Avatar: The Legend of Korra (intro and Book 1)
(Note: This is not to be taken as a “fixed” or “improved” version of the show. While I acknowledge it has some flaws, it is still a good show, and this is merely my own take if I were writing it and its real life production issues never happened. I’m aware my changes could be both good and bad.)
The Legend of Korra (officially known as Avatar: The Legend of Korra) is an animated television series created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino (“Bryke”). A sequel to Bryke's previous series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which aired from 2005 to 2008 and continued in the form of an animated movie series, the series is animated in a style strongly influenced by Chinese donghua (animated series). The Legend of Korra ran for six seasons from 2012 to 2017. Like its parent series, it has been continued with a series of animated movies.
As with its predecessor, the series is set in an Asian-inspired universe where some can manipulate, or bend, the elements of water, earth, fire, or air. One person, the Avatar, can bend all four elements and maintains balance in the world. The series follows Korra, the reincarnation and successor of the previous series’ Aang, as she faces political unrest in a modernizing world seventy years after the previous series ended.
Like its predecessor, The Legend of Korra received critical acclaim, drawing favorable comparisons with the (completed) book and (12-season) television series A Symphony of Frost and Flame (as well as its own acclaimed companion series, A Hymn of Shadow and Jade) and the works of Studio Ghibli and the Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. The series has been praised for its writing and production values and has been nominated for and won several awards. The series was also praised for addressing sociopolitical issues such as social unrest, terrorism, globalization, and authoritarianism, as well as for going beyond then-established boundaries of youth entertainment regarding issues of identity, race, gender, and sexual orientation.
The Legend of Korra was initially conceived as a miniseries following the success of the first two animated movies released as sequels to The Last Airbender—The Promise, where Aang and Zuko negotiate the future of Fire Nation colonists in the Earth Kingdom, and The Search, which reveals the fate of Zuko’s mother Ursa—but was soon picked up for six seasons as Bryke insisted they could only tell the story they wanted if they were confident they had enough time to tell it, as had been the case with The Last Airbender. The story arc initially planned for the miniseries was expanded into the first two seasons of the series. Each pair of seasons (books) of 15-20 episodes per season contain a largely standalone story, although elements are carried over to the next pair, most notably in the transition from Books 3-4 to 5-6.
Setting
The world of Avatar
The Legend of Korra is set in the world of The Last Airbender 70 years after that series ended. The people of the world still largely belong to four nations: the Water Tribes (based on the Inuit peoples of the Arctic), the Earth Kingdom (based on feudal imperial China and Korea), the Fire Nation (also based on imperial China but at the height of Ming and later imperial Chinese power, as well as some Indian, Japanese, and Southeast Asian influence), and the Air Nomads (based on pre-Slavic Buddhist Tibet). The distinguishing element of the series is bending, the ability of some people to manipulate the classical element associated with their nation (water, earth, fire, or air). Bending is carried out by spiritual and physical exercises, portrayed with actual Chinese, Korean, and Japanese martial arts. As a result of the Air Nomad genocide in The Last Airbender's backstory (and title), there is only one living family of airbenders by the time The Legend of Korra begins. Only one person, the Avatar, can bend all four elements. Cyclically reincarnating through the four nations, the Avatar maintains balance throughout the world and serves as an international arbiter of peace and justice.
Cranefish City
The first season is mostly set in Cranefish City, a 1920s-inspired urban metropolis based on Fusang’s Hongzhou. Cranefish City is the capital of the United Commonwealth, a multicultural sovereign state whose origins are explored over in The Last Airbender’s sequel movies (specifically The Promise, which sets up the cultural and political circumstances for the Commonwealth's creation, and The Rift, which sees the first settlers arriving in what would become Cranefish City). Technological growth and social progress brought on by the mingling of the four nations’ cultures in the Commonwealth displaced the spirituality of bending. What was considered a renowned martial art 70 years ago is now commonplace. Pro-bending is a popular sport watched by thousands around the world. Bender gangs use their abilities to commit crimes, while other benders use their bending for ordinary jobs. Formerly rare special bending techniques such as lightningbending, seen only used by Fire Nation royalty in the previous series, and metalbending, discovered by Toph, have spread into the general public. Non-benders protest against their marginalization in the bender-oriented economy and society. Book 2 sees Korra visiting her home at the South Pole as well as the Southern Air Temple to connect with her spiritual side, while other characters visit Cranefish City’s sister city Yu Dao, building on plot points first established in The Promise and learning of the Commonwealth's early years. Books 3 and 4 expand to the Earth Kingdom proper, including locations from The Last Airbender like Ba Sing Se, Kyoshi Island, and Omashu. Book 5 again has a focus on the Earth Kingdom and Commonwealth, while Book 6 moves the setting to the Fire Nation.
