My favourite television series of all time will not surprise anybody who grew in the 2000s. It’s not the Sopranos, not The West Wing, and not Breaking Bad. No, the winner is Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Not only is Avatar (no relation to the blue mess of the same name by James Cameron) the best children’s series of all time (sue me), its popularity is enduring, enjoying an enormous renaissance in 2020 when it came to Netflix. The show, which originally ran on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2008, ticks so many boxes for perfect family-friendly entertainment. Grounded fantasy elements? Check. A clear beginning, middle, and end? Check. Compelling characters with fascinating narrative arcs? Check. A show that takes itself seriously? Check. Avatar’s success is difficult to replicate and its continued success has of course left fans hungry for more.
To satisfy fans, Avatar’s creators, Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, created a sequel series to Avatar, The Legend of Korra, the subject of today’s media detour.
What Is The Show About?
The Legend of Korra is set seventy years after the original series took place and centres on the new Avatar, Korra. For those unfamiliar, the original show’s main character—12-year-old Aang—was the Avatar. In this fantasy world, The Avatar is able to control and manipulate, or ‘bend’ to use the show’s terminology, all four elements (air, water, earth, and fire) whereas all other ‘benders’ are only able to bend one element. Due to their enormous power relative to everyone else, the Avatar is tasked with maintaining balance between the four elemental peoples in the world. When the Avatar dies, they’re reincarnated to a person in the next nation along in the aforementioned elemental order. Since Aang was an Air Nomad, his successor, Korra, is from the Water Tribe.
Like the previous show, The Legend of Korra’s seasons are about Korra’s efforts as the Avatar to restore balance in the world. But unlike the previous series, which was always building up to a final battle between Aang and the evil Fire Lord, The Legend of Korra opted to tell its story over four shorter seasons with a new antagonist for each season.
Initial Thoughts
Immediately, we can see the strength of this approach to the sequel series. Firstly, a seventy year time jump ensures that all the previous characters would be dead or elderly. Many sequels struggle to match their predecessor because they are aiming for the same feel as the original. The Legend of Korra (mostly) avoids this issue by stating unequivocally that the previous protagonist is dead and that a new Avatar has arrived. Secondly, the long time-jump freshens the fantasy world the series is set in. Seventy years is a long time, and the creators opted to show technological and sociological progress that took place in the world as a way of showing progression.
A second strength of the long time-jump is the ease of introducing the new main character. The creators’ pitch for Korra’s character was simple: the opposite of Aang. Aang was 12, male, and the reluctant hero type. Korra is 17, female, and eager to embrace her role as the Avatar. This opportunity for a role-reversing main-character simply didn’t exist in the original series, and it was a smart call to take advantage of it with the sequel.
A third deviation was creating seasons that were de facto standalone arcs compared to a single story told over those seasons. This allowed Korra to battle different antagonists and expand the world-building elements which might serve as inspiration for future projects.
However, despite these initial strengths benefiting the show, The Legend of Korra has definitely earned mixed reviews from Avatar fans. Some criticisms are fair, others are not, and I feel that if one is going to criticise Korra, they need to do it without saying “the original series did it better”.
So what storytelling decisions did Dimartino and Konietzko make that ultimately turned out to be sub-optimal? Was it hundred, thousands? No, just two. But they’re two very important nodes in the creative network of ideas.
Major Flaw #1: The Pacing
The Legend of Korra moves at a blinding speed and the plot relentlessly moves forward without pause. Slow moments that reveal who the characters really are can be frustratingly sparse. In lieu of stopping, characters are constantly on the move, constantly battling their antagonists, constantly working to uncover a mystery, constantly navigating the treacherous world around them, and constantly learning more information about the fantastic world they live in. On and on it goes.
Some of these pacing problems aren’t the fault of the creators, but the format. The creative team had anywhere between 12 and 14 episodes spanning 23 minutes each for a season of Korra. Nickelodeon previously gave them 20 episodes per season for Avatar. Objectively, this means the sequel series is telling a smaller story, which is fine. I can’t stress this enough: a reheating of the previous series would have been dreadful and uninspired.
