For the sake of ease, I'm going to assume you've been keeping up with the series thus far (also, I marathoned the final four episodes and they blur a little). Brief recap: Varrick, blah blah, Tenzen spirit fail, blah blah, Unalaq evil, blah blah, Korra bitchy then nice, blah blah, more love triangle bullcrap, blah blah, "we must restore the balance". Everyone up to speed? Good.
Now overall I felt that this finale had the same problems as the finale to season 1: It tried to do too much too quickly for the sake of closure and ended up feeling rushed towards the end. There's also a bit of a deus ex machina (that I'll get back to later). Overall, I felt it was apt for the season that was in it, as in it dragged for the first bit then rapidly picked up speed and felt ultimately unsatisfying (keep your mind out of the gutter). The plot is basically that Unalaq has fused with Vatu and become a dark avatar and he and Korra fight. He extracts Rava from Korra's body and smashes it against a rock until it's dead, resulting in Korra losing her connection to the past avatars, then turns into a giant dark spirit and sets off to terrorise Republic City. Meanwhile, Tenzen gets some closure on his Daddy issues in the fog of lost souls and rescues Jinora, Kya and Bumi. They go back to the convergence spot and learn of Korra's predicament. It just so happens that the tree Vatu was trapped in was the tree of time and Korra meditates there and turns into a giant blue Korra spirit and goes to fight giant Unalaq, Power Rangers style. They fight and *loophole!* Korra remembers that in avatar Wan's memories she heard that if Vatu ever defeated Rava or vice versa, the other would grow inside them until they both existed again. Jinora appears and glows, distracting Unalaq for enough time that Korra can make a move. She plucks Rava from Unalaq's chest and fuses with her, they fight and Korra wins. Yay. She then decides not to close the spirit portals and should let the spirits coexist with humans once more. The End. (Also, Korra and Mako talk and decide they don't work as a couple, Eska and Bolin kiss but Eska doesn't want to be tied down by him. Has anyone else noticed that those two are basically just Andy and April from Parks and Rec?)
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| Embodiments of Good and Evil? Wrestling kites, definitely. That makes sense. |
I had some major issues with the message this season was sending. After such a great villain and conflict (though badly resolved) in the last season, I was eager to see what this season would follow with. I was intrigued by the idea of embodying good and evil in Rava and Vatu and had decent hopes for the talk of restoring balance as I thought they might be going a route that is often overlooked. However, they went with the safe choice and for that the season fell drastically in my opinions.
Here's the thing: The whole "restore the balance of good and evil" thing has been done to death. It tends to be the driving force behind "chosen one" narratives (AKA the monomyth) and anything that follows similar tropes, such as Avatar. However, one very important factor in this idea of balance is often overlooked: The idea that for balance to occur, there needs to be both good and evil in equal proportion. This is what Yin and Yang represent, the ever present balance and struggle between good and bad. One cannot eradicate the other because they are present in each other. Most of these narratives focus on restoring the balance by defeating evil. That's fine, if evil has grown to such strength that it is smothering the good (as in the "Avatar, Legend of Aang") however, here evil was trapped in a tree. That hardly seems balanced.
I think the reason I had such high hopes for this was down to the emphasis on balance in both the imagery and dialogue of this season. Unalaq said repeatedly that he was working for Vatu to restore balance and I began to think that someone had finally gotten the hint as to what the word balance means. Nope! He's just evil and wants 1,000 years of darkness (not unlike the new Thor film, actually). Iroh's fan service reappearance, talking of balance, the constant Yin-Yang motif, good and bad spirits, I thought they were all leading up to something clever. Nope! Big battle, they smash the bad guy, happy ending. They also overlooked that, having destroyed Vatu, he should have started to grow again from within Rava. Nope! Let's ignore our own logic (though that could potentially come back if they have a third season, so fingers crossed).
When they started talk of a Dark avatar I was grinning my face off because IT MAKES SENSE! You have Rava and Vatu wrestling in Avatar Wan's memory, symbolic of good and bad's struggle against each other. Wan disrupts that, wouldn't it have been great if, to bring everything full circle, The dark and light avatars end up perpetually grappling with each other, as it had been in the beginning? Ugh. It was simply disappointing that a clever enough show would ignore such an obvious issue, especially considering the stress they put on it.
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| A dictionary, motherfucker! Do you own one?! |
Anyway, what else was in the finale? Jinora suddenly becoming a pseudo-Jesus was weird but otherwise inconsequential. I really liked that Korra and Mako didn't restart dating, that was getting tired and stupid, plus it can't hurt to have a hero without a love interest every once in a while. Asami seems to have gotten sidelined in the finale, I didn't really see why she would have to go back when she knows how to work the machinery that the Northern tribe were using, could've been useful. I liked that Varrick escaped, leaving that open for the next season (I love this guy's phrasing: "Zhu Lee, do the thing!").
Then there's the issue of Korra. I get the feeling that the writers of the reboot didn't like her very much because they keep making her screw up. Fatally. In season one she loses her Avatar powers (deus ex Aang restores them but there's a definite moment of "What the fuck, Korra? Be more careful with the fate of humanity and stuff!") Then in this season she loses Jinora and later her connection to the past avatars. Like, dude! Honestly, Korra as a character has always struck me as somewhat ungrateful compared to Aang. I know this is just her personality and the writers were trying to make her distinct from her predecessor but did they have to make her so... bratty? Because that's what she tends to come across as. I cared much more about Asami (who is awesome but gets a criminally sparse level of screen time and development) than Korra at the end of this. When Korra lost the connection to Aang and the others (irreversibly, might I add) all I could think of was "Oh great, now you've screwed everything up for the future avatars!" I just don't understand what went wrong with her character, especially considering how other characters with similar flaws come across better. Varrick almost sparks a war between the two water tribes because he's greedy but I still liked him. Mako can be cold and overly serious but I still liked him. Bolin could be cocky and makes some bad decisions but I liked him. Why was the protagonist the one exception?
Honestly, does anyone know? I found it so hard to empathise with her this season. Oh well, I guess we'll see what season three: "Changes" has in store. This has been my review of the season 2 finale for "Avatar: Legend of Korra".
Embrace the Madness.
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