Book 1: Air
(Spoilers for OTL Book 1 and the first two ATLA comics.)
Tenzin said:
Earth.
Fire.
Air.
Water.
Many years ago, my father, Avatar Aang, worked with Fire Lord Zuko to end the Hundred Year War and bring about an era of peace. Together, they established the United Commonwealth, with its capital of Cranefish City a place where people from all over the world can live together in peace and harmony. But Avatar Aang’s time in the world eventually came to an end. Many years later, the White Lotus discovered the new Avatar, a waterbender named Korra. Although she has learned much already, her story is only just beginning.
The opening credits for this season feature the Avatars Kyoshi, Roku, Aang, and Korra bending their respective elements while Tenzin narrates the series' backstory and premise, before launching into shots of Cranefish City's skyline, including a statue of Aang in the harbor.
The series opens with White Lotus sages visiting the Southern Water Tribe home of Tonraq a couple years after Aang’s death. They ask why he is so sure his daughter Korra is the Avatar. Korra barges into the room and begins manipulating pebbles, small flames, and drops of water. She boasts she is the Avatar and they have to deal with it. Many years later, Tonraq is now chief of the Southern Water Tribe. Korra is 17 and living in a White Lotus compound dedicated to training and protecting her. She finishes the day’s training with her firebending master, Zuko’s sister Lady Kiyi, who reaffirms to the other masters, including an elderly Katara, she is close to mastering firebending. Unlike Aang, it is clear Korra excels at the physical side of bending, but she fails on the spiritual side and is unable to airbend or enter the Avatar State. Tenzin, Aang and Katara’s youngest son, arrives with his wife Pema and kids Jinora, Ikki, and Meelo to visit his mother. Korra insists on going with him to Cranefish City so he can teach her airbending, but Tenzin refuses as the political situation there is unstable, and the compound won’t be available in the city. He remembers a particularly terrible incident which led them to build the compound. Nevertheless, after he leaves, Korra and her polar bear dog Naga stow away on a steamer bound for the Commonwealth with Katara’s help.
Katara helps Korra and Naga embark on their journey
Having grown up in the compound her whole life, Korra is amazed by the skyscrapers, traffic, and crowds of Cranefish City. Brashly deciding to make herself known, she immediately begins beating up triad members attempting to extort townspeople, but the property damage she causes leads to her being arrested by metalbending police officers led by Lin Beifong, Toph’s daughter and chief of police.
Tenzin bails her out and reluctantly decides to teach her airbending, allowing her to live with his family on Air Temple Island in the harbor. In the background, a non-bender revolutionary group called the Red Lanterns, led by the masked Amon, organizes rallies of hundreds calling for the end of the Commonwealth’s bender-dominated society and for a truly equal society to replace it.
Although Korra eagerly embraces her training, she remains unable to airbend or even talk to her past lives, which frustrates her. She begins attending pro-bending games against Tenzin’s will. At one of these games, she befriends the firebender Mako and earthbender Bolin, orphaned brothers who play for the Fire Ferrets team. When the Fire Ferrets’ waterbender teammate quits, Korra impulsively replaces him. Although she is inexperienced and is allowed to only waterbend, she wins a pivotal match using airbending techniques. Impressed, Tenzin allows her to continue playing for Fire Ferrets.
