The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

[phantom000]

Kuvira was the weakest of the four villains in LOK. The other three at least represent a different side of the Avatar universe but Kuvira just seems like another Ozai, a generic villain to move the plot forward. Between the two Kuvira comes off weaker because 1. they tried to make her more sympathetic, something they never even considered with Ozai and 2. she has no counter point character, no Iroh or Zuko who could be described as the 'good Ozai.'

You could fix both problems if you made her more of a counter-point to Korra. Season 4 is supposed to be about Korra trying to fix her mistake and making things worse, so what if Kuvira is also trying to fix her mistake? Kuvira and Batar Jr. tried to build their empire through diplomacy and economics but when she began negotiating with a city they tried to assassinate her and Batar Jr. literally dies in her arms because she trusted the wrong person. That would make her much more sympathetic and make for a more compelling climax as Korra stops her because she realizes that Kuvira is going through the stages of grief and Korra allows her to accept her mistake, the same way Zaheer helped Korra.

[Winter]

Really? I think Unalaq is the weakest villain due to just how utterly boring he is along with just how flimsy his motivation and the fact that he is just a plain idiot. Kuvira has her issues but at least she was, mostly, constant with her character and she's not a idiot, all her choices make a strategic sense, they're not sane choices but they do make sense from a strategic standpoint.

The real problem with Kuvira is that she is given very little screen time throughout the series and her motivations are weak and seem to make her evil just for the sake of making her evil, like the death camps and her being a race purist, which comes completely out of nowhere and is not something we see from her directly.

This again is likely all down to the series being rushed and using Turf Wars as an example, Tokuga is, IMO, the best villain of Korra even though like Ozai he is evil for the sake of being evil but like Azula he is just so much fun to watch and one of the major advantages of his character, unlike most of the villains in the show proper comes down to three major points.

First off, his motives are simple, he wants power and he doesn't care who he has to hurt or kill to get it and later he wants Revenge against Korra as he blames her for the Spirit attacking and disfiguring him. Secondly he's back story is short and to the point, he was a nobody who took advantage of the chaos caused by Kurvira's attack and was able to bring most of the gangs under his control. Short and to the point, no Freudian Excuse about how he lost his parents, about feeling like he wasn't respected as a kid or how he had a terrible father he just wants power for the sake of wanting power and he wants Revenge on Korra for something he thinks she did.

Most of the villains of TLOK, with the exception of Zaheer, motivations make very little sense and seem to contradict themselves more often then not or make very little sense. Amon is more interesting as an idea for a villain as Chuck pointed out but when you actually look at his backstory his character doesn't make a whole lot of sense. He's father abused him and his brother so now he blames bending for ruining the world? What? How do you go from A to Delta, this is never explained we're just suppose to assume that having a terrible childhood would make you a villain who wants to take over the world while hating people with powers of whom you are one.

Unalaq also makes no sense when you think about it, he was jealous of his brother so he framed him for to get him exiled from the south and has come to love spirits more then people and wants to take over the world because he thinks humans suck. Again how do we get to this point it's like Linkara said in his review of Kyōryū Sentai Zyuranger, there's a bit of difference between wanting revenge and taking over/destroying the world.

With characters like Tokuga or Khan they already had goals of taking over the world/Republic City and Revenge was more of something that happened along the way to that goal that made them more of a threat to the hero. With Amon, Unalaq and Kuvira the place they start and the place they finish aren't ever really explained which makes them come off as weak villains as their motivations makes little to no sense.

[Lizuka]

The main thing I've never understood with Unalaq is this - what, exactly, is the purpose of pretty much anything at all he does to the Southern Water Tribe? The entire thing of taking them over, the civil war, and all of that serves absolutely no purpose except to turn Korra against him, because dude just wants to destroy everything anyway. There is zero benefit to any of it except to establish to her and to the audience that he's a bad guy.

[Winter]

I've said it before I'll say it again, this is a result of the show being rushed out the door, things that normally would have been spotted if the writers had been given the time they needed to work out the story slipped past everyone's notice and didn't realize it until it was to late. Again look no further then DA2, the reason everyone in Kirkwall is a jerk with no real redeeming qualities is because there was no time to actually flesh out any of the villains except the Arishok who was given the most screen time and therefore was the one the writers had the most time to flesh out.

By contrast Meredith and Orsino only had about 40 minutes of screen time and most of that is their respective boss battles, in terms of cutscenes they have maybe 10 to 15 minutes. Same thing with Unalaq, despite being one of the big bads of the season he has very little screen time. Most of the time he's only onscreen for about 2 minutes per-episode after the first 4 episodes. It doesn't help that Korra barely interacts with him after the first four episodes, she spends more time talking with Vaatu then with her own uncle and most, if not all, of that time is them just fighting with one another.

When Aang and Ozai finally met one another at the end of TLOA it was a conflict that was building up throughout the series. Every lesson Aang learned, every skill he acquired, ever character he met, ever battle he lost was all about him getting ready to fight the Fire Lord while most of Ozai's time was us getting to know just was a awful person he was in how he treated his own son and what he was doing to his own nation and the other four nations of the world. So when the two finally met a fight was the one way it was going to go down and that was all fans wanted to see as we grew to hate Ozai that we wanted to see him get his comeuppance and for Aang to finally over come his final obstacle.

But with Unalaq, sure he was a twat but we just wanted Korra to beat him and move on. Everyone knew he was evil the moment we saw him in the trailer so when he manipulates Korra we're not with her in wondering if he can be trusted we're waiting for Korra to figure out what we already knew months before the season started. Not helping matters is that the choices he makes throughout the game are just so stupid.

