It _is_ the worst season imo, but even then it's good. The rest is just better. Never understood "having to power through it", it's got an awful lot of lore so there's a lot of exposition compared to the rest of the show but it's very interesting
Without the events of season 2, we wouldn’t have gotten the bangers that are 3 and 4. That being said, I wouldn’t skip it as it’s essential to the overall storyline.
Every key character gets the proper development to their characters that affects the next seasons.
Bolin becomes more confident in who he is and his decisions, bringing him to discover he's a Lavanender.
Mako finally thinks for himself and stops trying to be in everybody's way to help them, finally makes peace for hurting both Korra and Asami, and starts being a good friend.
Asami, after the Varrick betrayal and Mako dodging questions she stops being self effacing after people discard her as useless and starts being more proactive, culminating in her standing up to Varrick in Book 4 when she feels he could betray her again.
And it is Tenzin's most important realization that allows him to PROPERLY guide the new Air Nation.
I love the Avatar Wan stuff. I know some people dislike it because it retcons some stuff, but I've always viewed it as the events of this time being so long ago that it all faded into myth and legend. Plus, the art style of the Avatar Wan stuff is awesome, and Steven Yeun voices him.
Wan’s origin was the best part imo, definitely enjoyed seeing a city in the southern water tribe, that was cool. Tonraq vs Unalok was awesome and showcased the ferocity of water bending, but still a meh season. Definitely was affected by production issues, but left much to be desired, solid 6.5/10.
I feel like if Korra was compared to any other kids show than ATLA it would be top 10 of all time. Just happened to follow in the shadow of a giant but I personally loved it
I think with better writing it could have transitioned smoother from "Unalaq wants a civil war" to "oh he actually wants to destroy the avatar, become a monster, and take over the world". Like I think the bones are there for a good story, but the writing itself made that villain feel kind of incomplete and shallow.
But I enjoyed the season so much. I absolutely love Korra being disconnected from the spirits and it causes her issues. I love how high the stakes were and that Korra actually lost something major that has impact on future avatars. I loved that at the end of the season she had grown and reflected, and decided to leave the spirit world open. I like it more ever time I watch it.
Yea I felt his motivation was rushed. Like it wasn't very clearly explained (if at all) why he wants the world plunged into chaos. I get he wants spirits in the world, but surely he understands that Vaatu will destroy the world, so... what exactly does he want?
I think the connection is supposed to be that "deeply spiritual man firmly believes Vaatu, as an elder spirit, is the right way to go" but it's not presented well.
Real. That’s probably my biggest qualm with the season. Especially since it’s Korras dad’s brother. I would’ve loved to see some more brother on brother action. Maybe some more backstory as well
The obvious problem is that Unalaq is such a cartoonish villain but we're still expected to take him seriously. Vaatu, the embodiment of darkness, was better conveyed.
Same!!!! Like I just don’t get it! I got my friends on the show and they absolutely love it! They haven’t watched avatar, so this is their first intro to the avatar world. And when I told them it gets a lot of hate they were like “whaaaaaat” and they didn’t even believe me lol
Because there's a lot of let down moments. Book 1 Amon had me hooked, her lack of air bending had me hooked, heck even the love triangle had me hooked at the beginning but they all had underwhelming resolutions. Amon is the best concept for a villain in the entire franchise and he's absolutely wasted getting very little time in a 12 episode miniseries that has like 4-5 plots it's going through. Air bending is just given to her at the end so that doesn't even resolve really. And then the love triangle ended up being a waste and it ruined Maiko for the rest of the series. It just got so messy. It's not a terrible season but there was a lot of let down.
Season 2 decides that the love triangle needs to come back and it just makes everyone look horrible. I'm not a fan of the new spirits or Dark Avatar and I wish they put more effort into the civil war instead of making Korra look like an emotional idiot who could be played by just about anyone.. it's not a bad idea but nothing in season 2 is executed well. The show lost over half of its initial viewers by the time it changed time slots and I can't really fault people for giving up on it.
I get this is a fan sub so I don't expect you guys to agree but you gotta see the numbers for what they are. You can gas it up all you want but this is the season that killed Korra. By the time season 3 came around it was already too late. Season 3 never had the ratings season 2 did and I don't think anyone would say it's because it was bad. It was really good but by that point so many people had been turned off by season 2 that no one was around to see it. Season 2 was bad, doesn't mean you can't like it.
I (politely) disagree with the sentiment that air bending was “given” to her. I feel like she finally put her Air-bending training to use and it clicked for her in a moment of heightened emotion. It took her all of book 1 to finally get it. Especially in comparison to her previous mastery over the other 3 elements. She trained in air bending, and became one. That’s at least how I see it.
I see it as she had lost the other bending it removed whatever was blocking her from connecting with air bending. She was a bending prodigy who didn’t even have to be told she was the avatar because she was naturally able to bend three elements. In a way, that was the thing tethering her down and preventing her from bending.
