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On the whole I think the Legend of Korra has stronger villains. Not to say that Last Airbender had bad villains but I think only really Zuko and Azula stood out while the others (Zhao, Long Feng and Ozai) aren't nearly as compelling as all pretty much boil down to a fairly standard Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain.

Compare them to Amon, Zaheer and Kuvira. All have fairly complex motives with all of them wanting to make the world better but none realize that they're burning the very world they're trying to save, believing that their actions are justified regardless of how terrible they are, because no price is to high for their perfect world. In the end they all have a profound impact on Korra's development as she manages to find a way to achieve her enemies goals without resorting to the same horrible tactics. There's also the fact that they actually score a lot more victories then most of the villains in TLA.

Think about, what exactly did Zhao, Long Feng and Ozai accomplish in their seasons. Zhao captured Aang, who escaped right after he was caught and wasn't able to do so without the aid of the Yuyan Archers. He killed the Moon Spirit... for about 3 minutes before that was undone. Sure Yue died to undo this but this has very little impact on the series going forward.

Long Fang, prevented the Gaang from meeting the Earth King and captured Appa... and that's really it as every other encounter with him results in his defeat and getting humiliated at every turn and he's arrested needly Azula to help him who promtply takes over the Dai Li and he gives up without putting up a fight.

Ozai... did nothing to Aang, Sokka and Katara. He is just Aang's final obstacle and nothing more. Sure he did a lot of horrible things to Zuko and Azula which is great (from a story point of view) but he's kind of a rather pathetic villain seeing that he only became Fire Lord because his wife did his dirty work and then he just stat on his throne looking intimidating. He did it very well but when it comes to actually doing anything of note he's just kinda there.

Amon committed several terrorist attacks, took over Republic City and took away Korra and Lin's bending. Sure this was all undone but he still managed to pull it off and remained a threat until the end of the first season. Zaheer killed the Earth Queen and threw the Earth Kingdom into complete chaos and crippled Korra which took her out of commission for 3 years in universe. Kuvira single-handedly took over the entire Earth Kingdom, lunched a full scale attack against Republic City and killed Asami's father.

Even Vaatu, who despite also being a standard mustache twirling villain still had a great presents and did quite a lot with very little screen time.

But in all this there is one villain who's not only the worst in TLOK but easily the worst in all of Avatar. Korra's uncle and... (sigh) the Dark Avatar. Unalaq.

Unalaq is easily the worst villain of the series. He causes more problems for himself then the heroes do, the show tries to present him as a master manipulator but is one of the dumbest characters in the series (highlighted best by his "Plan" to open the spirit portal by punching it until it opened). And would have lost if not for Wan Shi Tong learning about the heroes plan and telling Unalaq about it.

It honestly feels like the only reason Vaatu picked Unalaq to be his host is because no one else was dumb enough to work with Vaatu.

This is despite the fact that he is honestly a really accomplished villain who has a lot of potential. He's Korra's uncle which means there could be a deeper bound between them, he managed to take the throne of the Northern Water Tribe from his brother (which was more a result of Tonraq's stupidity then anything Unalaq did). Managed to manipulate Korra into opening the Spirit Portal, forced her to open the second portal, freed Vaatu, crushed the Southern Water Tribe Resistance and briefly killed Raava which destroyed the original Avatar Cycle.

He should be one of the greatest villains in the series but he is, rightly, seen as the worst. Even the show admitted to him being such a piss poor villain that it made fun of him. What's hilarious the parody version of Unalaq seen in both said recap episode and in Season 2 was more interesting then the actually character.

So, how do fix this sort of character?

Personally I would had Unalaq be Big Bad Wannabe. He still is the one who manages to trick Korra into opening the first portal but as with the original show he's want to punish his brother gets in his way of his plans and soon a new villain comes into the picture. I wouldn't have it be Vaatu, as much as I love the story they went with I would rather have this be something else.

Kind of a Pain (Naruto) like character. A being nearly or as old as the Avatar who can possess multiple bodies (that are already dead) and uses those bodies to control the elements (5 in total, one of each element). Have them working with Unalaq at first but as soon as things get out of hand the focus begins to shift over to this new villain, whom we'll call Kyōfu, who proves to be the great threat due to being able to manipulate the elements like Korra but has centuries of training to back them up. Basically imagine fighting 5 Elemental Masters one of whom has the power of energy itself. As an added bit of creepyness they all have the same eyes, with the whites of the eyes being pitch black while the iris is a unnatural neon blue.

But basically Unalaq is just the starter villain to something much older then him, something more powerful and more cunning who are, themselves, equal to the Avatar in every respect but is also different in pretty much every way.

Thoughts?

I think the biggest problem is he's a political badguy... and we just had a better political badguy. I think it might have helped just spacing it out so he's not coming right on the heels of Amon. Just moving him to season 3 and giving him more water tribe support so he's more threatening and more of a betrayal for corrupting the 'goodest' tribe of Last Airbender would have helped a lot.

stryke wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 11:31 am I think the biggest problem is he's a political badguy... and we just had a better political badguy. I think it might have helped just spacing it out so he's not coming right on the heels of Amon. Just moving him to season 3 and giving him more water tribe support so he's more threatening and more of a betrayal for corrupting the 'goodest' tribe of Last Airbender would have helped a lot.

Well, most of Korra's adversaries are political bad guys. Amon's motivation is equality for Non-Benders, Tarrlok as you pointed out was a officially elected politician, Zaheer is an anarchist who wants to over throw all Governments and Kuvira is a dictator. Even many of Korra's more minor adversaries like the Earth Queen and Varrick are political.

