Rambling Thoughts on the Season 3 Finale of The Legend of Korra

Perhaps you’ll disagree, as all I seem to be seeing is nothing but praise all across the internet, but I can’t help but feel disappointed and a little cheated by the finale of The Legend of Korra’s third season. Let me back up a bit. Season 3 of Korra was by and large an enormous success in my book. All the characters were given something interesting to do this season and a sense of adventure that has been missing since The Last Airbender was brought back to the show. I still think Korra is a bit of a boring protagonist, but at least she seems more mature this season and I accepted her as the heroine this time mainly because everything going on around her was so engaging. The writers should also be given credit for doing a good job of portraying Korra as a normal teenager who just so happens to have this god-like power and god-like responsibility that she never asked for. The animation has also been at its best this season, with some really unique and beautiful set pieces like the metallic city of Zaofu and countless beautifully choreographed action sequences, each one more stunning and thrilling than the last. And although characters like Asami, Tenzin, and Lin really shined this season (Mako and Bolin weren’t too shabby either), the true star of this season wasn’t Korra and her friends, but the methodical Zaheer and his fearsome gang.

And this is mainly where season three’s finale failed me. It failed in doing any sort of justice for its most interesting characters. This whole season has built up Zaheer, P’Li, Ghazan, and Ming-Hua, as competent, interesting, and sympathetic antagonists, who by the episode entitled “Long Live the Queen”, I actually found myself rooting for. Zaheer’s methods involve murder and other questionable methods, but he still maintained a sense of honor and respect throughout the season. He is someone who is wholly committed to his goal, but also seems sympathetic and human, someone who is not only loyal to his mission but also to his friends and to his lover. I expected to learn more about Zaheer and his friends and what in their lives had led them to where they were; I had expected in the end that they would become more and more ambiguous in their role as the “villains”. Something that The Last Airbender excelled at was giving its villains a human side and treating them like actual people. This seemed to be the case for the Red Lotus as well. The season seemed to be building up to something greater than just a “good guys vs. bad guys” showdown…but that’s pretty much what we got with the finale.

Don’t get me wrong: that showdown was absolutely thrilling and even shocking at some points, with some characters suffering brutal deaths and others very close calls. The finale was emotional, but the whole time I had this sinking feeling inside me as one Red Lotus member after the next met their demise: “please don’t let it end like this”, I kept thinking. You see, Zaheer and the Red Lotus, and the whole story that this season has built, has been so much more interesting than anything else in The Legend of Korra, that there was no way that the writers were going to satisfyingly wrap everything up by the end of this season without rushing things. I figured that the Red Lotus arc would carry over into the fourth season, and Zaheer and his crew would be the show’s antagonists until the series finale. That’s how it should have been, at least. These characters still had plenty of potential and were certainly capable of carrying the villain quota for another season. Unfortunately, the writers of Korra fell back on utilizing deus ex machinas and an unfortunate desire to once again try to wrap everything up in one gigantic, admittedly thrilling, fight sequence.

P’Li’s death felt tragic, especially after the moment her and Zaheer shared just before. I literally felt far more emotion for Zaheer in that moment than I have for Korra the entire series. I was disappointed though because I wanted more from P’Li’s character, and I was also disappointed that the writers were employing the old “kill off the male character’s girlfriend to give him more motivation” (otherwise known as the “women in refrigerators”) trope. But I bought it in the moment as the whole sequence took me off-guard and was really well put-together. But Mako simply using a lightning shock to defeat Ming-Hua felt very anti-climactic and raised the very, very valid question of why he didn’t just do that to begin with (like, the first time he ever fought her). And Ghazan, who I was just really starting to like after his moment with Bolin while riding in the truck a few episodes prior and his sporting attitude during their fight in the finale, shortly afterward resorting to sacrificing himself in order to take down Bolin and Mako (an effort from which they both escaped from extremely easily by doing something that Ghazan himself also easily could have done to escape) felt forced and out of character for the seemingly lighthearted Ghazan (I know he was also trying to avoid going to prison, but he could have just used his lava bending to escape; this just felt like the writers reaching for a way to kill him off because they wanted all the main Red Lotus members dead except for Zaheer). This all just feels like such a waste of characters that this season did a great job of making me want to know more about. The writers seemed to be making them more and more human with each episode, and here in the finale, they just get cheaply picked off one by one like common villains. I feel cheated.