Bolin (left), Mako (right), and Korra playing for the Fire Ferrets
After being accidentally run over by her, Mako falls in love with the heiress Asami Sato, who convinces her father, Hiroshi Sato, the wealthy founder of Future Industries and inventor of the car, to sponsor them. Bolin is pressured into resuming work with the triad which had raised him and Mako on the streets, but he and several other triad members are abducted by the Red Lanterns (seemingly using information only Asami knew). Korra and Mako infiltrate a Red Lantern rally where they find Bolin and the triad members tied up. Amon tells the crowd the spirits gave him the ability to take away bending, which he believes to be a tool of oppression and discrimination, and restore balance to the world. He demonstrates this on the triad members, who become non-benders. This terrifies Korra, who built her entire identity around bending. Before Amon can do the same to Bolin, she and Mako free him. The Red Lanterns sent to capture them hold their own using chi blocking and technology to make up for no bending.
Amon takes the bending of a powerful lightningbending triad leader
The next day, Cranefish City’s governing council, made up of Tenzin and four other benders representing each nation and Water Tribe, convenes to discuss Amon. Tarrlok, the Northern Water Tribe’s representative, insists on a heavy handed response to crush the Red Lanterns. Tenzin and Yue, Sokka and Suki’s daughter and the Earth Kingdom’s representative, oppose him on the grounds that would only galvanize the movement, but the other two delegates vote in favor of Tarrlok. Tarrlok then attempts to recruit Korra, who at first refuses, but he eventually pressures her into joining him by manipulating the media against her. After a successful yet brutal raid on a Red Lantern hideout, Korra impulsively challenges Amon to a duel. But Amon and his forces ambush her at the duel location. Just when she fears her bending will be taken, Amon relents and releases her, not wanting to make her a martyr to the benders, but he promises he will come after her eventually. Returning home, she begins seeing scattered flashbacks of Aang’s life. These range from interactions with Tenzin and his siblings at younger ages to his work keeping the peace around the city, focusing on a specific trial he attended where something went very wrong. Yue, getting nightmares of the incident Tenzin previously mentioned, which she was involved in, warns Tenzin to protect Korra better.
As the Fire Ferrets advance to the championships, Lin learns the Red Lanterns intend to attack during the match. Although the council wants to cancel the game, Tarrlok convinces them otherwise and pressures Lin into using it to lure out Amon. The match proceeds as scheduled, but Korra’s opponents cheat and wipe them out. Disguised as regular spectators, the Red Lanterns strike, shocking Lin, Tenzin, Yue, and the police officers with electrified gloves. The police officers are captured, while Lin, Tenzin, and Yue escape. Amon arrives and takes away the cheaters’ bending before delivering a manifesto to the captive audience in which he calls for all non-benders to unite and rise up against the oppressive bending establishment. He then blows up the arena and leaves with the police officers. His second-in-command, the Lieutenant, attempts to capture Korra, Mako, and Bolin as well, but they escape. In the aftermath, Tarrlok uses his media connections to pressure Lin into resigning as chief of police, replacing her with his preferred candidate. Yue suffers a traumatic reaction from her brief capture, flashing back to the old battle, where she failed to protect her father. Although Asami said she was going to attend the match, she is absent, saying her father had asked for her help on designing a new car model at the last minute.
As their living quarters at the arena were destroyed in the attack, Mako and Bolin move into Asami’s mansion. Korra and Asami gradually bond and have insightful conversations about the Red Lanterns and their ideals. Although Asami disagrees with their methods, she believes their desire to end non-bender marginalization is justified. Her mother was killed by a firebending mugger when Asami was young, and she hopes a larger conversation about non-bender rights can begin so nobody will have to go through what she did again. Korra inadvertently overhears a suspicious phone call by Hiroshi which she takes to mean he is colluding with Amon. Asami tries to defend her father, but Korra remains suspicious. That night, accompanied by Lin, now a vigilante, they find a secret Red Lantern factory under the mansion, where Hiroshi attacks them with platinum-armored mechas Lin can’t metalbend. The team fends off the assault, and Asami asks Hiroshi why he is supporting the Red Lanterns, realizing she had been manipulated into helping them. Hiroshi explains he wanted to keep Asami from ending up like her mother. He asks Asami to join him so they can avenge her mother, but Asami rejects him, and he escapes.
