the season.
@15 Tesh
At the same time, Varrick uses his corny behavior to cover up his true devious mind. He is disarming in his goofiness. That alone makes him slightly better, as it turns the silliness into another tool he uses to manipulate people. While the character may have his flaws, as least he is thought out.
I’m not a fan of the narrative shortcuts they’ve taken this season, but then again, I may simply be missing out on something they are building for next season in terms of character arcs.
At this point, I still have some faith in the creative team, as they didn’t mess up the original series. While I’m disappointed with how things are shaping up, who knows what will happen over the next several episodes, much less the next couple of seasons.
One thing that I do like is how they’ve handled Asami so far. Her honesty and integrity has cost her pretty much everything. That’s a little too close to real life, and while it irks me to see it, at the same time, I’m glad to see her still fighting.
I really like Asami.
I think the Wan episode was a turning point. Now the show can get down to business. This was a pretty good episode, though Lin continues to disappoint.
I thought the same thing about Tenzin seeming genuienly worried for Jinora’s safety. And I forgot that you can’t bend if your spirit goes to the spirit world, which I guess really goes along with what we learned about how humans originally gained bending in the Beginnings two-parter.
Ola, been lurking here for a while – great work Mordicai – And Robotech, and hiho and CainS… he he, I could go on. :).
Just wanted to mention – Mordicai, you keep saying that Wan has both Raava and Vaatu’s markings, but aren’t they the same, simply with a different, possibly inverted colour palette?
I guess someone beat me to the punch. Will go back to lurking now.
Great work guys.
15. Tesh
I’m still not moved by the concern that making Varrick a bad guy is a tar & feathers of the rich…especially not in the context of our world where war profiteering is real, or in the context of the Korra-verse, where Asami exsists as the obvious counter-example.
19. Rathulfr
Yeah; that has been pointed out to me. I think the root of my confusion is that Raava’s marking’s change as she shrinks in size, so I saw things on Vaatu that weren’t on Raava, & mixed it up! But if it got you to come out of lurking, it was worth it; hello!
Oh right, I forgot we have 14 episodes. That’s great, means the ending doesn’t have to be rushed.
I’m sure there’s more to Unalaq helping Vaatu than just wanting power, but I doubt whatever reveal they have in store will help much to devillainify him. He’ll probably end up somewhat like Amon, he has some kind of reason, but in the end you can put the “villain” sticker on him without much difficulty.
@21. Jineapple
Which is what bothers me about it so much. It’s so obvious. Amon kind of changed things for the show. Sure, he was creepy and all, but when you listened to what he was saying, it was hard to cast him as a bad guy, really. There was logic, reason, and honestly, truth, backing him.
He was more of an anti-hero till the last episode than a villian.
Unalaq they’ve just given big broad brush strokes to. It seems sloppy, which baffles me, coming from this creative team.
@22. CainSLatrani
What they did to Amon was what bothered me the most in the first season. He was great as Korra’s Antagonist, creepy, mysterious, but he had a point and you could call him an extremist, but not a villain.
Until the bloodbending reveal. There were theories about him being a bloodbender, and I never could believe them because it would change so much about what his character meant. Yet they still went with it. I can only hope that at least the equalists will feature again in the coming seasons…
22. CainS.Latrani
&
23. Jineapple
Yeah, I want to find out that the Lieutenant is still alive, & has taken up the mask of Amon & it leading the Equalists…in peaceful non-violent civil disobediance & such. Noatak may have failed at being Amon, but maybe the next one won’t…
@22: Amon an antihero? That seems… revisionist. Sure, the Equalists’ cause had merit, but it was clear from the start that Amon was exploiting and corrupting it. At best, he was a violent fanatic whose methods robbed his cause of its legitimacy — like, say, Batman‘s Poison Ivy, who fights for just causes (environmentalism and feminism) but in a horribly unjust, destructive, and inexcusable way. At worst, he was just exploiting the Equalist cause to seize power (which did, in fact turn out to be the case). So he was unambiguously a villain from the start, even if many of his followers were not.