Once again, Jinora saves the day in the end by rallying the other airbenders together to create a giant tornado that sucks Zaheer to the ground. While all the new airbenders working together to use their combined strength to take down the powerful Zaheer was good closure for their story this season and the image of Korra wrapping a chain around Zaheer’s leg and yanking him to ground only for him to be literally encased in earth felt like a poetic defeat for the man who wished to be untethered from the earth, the writers follow this up by committing a huge sin. They take their most interesting character, the star of this season really, and instead of giving him any kind of respectful closure, they turn him into the punch line of a Bolin gag. When Fire Lord Ozai was made to look like a fool at the end of The Last Airbender after his defeat at the hands of Aang, it felt appropriate as comic relief to show that this massive threat was finally quelled, and also felt satisfying because Ozai was a character in desperate need of humiliation. But the writers went out of their way this season to make Zaheer sympathetic and try to get us to see his point of view. I wouldn’t say I one-hundred percent agree with everything Zaheer was doing, but he was far from the kind of villain I wanted to see humiliated in the way that he was. He certainly deserved more than being made to look like a raving madman before getting a sock shoved in his mouth.  It just felt really bizarre and out of place after everything else this season has done to build Zaheer’s character, and also clashed with the overall tone this season has had. Far from laugh, I could only feel confused and slightly agitated during this moment.

Was Zaheer wrong about wanting a world without leaders? Between The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, we’ve seen firsthand how much those with power have continuously screwed up the world in this series. Fire Lord Sozin and later on Fire Lord Ozai sought to conquer the world and assimilate all nations into their own; Tarrlok was a corrupt politician who used his power to manipulate people, discriminate against non-benders, and engage in other crooked tactics in order to defeat the Equalists; President Raiko seems intent on being fairly useless, stubborn and ignorant; Unalaq, former chief of the whole entire water nation, lied his way into power and was willing to sacrifice anything, including the well-being of his own children, in order to gain ultimate power; the Earth Queen…do I even need to go on? Korra herself has shown on multiple occasions that perhaps the god entity responsible for maintaining balance in the world shouldn’t be a flighty teenager. The show seemed to asking its audience an important question this season: Who is right here? Who is really the villain? If Zaheer has his way, will this world be better off? Or is disorder and true freedom not worth all the loss of life and general chaos? It felt like the story was building up to an ambiguous ending where the true best course of action wouldn’t  be clear, and would be up to the viewer to decide, or perhaps it would be up to Korra to decide and make a difficult choice.

 
But the finale ultimately had very little to say about the important question regarding order and the status quo that it has been asking all season. Zaheer was made a fool of in the end, shown as a ranting loudmouth who needed to “have a sock shoved in it”. Shortly after we see Raiko calling the Red Lotus “terrorists” and everyone explaining how they need the Avatar now more than ever. So I guess the show is now telling us that we’re supposed to think that order and leaders are a good thing? Despite all the stuff with the Earth Queen and all the evidence it seemed to be mounting to the contrary? It seems really contradictory and like such a safe, dull conclusion. I just don’t buy it. This is why this “finale” just seems so unsatisfying. While Ba Sing Se is in disarray presently, was freeing all those people and tearing down an oppressive monarchy really all that terrible? Yes, he was willing to kill people including an innocent teenager (Korra), but was Zaheer really just an evil terrorist? Remember when he stopped Ming-Hua from hurting the radio operator in Ba Sing Se and delivered that line about the innocent man being the kind of people that he wanted to help? And if Zaheer lying about giving up the airbenders was meant by the writers as some way of showing his true nature, it really just came off as false and untrue to his character. Judging from the code of honor that he seemed to exhibit all season, I feel like Zaheer would have been true to his word in that instance, and there didn’t really seem to be any reason for him to still hold the airbenders captive.

I do like that not everything was wrapped up in a neat bow at the end of this season and there did seem to be a lingering sense of melancholy in the end, which felt appropriate, and I’m hopeful due to Raiko’s mention of there still being more Red Lotus members out there, not to mention that fact that Zaheer is still breathing by the finale’s end, something that the previous two seasons’ main villains didn’t manage to accomplish (Zaheer is too determined and powerful to go down this easily, right? Perhaps next season will see a vengeful Zaheer making a comeback?). But unfortunately, I don’t see Ghazan and Ming-Hua coming back, even though their deaths were a little more ambiguous than P’Li’s gruesome demise (is this really still a Nickelodeon show? Well, I guess it was technically taken off the air…). The end of the finale seemed to have this odd implication that Jinora is going to be the main heroine next season (I mean, she basically has been the past two seasons anyway), and I’m guessing her tattooed reveal as an airbending master being very reminiscent of Aang’s appearance was no accident. Korra is seen as an invalid, shedding a single tear as she sits in her wheelchair off to one side. Is this ending symbolic of the writers wishing they’d made Jinora the star? Or is this their way of finally just giving in to the cranky fans and having a young airbender be the focus again while poor, unpopular Korra is battered and defeated off in a dark corner? Wasn’t this season supposed to be about “change”?

And what the bloody heck is up with Kuvira, the young female metalbender who got a suspiciously conspicuous introduction and another line about wanting to go with the others to rescue the airbenders and then wasn’t heard from again? (I know we've seen her before, but she got a strange spotlight during the finale, like it was setting something up with her character.)