How Would You Redo Unalaq

[Winter]

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.

Also, I think the series should have dropped him being a Waterbender and instead make him or if we follow my idea someone close to him, an Energy/Spiritbender. Let's be honest Spirit Bending was made to give Aang a way out of killing Ozai (which itself was there because the writers forgot to give these two any real connection outside of being an obstacle to each others goals) and the same problem exists with Korra, it's there so she can get her powers back and then it never gets mentioned again. At least with Bolin being a lavabender they had him use it several times after he got it so while it was a Deus Ex Machina they at least did something with it. Spiritbending is there just to get the writers out of a corner they put themselves in.

One think I like about Korra is the fact that, outside of P'Li, none of the antagonists are firebenders while her primary adversaries are 3 waterbenders, an airbender and a earthbender. So, why not play into that idea and explore an element that has been just kinda forgotten.

We know that Energybending can remove a persons bending but is there anything else it can do? Can it allow one to manipulate and influence spirits? Does it grant someone the power to move between the worlds? What can someone with this power do in the Spirit world, can they warp reality while in their? Can they eat the life energy of other people or be like Rogue from X-Men and briefly gain the powers of those they kill? Would they be able to bend their powers in the human world and be like Mr. Negative from Spider-Man? Can they, as those who can manipulate the energy of those around them, read our spirits and in doing so our minds or emotions?

The second season of Korra is called Spirits but 1 of the three villains have nothing to do with spirits and one is more concern about his own petty ambitions and the last one is just there to cause chaos for the sake of causing chaos.

I say have Unalaq or maybe a original character be someone who has energy and spirits and drop Vaatu. And keep in mind I like Raava & Vaatu and the origin of the Wan the first Avatar but the season has to much going on and needs to streamline things given the shorter length of the season next to what Airbender had.

Drop the Civil War of the Water Tribe and Varrick's War Profiteering plot (while still trying to keep the SOB around because Varrick is awesome) and focus on the conflict with Unalaq or whoever is the main baddie of the season.

I also think that having a sort of cold ham villain would be more interesting. Someone like Sephiroth, cold and ruthless yet stays in the shadows for a good chunk of the season, letting their minions do the work while they focuses on their real plan but dominates the scene every time they shows up.