I think the only adversary of Korra who isn't in anyway political is Vaatu and that's mostly because he's the Spirit of Chaos with no plan other then to cause as much harm as possible.

So I don't think that him being a politic is really that big of a deal with why he doesn't work but rather that this part of his character isn't really explored all that much. Most of what we get is the events of Civil War where he takes control of the Southern Water Tribe and starts arresting people who didn't actually do anything but that's about it.

Amon created a crisis by committing acts of terrorism, Tarrlok took advantage of that to gain more power and used that to hurt people. Zaheer keeps trying to kill political leaders in the belief this will fix all the problems in the world and Kuvira is taking over the Earth Kingdom by taking control during a crisis like Tarrlok did but on a larger scale.

I think the main problem with him as an antagonist is that he's just boring and forgettable. His kids are interesting and memorable characters but I legit can't remember what he looked or sounded like without looking it up.

Winter wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 6:34 pm Well, most of Korra's adversaries are political bad guys. Amon's motivation is equality for Non-Benders, Tarrlok as you pointed out was a officially elected politician, Zaheer is an anarchist who wants to over throw all Governments and Kuvira is a dictator. Even many of Korra's more minor adversaries like the Earth Queen and Varrick are political.

Okay probably shouldn't have just used the shorthand of calling him a 'political' and leaving at that.

To me at least Amon feels far too similar to Tarrlok in a way that Zaheer and Kuvira don't at all which is why I suggested giving him some space by bringing him later might have helped.

Amon and Tarrlok have too much of the same vibe to me. Being populist leaders whose actions help turn some of the general population against the avatar which invokes elements of being betrayed by them. Only difference is that Amon has to work to get some wins to get where he is, while Tarrlok is in power already, and y'know the whole not being as well written issue

Zaheer has like four people in his crew. That's as far as you can get from being a populist type as you can get. He's much more of a lone terrorist cell leader type.

And as you mentioned Kuvira is a dictator. She's not here to make friends, but to compel obedience by brute force. She's also much more military themed.

Hope that helps explain where I was coming from.

stryke wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 7:00 pm

Winter wrote: ↑Wed Nov 22, 2023 6:34 pm Well, most of Korra's adversaries are political bad guys. Amon's motivation is equality for Non-Benders, Tarrlok as you pointed out was a officially elected politician, Zaheer is an anarchist who wants to over throw all Governments and Kuvira is a dictator. Even many of Korra's more minor adversaries like the Earth Queen and Varrick are political.

Okay probably shouldn't have just used the shorthand of calling him a 'political' and leaving at that.

To me at least Amon feels far too similar to Tarrlok in a way that Zaheer and Kuvira don't at all which is why I suggested giving him some space by bringing him later might have helped.

Amon and Tarrlok have too much of the same vibe to me. Being populist leaders whose actions help turn some of the general population against the avatar which invokes elements of being betrayed by them. Only difference is that Amon has to work to get some wins to get where he is, while Tarrlok is in power already, and y'know the whole not being as well written issue

Zaheer has like four people in his crew. That's as far as you can get from being a populist type as you can get. He's much more of a lone terrorist cell leader type.

And as you mentioned Kuvira is a dictator. She's not here to make friends, but to compel obedience by brute force. She's also much more military themed.

Hope that helps explain where I was coming from.

I think you mean Unalaq and Tarrlok and not Amon and Tarrlok cause besides being brothers Amon and Tarrlok have nothing in common, I mean, one of them is a terrorist and the other was given power by the league system.

But besides that yeah I do get what you mean hence my idea of having Unalaq taken out early in the story by someone else.

Doh, yes had the names confused. My bad. Haven't watched Korra since it was airring.

I feel like we never really got how he got from Point A: Ruler of a huge chunk of the planet's population to Point B: SATANIC EVIL WIZARD.

Was it jealousy? Religion? Just misanthropic spite?

No idea.

There were hints he's a theocrat but how does a theocrat go to contacting the Anti-Avatar to unleash the Anti-Christ?

The funny thing is that there's actually a really good idea in-universe that Unalaq SHOULD go into being a theatrical mad scientist Ming the Merciless type. Have him just drop all of his stoic pretensions and go like, "You know I worship the spirits? UNLIMITTTEEDDDDDDD POWER."

Well first I'd Undo Realaq

What's frustrating is we had the seeds of something good. Giving Korra an untrustworthy mentor figure, the "avatar must remain neutral in intra-national conflict and stay above it all" bullshit. The problem is he's so petty he keeps undermining himself. If he hadn't gone after Korra's father, he might have succeeded.

Maybe it would have worked better if he just controlled the southern water tribe and we dropped the Dark Avatar stuff. Show how oppressive a rigid theocracy can be. Have Korra's family torn between the desire for freedom and the fear of the consequences for rocking the boat. Have him be genuine in his desire to see the spirits respected but he's going about it all the wrong way. Show how much of a quagmire a civil war can be, even when the good guys weigh in with the best of intentions, and how messy it gets. Have Korra get involved not because he's blatantly petty and corrupt but because she doesn't want her family to live in a society like this and she slowly realizes this person she looks up to who taught her amazing things is deeply misguided and unwilling to see reason. Have Korra defeat him by earning the spiritual authority she was born with.

Also figure out some way to stick Ko into things. I always wanted to see that bad boy again.