As already covered everything he does in episodes one through 4 make no sense and only several to alienate the one person he should be working hard to keep on his side and nothing he does here benefits him in the long run. Then he blames his kids for losing Korra despite the fact that it was his actions in not keeping control of the spirits that caused them to lose her in the first place. We're also coming up on one of his truly stupid moments when we see what his "plan" is for opening the spirit portal without Korra's help. Spoilers, it's pretty much just him and his kids punching it in the vain hope that three waterbenders can do what spirits of infinite power have failed to do for over hundreds of years.

Hell even his plan to take over the northern water tribe was more of a result of his Tonraq being a idiot and not thinking that attacking a place that had cultural and spiritual significance would be a bad idea. Had Tonraq not destroyed the forest then it's entirely possible that Unalaq would have never been made chief and he would have spent the rest of his life sitting in his brother's shadow.

Take this in contrast with Thor's exile in the first Thor movie, it was likely not Loi's plan for him to get exiled that was just something that happened due to Thor's own bad choices and Loki just took advantage of that when he could. Though again, if the writers had the time to actually plan all this out this may never have happened.

[phantom000]

One thing Zaheer, Amon and Unalaq have over Kuvira, I think, is that they fit into the universe of Avatar in a way she does not. Their stories, their motivations and their and powers seem much more rooted in the lore of Avatar than Kuvira. Aside from their basic archetype, which all characters have, it seems very hard to fit them into another universe. Kuvira could easily fit into something like Star Wars or Lord of The Rings or even the MCU.

Seriously, you can switch her with someone like Grand Moff Tarkin or Ronan the Accuser or even Sauron and it would work just as well. You can't quite do that with Amon or Zaheer.

Granted, Azula and Ozai don't seem much better off in that sense but there are two things I want to point out. First, Azula is rooted into the story if not the universe, Zuko's story would not be the same without her because they are both what the other could have been for good or for ill. Second, Ozai is more of a plot device then a character as about all he really does for the story is keep things moving forward. Even his fight with Aang is more a matter of Aang against himself as he is facing a choice of evils and the fight itself is really just him trying to avoid making that choice.

[CharlesPhipps]

Weird, I think Kuvira is one of the strongest villains.

I also think that's debatable since uniting the Earth Kingdom doesn't strike me as too bad of an idea. Trying to take over Republic City was bad but she wasn't wrong that they were going to be ruled by a puppet dictator.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Kuvira has legit points about problems with Monarchy (Looking at you, Great fucking Britain), lack of cohesion, roaming bandits, etc. The problem is she looks at all these problems and says "The answer to this is unilateral power for ME."

She's not evil for evil's sake. She's evil because she thinks that an authoritarian strongwoman is better than another inbred idiot.

[Winter]

With the exception of Unalaq, Vaatu and Tokuga none of the main antagonists in TLOK are evil for the sake of being evil which is one of the shows strength and I do like how Korra does agree with their goals but not their methods. However, a problem I have with TLOK is that Korra herself seems to resolve some of thses problems a little to easily.

Non-Benders are treated as second class citizens, (which they're not as the only non-benders who are key characters and Hiroshi and Asami who are anything but second class), Korra resolves this with no real issue between seasons. Separating the Human and Spirit World was a mistake (how?) Korra just leaves the portal open and Humans and Spirits almost never interact with each other. A secret organization seeks to kill world leaders because they feel true freedom is chaos, never actually brought up in the show or comics again and we have yet to see the Red Lotus again. Kuvira feels that the the Monarchy is a bad idea, Prince Wu decides to abolish the Monarchy for no actual reason given, (seriously nothing he learned that season was showing him how flawed the Monarchy is so this comes completely out of nowhere).

Again this is what I like about Turf Wars, there's no debate, no difficult questions the show easily solves between seasons with no real issue in solving it and no villain with motives and goals that are complex but the way they arrived to wanting said goals is more complicated. The issues our heroes are dealing with is a incompetent leader trying to stay in power and the best solution is to appoint someone new who is more capable of handling the situation. There's also the fallout of Kurvia's attack which has had a massive impact on the people of republic city and again the solution is simple yet the challenge is getting to the solution which is not something that is easy to solve. And finally the big bad of TW is someone who just wants power and revenge. Easy to understand easy to solve.

Sometimes the simplest solution is the right one.

[phantom000]

Weird, I think Kuvira is one of the strongest villains.

I also think that's debatable since uniting the Earth Kingdom doesn't strike me as too bad of an idea. Trying to take over Republic City was bad but she wasn't wrong that they were going to be ruled by a puppet dictator.

I think she could have been a lot better if they had given her a reason to be obsessed with uniting the Earth Kingdom. As it is she comes off like a poorly handled Ozai. Her great speech about progress and building a better future sounding more like an excuse to seize power for herself, like Phaeton's speech during the invasion of Earth in Exo-Squad.

A secret organization seeks to kill world leaders because they feel true freedom is chaos, never actually brought up in the show or comics again and we have yet to see the Red Lotus again.

To be fair, they are dead, except for Zaheer who is in prison so what would you do with them anyway? I also give LOK some credit since the events of one season aren't so neatly cleaned off camera.

[CharlesPhipps]

Kuvira has legit points about problems with Monarchy (Looking at you, Great fucking Britain), lack of cohesion, roaming bandits, etc. The problem is she looks at all these problems and says "The answer to this is unilateral power for ME."

She's not evil for evil's sake. She's evil because she thinks that an authoritarian strongwoman is better than another inbred idiot.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting so many viewers seem to think it's a bad idea. Everything we've seen about the Earth Kingdom is that it was a nonfunctioning failed state with plenty of breakaway provinces. Kuvira deciding to bring the prosperity of her homeland and fix the problems seems like a sensible action.

In fact, I think a more interesting more Korra-esque ending would have been her forced to acknowlege Kuvira as the Earth Kingdom's leader and dealing with that