25. ChristopherLBennett
I don’t know, I agree with anti-hero, & I’d say you are using posterior information. What Amon’s plans were was very muddy, & he did talk a good game; in the end it was all about exploiting & corrupting it, yes, but we the viewers didn’t know that. Your point about his violent methods undercutting his causes legitimacy is just the age old question– terrorist, rebel or freedom fighter?– which doesn’t usually have an easy answer. (At least until the last couple of episodes…)
@26. mordicai
Equality for non-benders was an excellent ideal and having that be the backing for Amon’s revolution was a great story idea that deepened his character to something more than just villain. However, he was always too extreme and violent to be just an anti-hero, and they showed that pretty much from the start, not just later on in the season. At least, that’s how it felt to me.
Otherwise, I loved this episode and am very much looking forward to the rest of the season. We have one more week of a single episode, then it’s 2 double-headers to finish out the season. Which makes me EXCITED.
@26: No, I’m not using posterior information, I’m calling it like I saw it when the original episodes aired. It was pretty clear to me as early as “The Revelation” that Amon was a charismatic cult leader who was exploiting the legitimate concerns of non-benders, either out of fanaticism or out of the pursuit of personal power. I mean, taking people’s bending away by force, however he justified it, was clearly a cruel and horrific thing to do, an assault on a profound level, and it was presented from the start as a frightening, shocking thing. And just in general, anyone who rallies an angry militant movement by using gigantic posters of his own face (or equivalent) is not someone I’m inclined to believe has selfless motives. (And speaking in Steve Blum’s most menacing villain voice doesn’t help either.)
Besides, he wasn’t just fighting for the freedom of non-benders. He was fighting (or so he claimed) for the annihilation of benders. However real the non-benders’ grievances may have been, Amon didn’t appear to be anything but a bigot, trying to start the equivalent of a race war. That’s not a freedom fighter. That’s a fighter in the name of hate. I never saw any legitimacy in Amon’s cause, even before I learned the real lie behind it.
There’s a lot to cover, so I’ll just go by character.
Mako/Asami: Just stop it. I mean, I get it, I remember being a teenager, and it’s true to life, how they are acting. But it’s not making them look good. As far as Mako’s plot, I saw that coming. As far as Lin, I’m ok with Lin being wrong, this attitude is similar to the attitude she had at the beginning of the show in re. Korra. So it’s apparent that she’s inherited Toph’s superiority complex and finds it easy to be condescending to people who aren’t Lin Beifong. But, it’s also possible, that she and the Mustache Duo are on to the situation, but are playing along with Varrick’s plot to get something on him.
Bolin: I have a feeling he’s gonna be the key to clearing Mako and taking down Varrick. Mako told him about their plans in advance, and he knows Mako would never go back to criminality.
Korra: She’s still on the wrong track with closing the portal, but it’s good to see she’s working with Tenzin again.
Unalaq: I can still see that he might be “Lawful Good” on the alignment scale. IMO, Raava and Vaatu CANNOT confront one another with the portals closed(this is why Korra’s on the wrong track) so Unalaq could have good motivations for appearing to work with Vaatu in opening the portals, and has become so wrapped up in “saving” the world, he’s lost sight of things that are valuable, like his children.
The dual villains this season works better for the plot, serving much the same function that Amon and Asami’s dad had at the end of last book, but it’s better written than that was. Unalaq is the villain the Avatar has to face, but Varrick, the exploitative war profiteer with no access to super special powers, that’s somebody that the remainder of the gang can face off with.
@Aeryl (29)
That’s part of why I don’t like Varrick-as-villain, though. It seems too obvious that he’s a bad guy for the non-Avatar cast to deal with. It all feels very paint-by-numbers to me.
…and until I see Asami really leverage her wealth as a force for good, I maintain we’re dealing with a silly anti-rich/corporate theme in Korra’s stories. Mind you, I’d really *love* to see Asami hit some Batman themes. She has a lot of potential, I think. It would be awesome to see her as a rich nonBender who fights for peace and equality without falling into the shoes of her father, but who uses his tools. I’d love to see her redeem the Equalist movement and help realize the original dream of Republic City.
