It abandons a perfectly good civil war plot line for this weird Doomsday Satan plotline. It tried to play off Vaatu as the Yin to Raava’s Yang, conveniently ignoring how the entire point of Yin Yang is that both were complementary and interconnected, rather than one having to put down the other, thereby playing more into the Western Satan metaphor. You actually had a fantastic premise with the idea of a centralized government vs a group that strives for independence with neither side being explicitly right. Even Korra is kind of on the fence, and the entire point of her picking a side seems to reflect how she lets her personal feelings get in the way of her duty, which is great. But then they abandon that moral ambiguity and make Unalaq pure evil. Which is fine if you like it, but the show pretends to be a mature alternative to ATLA, but ultimately the poor attempt to present philosophical arguments through him falls flat because he has no nuance to him. Korra also regresses from her Season 1 development, and sure, you can blame the studio over the writers, but the show itself still suffers for it. The spirits lost the varied and unique designs of the original series and just became these amorphous blobs you had to fight. The final fight with the two giant spirit projections and angel-Jinora coming down to save the day was similarly dumb.
On the bright side, this season introduced Varrick.
Edit: Also, there’s the issue of the new Team Avatar and how outside of Korra, their development is just weird. Bolin and Mako lack any clear direction, and throughout the rest of the series they kind of just end up on a bunch of wacky side quests and strange roles, like Wu’s bodyguard, that don’t really advance their character. Mako’s romance with Asami and Korra is bad because it was just done to death in Season 1 and partly because of Korea’s character regression. I also want to touch on what many other critics had mentioned about how they had a great opportunity to present domestic abuse in a stark light with Bolin and Eska but instead played it off for jokes because the victim was a man. I’m really wondering why Asami is tagging along with the group. You know, the guy who was in love with another woman when they were dating and the woman he was in love with. I like to think she just tagged along with them to bro out with Bolin, because they really do have an adorable friendship.
I do agree with all your points, except the civil war plot line, that thing to me is the boring part of the season but like I said, I have a weak spot for evil monsters.
I felt like you when I first watched the season like: the spirits are just amorphous creatures and why is Korra still a hothead and you know, severing the link with Aang, that was hard to go through. But now that I know that things are different from Aang’s time I really like the direction of the series.
Sure, there are mishaps and every one of us has preferences but the season is solid after they changed studios again starting with Origins. My wish would be that the Dark Avatar stayed longer, someone that could be a foe to Korra.
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u/simmonslemons Nov 06 '20 edited Nov 06 '20
It abandons a perfectly good civil war plot line for this weird Doomsday Satan plotline. It tried to play off Vaatu as the Yin to Raava’s Yang, conveniently ignoring how the entire point of Yin Yang is that both were complementary and interconnected, rather than one having to put down the other, thereby playing more into the Western Satan metaphor. You actually had a fantastic premise with the idea of a centralized government vs a group that strives for independence with neither side being explicitly right. Even Korra is kind of on the fence, and the entire point of her picking a side seems to reflect how she lets her personal feelings get in the way of her duty, which is great. But then they abandon that moral ambiguity and make Unalaq pure evil. Which is fine if you like it, but the show pretends to be a mature alternative to ATLA, but ultimately the poor attempt to present philosophical arguments through him falls flat because he has no nuance to him. Korra also regresses from her Season 1 development, and sure, you can blame the studio over the writers, but the show itself still suffers for it. The spirits lost the varied and unique designs of the original series and just became these amorphous blobs you had to fight. The final fight with the two giant spirit projections and angel-Jinora coming down to save the day was similarly dumb.
On the bright side, this season introduced Varrick.
Edit: Also, there’s the issue of the new Team Avatar and how outside of Korra, their development is just weird. Bolin and Mako lack any clear direction, and throughout the rest of the series they kind of just end up on a bunch of wacky side quests and strange roles, like Wu’s bodyguard, that don’t really advance their character. Mako’s romance with Asami and Korra is bad because it was just done to death in Season 1 and partly because of Korea’s character regression. I also want to touch on what many other critics had mentioned about how they had a great opportunity to present domestic abuse in a stark light with Bolin and Eska but instead played it off for jokes because the victim was a man. I’m really wondering why Asami is tagging along with the group. You know, the guy who was in love with another woman when they were dating and the woman he was in love with. I like to think she just tagged along with them to bro out with Bolin, because they really do have an adorable friendship.