11.15
Too bad we don't have a menopause-bender.
So this episode’s one about the heroes getting back on their feet. Korra and friends try to act like they did in the old days, while Bolin and Varrick recuperate from betraying Kuvira. After the last outing with Kuvira taking Zaofu to complete the Earth empire, Korra’s situation now carries too much of a calm air to it. Yes, they have to save the prince from kidnappers, but that doesn’t have the decisiveness that should come after a dictator consolidating their forces. The gang getting back together tries to resonate a “here we go again” thing, with Mako being annoying and Wu providing comic relief in place of Bolin, when doing that makes what should be the first step to the series finale seem routine. The early half of the season promised something more morose and self-complicating. Here, things become simpler.
Exhibit A lies in Kuvira becoming Hitler during this episode, with her forces throwing fire and water benders into camps for no reason other than implied racial purity. I don’t get that. The cameos last season and familial conflict here promised something deeper. I was expecting to see someone with good intentions slowly corrupted by power until they became blinded into thinking the ends justified the means. Instead, we never get to see Kuvira’s descent from Suyin’s loyal disciple to a cruel dictator. That all gets slid off-screen into a time skip, and that lack of proper buildup gives the sense that she just woke up deciding to become Earth Hitler. I mean, even Hitler took years before becoming a dictator. Kuvira just needed a moment, and she suddenly has an army, spirit cannons, and her own secret police. This almost makes me want a Book 3.5 to make it flow better.
I know this is just me whining like I did back in Book 2, but there’s a major sense of a slipback here. There are some scenes that showed character progression, like Asami finally getting involved in (and winning) a fight after seasons of just being the Korra crew’s cabbie. I would even give points for Bolin becoming a decent leader for his own group after realizing the stupid yes-man motif has failed him for the last time. But those advancements are saddled onto stupid things like everything Prince Wu did. I get it, Bryan. Prince Wu’s supposed to be the clueless socialite. You made it clear in every other appearance of his. It would have been nice for him to take Mako’s message a few episodes ago to heart, but it feels like it never happened here. He still represents the failure of the system that made Kuvira take charge instead of a legitimate alternative to fascism, and that’s troubling for a character with only six more episodes to fully develop into that role.
In place of that, the episode’s more keen on the apparent symbolism in Baraz. Baraz is an amalgamation of so many prior characters from the Avatar universe, that it’s unsubtle. His actor played the main villain from the first season, so his scene emulates Bolin saving Amon from the current threat. He’s dressed up like Avatar Wan, showing how the re-education camps are imprisoning potential spiritual leaders and the like. Also, he has to be a firebender, like the last totalitarian force that almost conquered the Avatar world. He’s a minor character meant to tell more things than the writers can say, which renders him with more narrative luggage than the main characters if my assumptions are right. And even though I can admire that effort thrown into side characters, it only makes the lack of layers in more prominent members of the cast all the more apparent.
Also, Kuvira is going Colonel Quartich on the Toph’s swamp. I hope their fight next episode will make up for how dumb that allusion is.