29. Aeryl
Viz “Masami” I believe the correct spelling is “stahp.”
@28 ChristopherLBennett
I can see your point, but at the same time, I’m not sure I completely agree. Despite the turn about at the end, Amon did end up being a positive influence on the world, which is why I refer to him as an anti-hero. Despite his actions, his motives, or his goals, he did ultimately bring about a change that is for the better, and shed light on a problem nobody was paying any attention to.
I would have liked for his story to end differently myself. Something a little less final, a bit more open, and with more moral ambiguity than what we got. But that’s only because I actually rather liked him as an opponent for the Avatar, since he did have a strong moral standpoint, regardless of his own ends.
Though, now I’m curious how you would define an anti-hero.
@32: I think that’s whitewashing Amon. Just because he exploited a legitimate cause, that doesn’t make him any kind of “hero.” He didn’t resolve the bender/non-bender tensions — he deliberately exacerbated them in order to get people to kill each other for his personal gain. He made the situation worse. If anyone made it better, it was the other people, probably including Korra and Tenzin between seasons, who addressed the mess he’d caused and worked to resolve the underlying issues he’d only made worse.
I read an interesting essay in The Atlantic today about the controversy over Orson Scott Card’s homophobia, arguing that the hate speech of people like him and Anita Bryant has actually helped advance the cause of gay equality by exposing the true ugliness of the case against it, and by bringing the debate out in the open and giving the other side something to argue against. But that doesn’t make them heroes of the cause. At best it makes them catalysts, negative examples that the world turned against. Amon is much the same. He represented hatred, advocated using the differences between peoples as a cause for violence rather than understanding. That’s not “a strong moral standpoint” by any means. It’s just using the pretense of morality as an excuse to hate. And by exposing how much harm that mentality did, he encouraged the people to find a better alternative. Not because of his actions, but in spite of them.
I’d define an antihero as someone who’s flawed but still generally works for the greater good, or at least isn’t actively evil. Hatemongers and the leaders of personality cults built around themselves? No, they don’t qualify.
@33.ChristopherLBennet
I can see how your definition would leave him out of the running, then. I think I see it slightly different, but that’s another discussion for elsewhere.
I didn’t say Amon wasn’t a bad man. He obviously was. However, the problems resolved by the Korra and others would never have been brought up had Amon not brought them into the public, or at least, not until things got a lot worse. It wasn’t he who was good, but his actions did bring about a positive change.
Likewise, regardless of what his end goal was, or how he used the Equalists for that end, his point that benders were running roughshod over non benders was true.
In that sense, yes, he did have the moral high ground. Never mind that he stole it. The harsh truth that no one, not even Tenzin, wanted to see was that benders had stacked the deck against non benders. Not even when a man of obvious ill intent was shoving it in everyones face.
A person doesn’t have to be moral and righteous to sometimes hold the moral high ground. That’s what was fascinating about Amon to me. Despite himself, he had a point, and brought it into the public discourse.
@34: I still think you’re missing the most crucial thing here, which is that it’s not just about what side you’re on, but what path you take. Yes, obviously pointing out non-bender oppression was necessary, but that’s not what Amon was about. He was about hate. He was about killing the people who are different from you. That is NOT, NOT, NOT fighting for freedom.
Analogy: I think the peoples of the Middle East have a lot of legitimate grievances against the West, and that we have done a great deal to oppress and harm them and disrupt their society. But when someone like Osama bin Laden used that as an excuse to become a fundamentalist militant, that wasn’t about fighting for freedom or justice. That was about using the pretense of fighting for freedom and justice as an excuse, a protective camouflage to trick people into supporting an effort that was really about hatred, violence, and personal power, and that betrayed the core doctrines of the very religion of which he pretended to be a cleric and defender. He twisted some genuine truths about the mistreatment of the Muslim community into excuses for his own corruptions and betrayals of the faith.