Asami turns on her father
Tenzin offers Mako, Bolin, and Asami sanctuary on Air Temple Island. Asami finds vast troves of information in Hiroshi’s archives about the Red Lanterns, which she gives to the council. Korra’s flashbacks become more vivid and focus more on Aang in the courtroom, now making out the faces of Sokka, Suki, and Toph. She asks Tenzin and Yue about the visions. Tenzin believes she is slowly building her spirituality, and Aang is trying to tell her something relating to the current situation. Yue focuses on the content of the visions, finding some of Korra's recollections matching events from her childhood, particularly one she doesn't want to dwell on.
After reading Hiroshi’s documents, Tarrlok convinces the council to impose a blanket curfew on majority non-bender neighborhoods, which causes protests. Tenzin and Yue attempt to reverse the curfew, but Tarrlok accuses them of nepotism since they are cousins. Overriding their complaints with the support of the other councilmembers, he sends the newly subservient police to arrest the unarmed protesters. Korra intervenes only for Tarrlok to arrest Mako, Bolin, and Asami as well. Later that night, Korra impulsively storms into Tarrlok’s office and demands their release. Tarrlok demands Korra obey him if she wants her friends back, and a battle ensues. She initially has the upper hand, but the battle turns against her when Tarrlok reveals he is a bloodbender, able to bend the water in a person’s blood, and a powerful one able to bloodbend without the full moon.
He overwhelms Korra and locks her up in a cabin in the mountains. The next day, he tells the press the Red Lanterns abducted Korra, using it as an excuse to intensify his non-bender crackdowns. Lin breaks Mako, Bolin, and Asami out of jail, and with Tenzin and Yue’s help they infiltrate the Red Lantern stronghold they believe Korra is in. While they find Lin’s police officers, who had been stripped of their bending, the Red Lanterns deny capturing Korra, and Tenzin realizes Tarrlok misled them. They confront Tarrlok only for him to bloodbend them all and escape.
Korra meditates and focuses on her spiritual side, eventually piecing together her flashbacks with Tenzin and Yue's advice. The next episode takes place about forty years ago, when the notorious mobster Yakone threatened the city. After a terrifying incident where a young Yue and Kya, Aang’s waterbending daughter, were almost kidnapped before Katara intervened, Katara suspected Yakone could bloodbend, which she had made illegal after the Hundred Year War. Toph, chief of police, arrested him with the help of Aang and Suki. Councilman Sokka and Councilwoman Kori Morishita, the country’s founding heroine, organized a trial in the highest court of the Commonwealth on account of Yakone’s situation. Although Zuko was busy, he sent his daughter, Crown Princess Izumi, an accomplished lawyer, to assemble the prosecution’s case. Izumi spent the next few weeks gathering evidence.
Izumi presenting her case before Sokka and the United Commonwealth council
Witnesses were reluctant to come forward, and many who did were either silenced or had invalid testimony due to the bloodbending. She was threatened by Yakone’s gang, but Tenzin, Lin, Yue, Kya, and Bumi, Aang’s non-bending son, protected her. When Yakone was convicted at the trial, he bloodbent everyone in the room in broad daylight, even with his limbs restrained. He forced Toph to free him and then escaped. Aang used the Avatar State to overcome the bloodbending and pursue him through the city, eventually capturing him and taking away his bending.
Tarrlok returns to the cabin, and Korra deduces he is Yakone’s son, having inherited his unique talent for bloodbending. Tarrlok confirms this. After Aang took away his bending, Yakone was exiled from the Commonwealth. He went back to his home at the Northern Water Tribe capital of Agna Qel’a, where he had once been a soldier defending the city during Zhao’s invasion. He raised Tarrlok and taught him everything he knew about bloodbending, hoping Tarrlok would avenge him, but Tarrlok refused to do so. The Red Lanterns then storm the cabin, having followed Tarrlok. Although Tarrlok bloodbends them, Amon is unaffected and takes his bending. The Red Lanterns capture Korra as well, and although she puts up a fight, Amon takes her bending away too.
