The Legend of Korra's Two Fatal Flaws

My favourite television series of all time will not surprise anybody who grew up in the 2000s.

The winner is, of course, Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Not only is Avatar the best children’s series of all time (sue me), its popularity remains 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 meet this demand, Avatar’s creators, Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, created a sequel series four years later, 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 timeline of the original series and centers 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 being the peacemaker 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 (pictured), 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 to the world. But unlike the previous series, which was always building up to a final battle between Aang and the main antagonist, The Legend of Korra opted to tell its story over four shorter seasons with a new antagonist for each of those seasons.

Initial Thoughts

Immediately, we can see the strength of this new approach to the sequel series. Firstly, a seventy-year time jump ensures that all the previous characters would be either elderly or dead. 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 their fictional world to make it feel new.

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 overarching story. 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 the hardcore fans. Most of the criticisms are unfair, and I feel that if one is going to criticise this show, 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.

I believe a mere two choices in the network of ideas had an outsized impact on the show’s reception. But they’re two very important nodes, so let’s explore them.

Major Flaw #1: The Pacing

The Legend of Korra moves at a blinding speed and the plot is relentless. Slow moments that reveal who the characters really are can be frustratingly sparse.

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 22 minutes each for a single season. Nickelodeon previously gave them 20 episodes per season for the original show. 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 the plot completely brickwalls the episodes to the exclusion of everything else. In fact, during my first time watching The Legend of Korra, I was surprised when certain episodes ended where they did. The ending for some episodes was so abrupt that they felt unfinished.

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…and that list doesn’t include anything else the creators wanted to throw into the jumble.

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 the cast for the debut season.

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. Now we’re up to four. However, Korra needs an airbending teacher and there’s only one, Tenzin, son of the previous Avatar. That’s five. Tenzin has three children, Jinora, Ikki, and Meelo who help with the training. That’s a total of eight. While all that this is happening, Korra meets the police chief, Lin, the daughter of an original Avatar series character, bringing us to nine. However, this gang of good guys soon faces their first real group of villains, the Equalists, run by the mysterious Amon. And how could I forget Naga, Korra’s polar bear-dog hybrid?

If you count the names in the previous paragraph, we have no less than 11 ‘main’ characters for a season with twelve episodes. Characters from the subsequent stories would stick around just as long. 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 one 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 balanced 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. Sometimes characters would split off from the group and disappear for episodes at a time. Worse, 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 be shunted along to next character like you’re browsing watches at the Cartier store. You can look, but you better not touch.

And of course, the high number of characters needing to be squeezed in meant the already fast 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 sequences were amazing, the animation was absolutely breathtaking, and the music beyond compare.

In many ways, The Legend of Korra was a victim of its own success. The ideas were all there, but had nowhere to grow.

The Legend of Korra showed us why Avatar stories deserve to be continued, but also taught us what should be avoided in the process.