So no. Amon did not even remotely have the moral high ground. The moral high ground lay with the people he pretended to stand for, yes. But he used and manipulated those people to support his profoundly immoral, violent, hate-driven personality cult, and thus he dragged them down to his level rather than rising to theirs.
@35. ChristopherLBennett
I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison, really. After all, Amon avoided killing people whenever possible.
More than Sato wanted to do, that’s for certain.
Here’s the thing. I judge Amon by the enviornment as much as by his own actions. Considering the state of Republic City when we arrived there, it’s harder to argue with his motives and attitudes than it seems.
The city was over run with criminal bender gangs, preying on the non benders, while the bender police force seemed particularly ineffective in stopping them. The council, also made up of either appointed or elected benders, seemed less interested in stopping bender related crime (which is a Futurama joke if ever there was one) than they were in protecting their positions.
Amon didn’t create hatred for benders. It already existed. He just focused it into a force that still heavily relied on non lethal means. If it had not been him, then it may have been Sato, who wouldn’t have shown such restraint.
Then there is Tarrlok, who was guilty of gross over reach of authority and abuse of power. When we stand him next to Amon, which of them had more moral right?
That matters, too, because Tarrlok was a governing official. One who not only didn’t hesitate to violate non benders rights, but convinced the council and the police force to go along with it.
For the good of benders.
So, in a city where benders literally walk on non benders, how long would it have been before an Amon showed up? Would they have practiced his self control? Would they have focused on resolving the problem without bloodshed? Would they have even considered it? How much blood would they have shed if Amon hadn’t used his bloodbending trick to equalize benders rather than kill them?
So, yes, looking at the whole of it, I do consider Amon to have had a moral standpoint. Perhaps not a righteous one, but still one.
@36: I don’t think Amon specifically avoided killing; he just found it more satisfying to force benders to live without their gifts. And let’s not forget we’re talking about a kids’ show where the violence had to be kept off-camera, so what we saw doesn’t necessarily represent the full picture. Amon provoked a war. He launched a military takeover of the city and blew up a whole armada. It’s safe to assume a lot of people died off-camera, because of Amon’s actions.
And aren’t you forgetting that Amon’s whole professed ideology was a lie? That he was actually a bloodbender whose real purpose was to follow in Yakone’s footsteps and gain power over Republic City through criminal means? He didn’t actually believe in the non-benders’ cause. He just found it useful to exploit. He came to the city seeking a means to gain power, and he found an oppressed subclass with a lot of untapped anger, and so he spun a bunch of lies and propaganda designed to appeal to that subclass, to make them think he was one of them and supported their cause. But he was just using them as cannon fodder for a conquest whose only actual purpose was to feed his own ambition and ego. (We’ve seen this before. The National Socialist — Nazi — Party in Germany was neither nationalist nor socialist; it just pretended to be in order to win support from those movements.)
So as I keep saying: Yes, the cause was legitimate, but Amon’s exploitation of it was absolutely, profoundly not.
@37. ChristopherLBennett
Well, like I said, not a righteous standpoint, but then again, considering that Aang took away his father’s bending, you can make a case for his cause having a morality to it.
Obviously, Yakone was a terrible person, and I don’t fault Aang for what he did, but considering how Amon was raised, you have to expect his morality to be not entirely in keeping with ours.
No, I do know that he was a bad guy. I’m not trying to excuse his actions, or his motives. I just don’t think it’s a case of being stricly villianous.
It may be that I took something different away, but as the story progressed, and the tapestry of Republic City was painted more fully, I had a hard time not seeing his point. Even after his true past was revealed, it still made logical sense that he would identify with the Equalists, and in many ways, support their cause.
Was he a believer in what he was doing? In a way, I think he was. I think he really did believe in what he was doing. That it was right and just. Tarrlok provides a nice counterpoint again, because he was also a believer in his cause, just from a position of within instead of without.
It’s hard to say, really, as we never clearly got told if Amon actually thought his motives were right, or if he was just using the Equalists for his own ends. It was implied one way, but his character was kind of murky on that front.
In all, I guess I just feel that he didn’t come out of the Standard Book of Bad Guys, and I rather enjoyed seeing that.