Hiroshi and Amon make their move
Returning to Cranefish City, Amon declares the revolution has begun. In a coordinated assault, the Red Lanterns seize government buildings and capture the Fire Nation and Southern Water Tribe council members. Yue and Tenzin fight off the attackers sent to capture them. Due to the small number of airbenders still in the world, the Red Lanterns don't know how to fight airbenders like Tenzin. Although the Red Lanterns are used to fighting waterbenders, Yue's unique waterbending style takes inspiration from both earthbending techniques as well as her Kyoshi Warrior training, which they can't counter (not to mention having nothing to deal with the familiar boomerang and fans she fights with). The police, hobbled by Tarrlok’s meddling, are unable to fight back when Hiroshi flies a fleet of airships into downtown. Radicalized by Tarrlok, many non-benders rally around the Red Lanterns, who arm them. Yue and Tenzin reach the police headquarters, where Tenzin uses his airbending to save the officers inside from being knocked out with sleeping gas. He manages to send a message to the United Forces, the Commonwealth’s military, before the radios are jammed. The Red Lanterns attack the headquarters with Hiroshi’s mechas, which overwhelm Yue and Tenzin until Mako, Bolin, and Asami arrive to even the odds.
Pema gives birth to her fourth child, a son named Rohan, just as Lin reports the Red Lanterns are approaching Air Temple Island. Tenzin rushes back to the island and evacuates Pema and their children on his sky bison while the White Lotus sacrifice themselves to buy time. When Red Lanterns continue their pursuit with their airships, Lin also sacrifices herself to destroy as many airships as possible before she is captured and has her bending taken away. She is tied up alongside Korra. Amon broadcasts a message to the city announcing he has taken away the Avatar’s bending, and the world no longer needs the Avatar. This alerts Mako, Bolin, and Asami to her location. They board the airship but are also captured. Seeing Asami in danger, Korra desperately throws a punch and suddenly airbends. The gust of wind she creates throws Amon against a wall, buying enough time for Mako to charge up and fire a weak lightning bolt at him. Freeing Lin, they escape and hide in the sewers, where Korra worries she is worthless. Asami tries to encourage her, saying she still has airbending, but Korra doubts she can regain the other three or amount to anything now. She wonders what this means for the future. While the statue of Aang is covered with Amon’s mask, Amon declares the end of the United Commonwealth and the beginning of a truly equal society under the Red Lanterns. As the season ends, a United Navy fleet steams towards Cranefish City, led by Prince Iroh, grandson of Zuko, and Bumi, now a United Navy admiral and Iroh’s father.
Prince Iroh's fleet on its way towards Cranefish City
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In the Annionaverse, the series is only picked up as a single season miniseries. Yue does not exist, and her screen time is given to Korra, Tenzin, and Iroh, who team up to defeat Amon. With only airbending available to her, Korra goes to the South Pole, but Katara is unable to heal her. Depressed, she contemplates suicide as she believes she is useless and should let the next Avatar’s life begin. But in her grief and self-reflection at her lowest point, she becomes open to her greatest change, and with Aang appearing to help walk her through unlocking her final chakras, she restores her own elements and enters the Avatar State.
Fans, or rather a very vocal minority, hated the entire show, particularly the "convenient" ending, with the flames spread quickly online with bad faith arguments alleging Korra was a “Mary Sue” and the series was garbage in various ways (mostly for being very different from The Last Airbender). After many sensational "video essays" encapsulating these opinions broke millions of views online, Bryke lost their confidence to write more, permanently ending the franchise. They went on to become writers for the highly popular series The Dragon Prince.
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Here is the secret cultural update series I've been talking about. Remember how I said this had a similar reception to Edelgard and I wanted to avoid the controversy surrounding the new Star Trek series? Yeah...
Not much has changed here other than the addition of Yue, since the lack of Sokka and Suki was one of my only complaints about the series. I imagine Yue wearing a casual Kyoshi Islander dress, not the warrior outfit, and carrying around Suki’s fans and Sokka’s boomerang. She has Suki’s hair and Sokka’s skin tone.
(Something like this. I would credit the artist but the account associated with it is deleted, though I suspect this is the art style of u/kkachi95.)
I’ve incorporated plot elements from the comics, particularly the first two, for better continuity from the original series. Here, they were released much earlier and as animated movies as was the original plan. OTL Book 1 was planned as a single season miniseries, which meant plot points like Mako and Korra’s relationship, the Avatar State, and everything with Amon and his movement had to be resolved by the end of the season. As that is not the case here, I didn’t need to do that and extended the plot into the next season. Book 2 will be
very different.