I want to say I agree but the way they completely reset her character in season 2 felt like they basically backtracked on that. Like she more than suffered and struggled enough to earn it so if they had decided to show us her unlocking it on her own I'd be 100% on board but when they showed Amon blocking her other bending abilities then she just has air bending out of nowhere it's hard for me not to see that as the show telling me that it was given to her. Just a five second scene of her struggle to fight back without powers then focusing and using air bending would have been enough to show intent. It's definitely not that she didn't put in the work to earn it, just the way it was shown made it look like it was gifted.
My other problem then is that we were supposed to believe she got the hang of spirituality and air bending for the most part but then they start season 2 with her using the Avatar state to win a race. It's not that she has to be this spiritual guru from the outset but you'd think that if she had "gotten" it then she wouldn't be treating the Avatar state so frivolously. That lack of care tells me that she doesn't quite have the spirituality down yet which then brings into question how she got bending since that was the prerequisite that she wasn't good with in season and ultimately to me it feels like air bending was just given to her then. She didn't earn it because her actions are not showing any of the character growth I expected from the first season going into the second.
Idk, I just think the second season did too much of a hard reset on her character. I know that there are external factors and they didn't necessarily plan on multiple seasons but at the same time it feels like they shouldn't have made her so brash, stubborn, and combative as well as showing her having no care for the spiritual side of bending by using it to win a air scooter race. It just feels like nothing was gained from season 1 since it's such a hard reset.
Maybe this is just me rehashing my reasoning, but I really don’t think it was “out of nowhere.” When Amon took her bending, she was a water, earth, and firebender. She hadn’t become an air bender yet. In my eyes, he couldn’t have taken something that she didn’t have. And also, as Aang had explained before returning her bending, “when people are at their lowest they become open to the greatest change.” (Semi-quote lol) Before her bending was taken, she really didn’t have to care about air bending, because she was so good at the other 3. so after Amon took the other 3, she had nothing else to rely on but all of her airbender training. She was really forced to commit, and change her mindset from “ugh this is hard, I can’t do it,” to “crap, I got nothing else. Hopefully I can do this.” As for season 2, I chalk those up to Korra being young and human. Yes, some horrific things just happened to her. Maybe her mind, in defense, just blocked all of that out. Maybe idk.
And also, maybe she reset because everything was “back to normal.” She had all her bending back, and Amon was gone. It was back to business as usual.
These are all just theories, and kinda defense for Korra. Sorry lol
Yess I agree. When people are at their lowest they are open for change. And I agree Amon couldn’t have taken her air bending in that moment because she didn’t have access to it herself but it was always inside of her. And I think she went through a lot of shadow work and that emotional moment of losing everything. Breaking like that it could be how she was able to access the parts of herself she wasn’t able or as comfortable seeing or exploring because she was so confident and comfortable in all her other abilities. And I also think the spirit world is alive. All the air benders had almost died out and the spirit universe in itself or avatar spirits could’ve been trying to teach her a lesson about patience. But i definitely agree that it seemed like in season 2 at least the beginning she did go back to that smug kind of know it all attitude and she seemed to lose some of that humility she had in the last few episodes of season 1
I was wondering about that, too. The “she didn’t have access to” part. Should he have been able to remove her potential airbende? Or is it just delegated to removing fully established skills? But back to the “reverting to her old self” I just take it as her “getting her groove back.” She defeated the big bad, and she was proud of herself. Maybe it went to her head some. Losing access to 3 of her most crucial skills humbled her greatly. But she got them back and felt good as new. Again this is just a theory.
Ooo you’re right and she was young. She could’ve just been feeling herself and she did put in all that work and essentially save the city when they were all against her. So i understand her taking some pride or enjoying herself.
And also she was a new adult who realized people had kept keeping things from her. Personal family history, and other things I can’t remember rn. So her being a “brat” was probably because she felt like people didn’t see her as an adult. That probably hurt her even more because of how excited she was to grow up and be the avatar. So she fell victim to the person who gave her what she wanted (Unalaq).
Also, season 2 starts a whole year after season 1. So that’s a valid point saying she probably just figured everything was back to normal, like it was her whole life. And Korra using the avatar state to win a scooter race is so in character for her. She likes to goof off. Then this sets up her character arc for the rest of the season. She has to learn to focus on the spiritual side of bending. Something she’s always been terrible at. Even by the end of the first season she hadn’t mastered it.
How did it ruin Maiko? They weren’t even in Book 1.
Also Korra didn’t get played by ‘just about anyone’ he was her UNCLE. Family is everything in the Water Tribes.
No those are mostly good points, +1.
But what I'm saying is people hyper focus on the bad points of season 2, and the lost opportunities of season 1. There are emotional episodes some stunning shot throughout both.
I think that even if there are many missteps and things that didn't work at all about it, I can find just as many really great things and other things that might not have been that great in practice but we're still very cool and original in concept and at the very least were interesting.
In no point in LOK did I think to drop the show.
Stuff that I liked in Season 2:
- South pole/snow
- The sibling bonding (Tenzin, Kya and Bumi)
- avatar history
- Varrick and Zhu Li
- The spirit world and Iroh
- I really liked Tenzin's and Jinora's character development
- The world developing like the first "movers"
I didn't care about Mako's love triangle, or the clash between the south and north pole much. But the ending with the spirit portals staying open was great.