We could go around and around all day on whether or not he was acting in a way that was moral, perceived to be, or not at all, but in the end, I think he was an opponent of complexity and depth, and so far this season, I’m not sure we’ve stepped up from that to address characters that are truly in the moral gray area.
Perhaps I expect too much from a Nick cartoon, but they did set the bar pretty high last season.
@38: Either way, he was driven by hate and vengeance, and that is incompatible with morality.
@39.ChristopherLBennett
That I will disagree with you on. Hate, vengence, pretty much any dark or evil motivation can be seen as a morality of its own. Nobody ever said morality had to be good.
The Search Part 3 is out.
Best line of the episode.
“I knew this would happen.”
DED
Interestingly enough, when Korra ran through her breakdown of events that led to that line(DED), she left out “Tried to subourn the Republic military against the wishes of the democratically elected president”. I just wonder how Bumi would react.
@40: “Nobody ever said morality had to be good.”
Err, except the dictionary.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/morality?s=t
“1. Conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct.
…
Synonyms
1. See goodness.”
42. Aeryl
Yeah, Tenzin was killing it; he’s gone from lead role in season one to a much more supporting role, but it a testament to the “there are no small roles…” cliche.
ChristopherLBennett
&
CainS.Latrani
I think the crux of the disagrement stems from semantics. Namely, anti-hero. I think there are two kinds of anti-hero; one whose methods are ultimately shown to condemn them, & one who is ultimately exonerated. Well, then there is the third kind, that are always balancing on that line, often because they are serial characters like the Punisher. A friend of mine calls a certain type of NPC in my game “anti-villains,” since I always make villains with a plausible motive & master plan, I always give ’em a dash of sympathy, & sometimes they flip to the protagonist’s side, while sometimes they just spiral downwards into depravity, or they show the dangerous of zealotry…or, in Noatak’s case, they show the power of deception & propaganda.
@45 Mordicai
Basically, yes. There are many people in history and fiction who do things that are morally reprehensible to many for the most valid of reasons, at least in their mind.
Because morality is subjective, anti-heroes are always more fascinating to me than white knight characters, even when they end up falling into their own dark sides and become true villians.
@43 ChristopherLBennett
Sorry, I should have said nobody ever said morality had to be good in everyones eyes. Individual morality varies, and what is moral to some, is immoral to others.
My mistake for not expressing that better.
@46: I’ll grant that, at least in Tarrlok’s eyes, Noatak was someone who believed people should be treated equally. But I think that if he had really believed that, then his movement wouldn’t have been built around encouraging idolization of his own “face.” That’s basic personality-cult stuff, and it’s about elevating oneself above everyone else, which is as far from equalism as you can get. And sure, maybe Noatak had some affection for his brother, but not enough to stop him from abandoning his brother to an abusive father. So ultimately I think he was just a hypocrite. Whatever “morals” he had in principle, he didn’t care enough about them to truly live up to them, or to place them above his personal ambition and anger. So no, I can’t see his actions as having valid reasons behind them.
@47 ChristopherLBennett
Heh. You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villian.
I’m not sure I agree with you, but that’s okay. Diversity of opinion and view is wonderful. Plus, I always enjoy these kinds of debates, especially with another writer, and one I respect.
In case you were wondering, no, I’m not just being argumentive. I really do think Amon meant to do the right thing, at least at first. He was as much a victim of his own machinations as anyone was. He lost himself, I feel, to his own creation and ambition.
I guess another way to put it is Noatak was destroyed by Amon, who came to believe that the ends justified the means. I see him as an anti-hero because of that, really. His original goals were corrupted by his own growing thirst for power, and ultimately, what he set out to do was usurped by his own machinations.
But, yeah, I do find him a somewhat sympathetic character, and do believe he was more than just an evil mastermind.
47. ChristopherLBennett
Well, right, but that’s my point; it isn’t until we here Noatak’s backstory when we realize…that it is all just fabrication, deceipt, deception, propaganda, & that he’s a huge hypocrite fakir. Until then though, it could have been legit.
