Why Did Mako Stick Around in TLOK?

[Winter]

Tomorrow Chuck will be covering the last couple of episodes of The Legend of Korra: Book 2 Spirits and will no doubt be covering the number of issues with Mako and his and Korra's relationship. And with that I have a serious question which is, why was Mako kept on the series after Spirits?

Of all the characters in the Avatar series Mako is, In My Honest Opinion, the most useless character in the series. I can get why Bolin was allowed to stay as he does have a certain charm to him and he does play a relatively major role in the plot in Change and Balance but Mako? I can't really think of anything he does that actually affects the plot in a meaningful way.

Tenzin is Korra's mentor and the leader of the Air Nation, Lin is the chief of police and the sister of the leader of Zaofu, Jinora is Korra's spiritual mentor and plays a active role in the plots of Spirits and Change and Asami is the only other character in the series ,besides Korra and the villains, who has a active role in shaping the plot of every season and plays one of the most important roles in Korra's character development.

But Mako? He didn't really do all that much post Spirits and most of what he did do could have been done by anyone. Suspecting Aiwei of being the traitor, Korra or Asami could have done that given how often they've had to deal with people's BS. Fighting Ming Hua, could have been done by Lin, relaying a message to Korra about Zaheer going to attack the Airbenders, Tenzin could have called them as they were being attacked or Korra could have learned it from Zaheer himself via Spirit Communication. And believe it or not Mako becomes even LESS relevant to the series in Balance as he does next to nothing and he needs Korra and Asami because he screwed up the one job he has.

Mako only avoids falling into the realm of completely useless like Neelix because he does manage to help a bit but, again, most of what he does could have been done by anyone so why is he here?

Mako was designed for exactly one thing in the series, to be Korra and Asami's love interest and when that fell apart and the two started to gravitate towards each other Mako had absolutely nothing to fall back on plot or character wise. Asami had her issues with her father, her trying to rebuild and hold onto her company and her relationship with Korra so even if one of those failed she had more to do even when Korra wasn't around.

The reason so many people fell in love with Korra and Asami's relationship was because the two had a genuinely healthy relationship and both were great characters in their own right. In contrast Mako is just kinda there and he wasn't much of a character to begin with so bother keeping him around. IMO I feel that Mako should have just stayed in Republic City at the start of Rebirth and that should have been the end of it. Maybe he makes a cameo or two in Balance but aside from that I really think that he should have just left the series. Thoughts?

[Admiral X]

I'm going off of other reviews here, but isn't he essentially a butt monkey, existing solely to mess things up for Korra and Asami and for the audience to hate on?

[AllanO]

On the understanding that I've only seen the first three seasons and read none of the Korra comics. First this is really subjective I find Bolin more annoying than Mako for example. Mako to me is a cynic formed by being orphaned at a young age and having to grow up on the mean streets. His cynical outer shell masks the fact that he is emotionally stunted and so has trouble with relationships, trust issues etc. This creates character conflicts like his suspicion of that kid who is making the moves on Tenzin's daughter and so on.

Anyway my somewhat silly somewhat serious reasoning is balance. You need a firebender on team avatar (and Mako is ridiculously good at that), basically Korra is the avatar and the waterbender (technically the Avatar can be every kind of bender but for the purposes of this balance you can only fill in one spot with the Avatar), Tenzin is the airbender, Bolin is the earthbender and Asami is the token non-bender. Likewise in Avatar, the Last Airbender, Kitara is the water bender, Aang is the airbender, Toph is the earthbender, Zuko is the firebender and Sokka is the token non-bender. There are various hangers on (Suki, various Irohs). and provisos (after all Aang did not finish assembling his team until half way through the last season etc.), I think the writers really wanted that balance in the show.

The other balance is personality you have the choleric caustic angry one (Korra a lot of the time sometimes she is sanguine), the sanguine positive excitable one (Bolin), the melancholic dour one (Mako a lot of the time, sometimes he can be choleric) and the phlegmatic quiet thoughtful one (Asami) etc. You need the dour Mako to balance out the hyper Bolin or at least that would be my guess.

