The Legend of Korra Finale.

[cypsiman2]

The short version: The finale was very disappointing and only becomes more so the more I think about it to the point that it retroactively sucks out the joy of the earlier episodes due to how it undermined what came before.

I remember arguing with people on a forum I frequent over whether or not Amon was some sort of bender or quasi-avatar or something like that and I was firmly against that, since Amon being anything other than a non-bender with a special power to take away bending would be much less interesting. So yeah, Amon turning out to be a super-duper-hyper-ultra blood bender was not something I liked seeing, because now it makes it look like all the ethical and social complexities that were being set up look completely meaningless. This for me is the biggest problem with the finale as it undermines the entire conflict of the story and leaves me with very little to engage with.

There's also of course the love triangle; I am not a fan of love triangles, but when they played the whole thing for laughs back in episode 5, I figured that they would handle it well. I was wrong, Mako became a tool and his apology to Asami near the start of the finale was, to use the word again, undermined by him going off to kiss Korra without a second thought or moment of consideration to Asami. Another major effect of the love triangle was that character focus and development was very poorly handled: Asami stagnated while Bolin was given nothing to do, and Mako and Korra's development was not well done at all, I never believed in their relationship much less became invested in it.

Also, what the hell was with Tenzin and his family being captured? What the hell was the point of Lin sacrificing herself to make sure they got away if they were going to be captured anyway? And off screen at that, that's just lazy. Oh, and when Asami, Bolin, and General Iroh were going to the airfield, why the hell did they fall for that obvious electrical trap? And really, how many goddamn toys can Hiroshi Sato have possibly created, I mean biplanes, seriously?

Not to mention the whole thing of Korra's spiritual journey consisting of her feeling a sad, Aang shows up to fix things, season's over.

I am cautiously optimistic that the next season will be better, that it will hopefully be able to address some of the problems I have with this finale, but I am not nearly so enthused as I was when the show first started.

Comments

[cypsiman2.livejournal.com]

It does seem like a lot of problems would have been dealt with if they'd been able to work with the time constraints that they'd been used to working with instead of having to condense everything so much.

In any event I'm glad that you enjoyed the finale as the lead-up to it was good.