@49: But as I’ve said, all I needed to see was Amon promoting his movement with those huge posters of his own mask, and I knew right then and there, in “The Revelation” where we got our first good look at the guy, that he wasn’t a genuine believer in equality but was a personality-cult leader who was exploiting the Equalists’ anger to stir up violence and gain power. We’ve certainly seen no shortage of people like that in real life, so I didn’t need to wait another eight episodes to see him for the fraud he blatantly was from the very beginning. I never, ever believed Amon was sincere. No, I didn’t predict what his actual lie would turn out to be, but it was always obvious to me that he was a liar.
I mean, he wore a mask — that alone told me that he was keeping a secret. That’s just story structure, Chekhov’s Gun. If a mystery about his appearance/identity is being set up, then there’s going to be a surprise revelation later on and it’s going to turn out that he’s not who or what he appears to be. So I assumed from the start that his story about his face being burned was a lie. If a character in a work of fiction describes something that the audience isn’t shown, that’s generally a clue that it didn’t really happen that way. (The most famous subset of this rule being “They aren’t dead if you don’t see a body.”)
Not to mention his claim that his power-removing ability was a gift from the spirits. I never bought that either. The Avatar is the one with the connection to the spirit world; why would the rules of the universe suddenly change? Plus his technique didn’t entail the light displays that accompanied Aang’s use of energy-bending to remove Ozai’s abilities, so I figured it had to be something different, something not spiritually based, and that Amon was therefore lying. I figured what he was doing was some advanced variant of chi-blocking, just a trick to make the Equalists think he was divinely gifted.
So no, I’m not back-projecting based on what I learned later. I never, from the start, believed that Amon was legitimate.
50. ChristopherLBennett
Well okay but those are all seperate points to the one you brought up in 47. Personally, I would have been opent to Amon as a leader of a cult of personality, as an imperfect figure– no one is arguing that cult leaders of violent cells are good people– just that the internal elements revealed in the end are the truly damning details. Your other arguments could fall under a “moral grey” umbrella, to a debatable extent. As for thinking the mask was “fake,” I thought Koh was going to be behind it, so I thought the mask was “real,” & that Amon was faceless.
@51 mordicai
I saw him as being kind of like Batman, myself. A man who knew that as himself, he couldn’t do anything. With a face, he was powerless, but with a mask, he became more than a man.
Well, more of an anti-Batman, but you get the point.
@50. ChristopherLBennet
These are good points you bring up about Amon hiding behind his mask and how his personality cult is diametric to his supposed goals of equality. However, I feel that’s part of the design flaw about Amon that bothers me so much. He was always set up to be a villain instead of a flawed believer in his cause. The other way would have been way more interesting imho.
They could’ve just resisted firing that Chekhov’s Gun. Yes, tropes exist because they work well, but they can also make things predictable and stale. How much more interesting would it have been if no one from the good side took Amon seriously, only for it to turn out that he actually has a point, that he has help from some spirit or so that is bothered about the imbalance, even if he uses the absolutely wrong methods?
I didn’t believe his story either, but I had hoped that some part of it, maybe in a twisted way was true. The way they’ve gone was way too easy and boring for the darker tone they’ve used with LoK.
@51: That’s because in #47 I’d moved on to a different aspect of the discussion.
Re: finishing up storylines and rushing the last few episodes…
Since there will be four seasons, I think they’ll wrap up Mako’s story arc and (I hope) Bolin will get some sense slapped back into him.
I think Korra will fail. Vaatu seems like an enemy you have to train and prepare for, not one where you can just jump into the spirit world and lay the smack down. I think he will beat her and the convergence will end, leaving Vaatu free to wreak havoc on the world. Then Korra will get the band back together and, over the next season, they’ll travel around trying to figure out how to beat Vaatu, ultimately leading to Korra merging with him.
After all, Aang knew in season 1 that he had to defeat the Fire Lord but it took him 3 seasons to get there.
… then I read that each season is going to be a self-contained story. But it’s half an hour to the next episode, so I guess we’ll see soon enough.
Yep, I called it.