Anyway I think he just needs to stick with the crime fighting thing to avenge the parents murdered before his eyes, but realize that the criminals of Republic city are a superstitious and cowardly lot and he most adopt an appearance that will strike fear into their heart, he should become Wolfbat Man <thunder crash and lightning>.

[CmdrKing]

I'm gonna pitch a theory. The creator are the sort of people who keep tabs on their fandom, they've always been willing to talk about fan shipping and the like in interviews and conventions. But in Korra they didn't have a predetermined endgame in mind, and I think it created a feedback loop.

So basically? Mako stayed part of the show because he was important in their original story, and had a following in the fandom. When their story matured and moved in a direction that Mako didn't really make sense in... he stuck around because he had that following and they didn't want to upset the fans, despite not having anything meaningful for him to do.

In addition to being comic relief, Bolin they found a good role for because one of his established traits was being too trusting and prone to following into a bad crowd, making him a good vehicle to see the other side of conflicts as they developed. Mako... is the straight laced one. So he has to be persistently on the side of law and order, but there's only so often Korra can clash with them, nor can the show sustain just using Korra as a mindless enforcer of the status quo (I mean, that's... what the first season was about!) So they don't want to reinvent the character or have him quietly retired into the background, that might piss off the fans, but what they created as his basic character made no sense in the stories they ended up telling.

It's good to engage with your fans, but this is why you don't let them start dictating your writing.

[Worffan101]

I kinda liked Mako in the later seasons where they made him less of an angst robot and more of a sort of hard-bitten cop in progress. Bolin always pissed me off, he wasn't as funny as Sokka and lacked Sokka's cleverness and real human warmth.

Honestly, Korra hit its stride in season 3, was actually pretty damn good in season 4, but season 1 was weak and 2 was clearly underwritten on every level. Then again, the show was never going to be quite as perfect as ATLA originally was, because ATLA was a largely self-contained narrative and was a pioneering show.

I get that it's popular among certain Internet circles to hate on Korra because Teh Gayz and Teh Wimminz, but fundamentally, the only real problem was that the cast wasn't as solid from the get-go (Mako comes off too much like Zuko Lite in all the wrong ways in the first couple of seasons, for example), and then they added too many characters, and about half of them were not great. With ATLA, you had about 5 heroes and 2 pets, some memorable bit parts who came and went, 4 recurring villains, and Zuko and Uncle Iroh. In Korra, which has HALF the time per season to flesh people out, you have 7-8 protagonists at various points, plus major side characters who are effectively secondary protagonists numbering close to a DOZEN, and because they didn't have a plan going in they keep adding lore each season and it starts to pile on itself.

Frankly it's a miracle seasons 3 and 4 were more than passable, let along as awesome as they were.

Korra needed more time. More time to take place in, and more prep and writing time going in. As-is it's too overstuffed and they don't have time to linger on things like ATLA did or do standalone episodes. LIke--remember Hama? The bloodbender in ATLA? Was there EVER a single-episode villain like that whose sole purpose is to challenge one of the core protagonists like that in Korra? How about the Southern Raiders episode? Do we ever see, for example, Lin taking Mako on a quest for payback to teach him a lesson about why revenge sucks? Asami taking Jinora out for something similar, an "abnormal team-up that gets personal" kind of thing? No, because they don't have the time. There's no time for stuff like Hama or the man who killed Katara's mom or Aang fucking up his first attempt to learn firebending or Zuko having a diversion into a village where he tries to become a better person or anything like that. And those were some of the best damn episodes of ATLA, the bottle shows that were less about plot and more about character.

While I genuinely love seasons 3 and 4, they are NOT going to match ATLA. ATLA is just too damn good.

[CharlesPhipps]

Mako was supposed to be the romantic lead.

They just forked that up royally by making him a cheating, whining, condescending jackass. He went from being the Prince Zuko to the....actually one of the most disliked cartoon heroes of all time.