But the natural consequence of this format change is the pacing speeds up and plotpoints brickwall the episodes to the exclusion of all else. In fact, during my first time watching The Legend of Korra, I was surprised when certain episodes ended where they did. The fast pacing ensured that many episodes ended on what felt like a cliffhanger at best or felt cut off prematurely at worst.
A fast-paced show isn’t necessarily a problem. Indeed, one small upside from the fast pacing is the fluidity and excitement of the action and battle sequences. All are animated beautifully and make for a fantastic viewing experience. What makes the pacing problematic is the sheer amount of stuff running through that fast pacing. Each season has to, at minimum, set up the new antagonist, set up the new conflict for Korra to resolve, and add onto the existing material from previous seasons. None of that includes anything else the creators want to throw into the jumble.
And if reading complaint that has clued you into the second big flaw with The Legend of Korra, then you might already know what’s coming next.
Major Flaw #2: Too Many Characters.
This, right here, is the show’s Achilles Heel. The Legend of Korra has far too many characters and nowhere near enough screen-time to give all of them proper arcs, including Korra herself. To give you an idea on just how bloated this ensemble cast is, consider who they added to the mix when creating the story. Every character I name ought to be considered a ‘main character’ in the sense that they appear in at least ten episodes out of the fifty-two total.
First and foremost, there’s Korra herself, but a solo show with no secondary protagonists would be boring. To rectify this, the creators ensured Korra was (mostly) accompanied by three other leads, Mako, Bolin, and Asami. However, Korra needs an airbending teacher and there’s only one, Tenzin, son of the previous Avatar. Tenzin has three children Jinora, Ikki, and Meelo who help with the training. Whilst this is happening, Korra meets the police chief, Lin, the daughter of an original Avatar series character. However, this gang of good guys soon faces their first group villains, the Equalists, run by the mysterious Amon and his faithful Lieutenant. And this is just the crux of season one, spread out over 12 episodes.
If you count the names in the previous paragraph, we have no less than 11 recurring characters and that’s just season one. That’s nearly one main or recurring character for every episode of the season. Characters from the subsequent seasons would stick around just as long. Since my example excluded all subsequent seasons, I failed to mention Korra’s father, uncle, any of the subsequent antagonists, any of the cameos by older characters, or newcomers like Opal, Kai, and Lin’s sister, Suyin. There’s simply not enough oxygen for all of them.
Here’s why this is a problem: A story, regardless of the medium, is like a pizza that needs to be fairly divided between its characters. Too few characters will wind up eating bigger slices of pizza, leading to irrelevant details and nonsense filling the void where another character should be. But, as in Korra’s case, too many characters sharing the pie means that each slice is smaller and smaller, and divided in such a way that no character is satiated. Not helping Korra’s case is that the pizza itself is smaller (fewer episodes per season than the previous Avatar series). A proper story gives all its characters the right amount to eat so nobody goes hungry and nobody projectile vomits from overeating.
As you could probably guess, the effect of this decision to include so many characters metastasised on the show’s stories like an unchecked tumour. For one thing, in order to fit all the story-arcs in, the characters, by necessity, split off from the group and undertook many side adventures by themselves. It meant these ‘friends’ were not together very often throughout the entirety of the show. This in turn meant the relationships between the characters were minimal at best or rushed at worst. It also meant that each character’s individual arc had to be spread out very thinly over several episodes. Characters would get small windows to give you a glimpse at their compelling motives within, only for you to move along to the next character like you’re scrolling though a TikTok compilation. You can look, but you better not touch.
And of course, the number of characters needing to be squeezed in meant the already faster pacing feels even faster.
Conclusion
For my money, The Legend of Korra got it right 8 times out of 10, which is impressive for a sequel series. The characters ( despite their overpopulation) were interesting, the action was amazing, the animation absolutely was breath-taking, and the music was beyond compare.
In many ways, The Legend of Korra was a victim of its own success. Its action was thrilling, but too fast paced to really be appreciated. Its characters expanded on their original series counterparts in interesting ways, but you never had time to explore them to their fullest potential. The ideas were all there, but never had the chance to fully mature.
The Legend of Korra showed us why Avatar stories deserve to be continued, but also taught us what should be avoided in the process.