I feel bad for Bolin because both women were all about Mako and while a goofball, Bolin is objectively the better boyfriend material by far.

Dude may be a bit pudgy but you can guess he's a caring devoted lover.

However, you HAVE missed seriously the element as to why Mako stuck around.

Because he's Bolin's brother.

Even after he's the ex of Asami and Korra, he's still part of the group because Bolin is their Ron Stoppable. Korra and Asami aren't going to kick Mako out of their lives because they're still close friends with the awesomeness of the Magma Bender.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Now I want to write a fanfic where Korra kills Mako and then tells Bolin that she sold him to a farm where he'll be very happy.

[Admiral X]

What really bites about what the writers did with Mako is because he was named to allegedly honor the actor that played Iroh.

[Lizuka]

I really feel like the show never knew what to do with... pretty much any of its cast besides Korra. Like I feel like about the only case where someone isn't at least somewhat superfluous after their initial season is Bolin and Varrick in season 4. And even then it's not like Varrick actually matters in season 2 (granted he is by far the best part of that season, not even close), given how the sum total of his subplot is, "He gives them a boat, things happen, he gives them another boat."

Mako probably has the worst of it though. He keeps being treated as a lead because that's what he was designed to be but with abandoning the love triangle there's just... nothing to him.

About the only character I'm even kind of tempted to say had recurring importance was Jinora and even then that's just because they like using her as a deus ex machina.

[Winter]

I personally feel that the characters who are unquestionable the most important to the series overall plot are, Korra, Asami, Tenzin, Lin & Jinora and between the five of them I really only feel that Korra and Asami are the only ones who have the most impact on the series plot and each other.

Tenzin and Jinora are pretty much demoted to extras in Balance and Lin becomes a generic police commissioner in Spirits. By contrast Asami's conflict with her father is the Only major plot point that has any impact from Air and her stopping him is also a major plot point in Air. Her trying to rebuild and hold onto her company is a major plot point in Spirits, her growing relationship with Korra plays a big part in both women's character development in Change and Balance. And her rebuilding her relationship with her father is also a major plot point in Balance and out of all the main characters it's Asami who plays the overall most important role in defeating Kuvira as it's her idea and tech that is used to give the heroes the chance they need to bring the series final big bad down.

As much as I love Varrick and Zhu Lee their not really plot relevant until Balance and Bolin doesn't really have a character arc throughout the series so much as things just sort of happen to him. Also I'm not a big fan of his Power Up in Change as it's really just a Deus Ex Machina and has no barring on his character.

I do want to note that I like TLOK but like the Star Wars Prequels I do find it to be a flawed series and in many ways I personally find Air and Change to be weaker then The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. I think the series biggest issues here is that it has to many characters and most of them are rather pointless. IMHO you could cut out half the cast and the series would be better for it.

To show what I mean take a look at the Web Series RWBY. For the most part the series focuses on the titular team and also on team JNPR as the Deuteragonist. You do have major characters like Maria, Ozpin, Sun and teams family members and the villains but most of them are there to sever either the plot or the characters of the two main teams.

Case in point, Sun, who I actually really like, has currently left the series because his role in plot and Blake's character arc had reached it's conclusion. He was there to get Blake to start her fight to reclaim the White Fang and to help her get over her guilt of endangering her team mates. Once that was done Sun decided to return to his home to lead his team as he accomplished his goals and knew Blake didn't need him anymore. As much as I like Sun him leaving, for now, was the right move on the writers part as it allowed more time to focus on Ruby and her character development which was something that was really needed for the series and Blake is still growing as a character a good chunk of that is focused on her rebuilding her relationship with Yang and Sun wasn't needed for that.

I feel this is what should have happened with Mako as he no longer had a reason to stay around. IMO, he wasn't really needed for the series to move forward and his screen time could have been better used to properly introduced and establish Kuvira's character instead of just briefly introducing her in a odd ball cameo.