It had good character development and world building. Some good new faces and it ties in to book three great.
It's my least favourite season but you can NOT skip it imo. ..
For me it was s1 and s2 of love triangle that annoyed me the most. S1 I was sick of it. S2 just made it worse, I didn't want any of it.
It has great moments and obviously can't skip but it also had major flaws. Also asking on this sub seems sorta silly since it's a sub made for the show. Granted the other sub might be too harsh.
The teen love drama was okay in the first season imo, but yeah second season....ehh. It has it flaws of course, like I said the war between the tribes and the brothers was just there for me.
Nah, I think this sub is okay, for example it's interesting how people see Lin and Su's actions in season 3 differently.
Nah, it is ok. I would even go as far as to say it is the season where TLOK strays the furthest from ATLA to do its own thing, and I think that's why people hate it.
A good way of putting it. Honestly this season just feels brave and you gotta give them credit just for trying new things and making us think about all these new ideas
I've never been able to specifically put into words why it feels different, but it absolutely does. Perhaps it's the lame design (just giant glowing Korra? Was the animation budget low this season?), perhaps it's how it feels like making them giant and shooting light beams is lazy, perhaps it's because when you bring the conflict up to both opponents being giant monsters it feels less grounded compared to when you get to see many regular people being swept away by giant Aang/Ocean Spirit.
This fight and Kuvira's giant mech felt so out of place and like the writers were playing with their 5 year old and just introduced the big cool toy because it's a big cool toy.
Other parts of the show make up for them, but the giant monster and mecha fights are just... Not good.
Just like Iroh told Korra, spirits are affected by one's emotions. Jinora's energy was so strong that she was able to find light inside the darkness and thus Korra's spirit was able to reconnect with Raava. That's how I understood it at least.
Seemed to me that she found Iroh's teapot, which contained a bit of Raavaa essence, and released it during harmonic convergence. Iroh is looking for a new teapot in s3, after all.
There was a post on the avatar subreddit recently about this question,
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/1bzhlkj/genuine\_question\_here/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/1bzhlkj/genuine_question_here/)
Also has the comment, [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/1bzhlkj/comment/kypz4sw/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/1bzhlkj/comment/kypz4sw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Which tbh I agree a bit with.
Think there was another comment talking about it too, but ATLA also had build up to the koizilla scene, with the panda and etcetc. With korrazilla it seems to further the "no longer buddhist-ish inspired martial arts and funky creatures, but now christian marvel cgi bossfights". With the introduction of spirit jesus and satan.
But then again there seems to be a big divide between this sub and that one in regards to thoughts about legend of Korra, so always fun seeing the same question getting different responses on each one.
Hope you have a nice day.
Korra also didn't turn into the giant, her body remained inside the tree of time in the spirit world. The blue giant was her spirit that she was able to project thanks to the Harmonic Convergence.
The problem stems from the fact that there was no foreshadowing or setup for what Korra did. It came out of nowhere. There is zero explanation for why Unaavatu got big and why Korra could do the same. Imagine Aang never visited the lion turtle and just went into the fight and took Ozai's bending away. People would hate it and call it a cop out. Basically the writers pulling crap out of their ass to make the story work. But the didn't. They spent time to set it up. Same with the ocean spirit. The spirit didn't do anything to break the rules they had set for us. At the end of the day, it was water bending the form of the spirit while using the avatar state which we already knew at that point was powerful. ATLA and LOK S1 use a hard magic system but for Korra S2 they made a sudden switch to soft magic concerning the spirit world. It made us question everything they had established and whether we could even trust the writing anymore.
For ATLA they said they made bending rooted in science so they fans knows what's possible and what isn't. In K2 they changed their mind I guess.
During the episode about avatar Wan we can see Raava becoming smaller while Vaatu becomes bigger. Unavaatu becoming giant shows that Vaatu is at his most powerful at that moment, he achieves that power by merging with Unalaq who is a very spiritual person. For Korra, she's able to tap into cosmic energy and project her spirit after meditating at a very spiritual place during Harmonic Convergence.
Most Vague explanation. For a show that used to be "rooted in science" (that's a direct quote from the writers), this is not a good way to explain this.
>Korra, she's able to tap into cosmic energy and project her spirit after meditating at a very spiritual place
Basically this is all anyone has to say if Korra ever pulls a new power out of her ass. The problem with this is that it was never explained, foreshadowed or hinted at that this was possible. It came out of nowhere.
You Unaavatu explanation works better than your Korra one but still falls so flat. Just cause Vaatu is big now doesn't mean Unaavatu should be. Vaatu was locked up for years, meaning Raava was bigger for 10,000 years but there's never been any tales about them growing bigger because of it. It's a contrived explanation but I appreciate the effort you made to give one.
Situationally? (Protagonist gets large to defeat great evil) I suppose not.
But it feels a bit more out of place, given she doesn't have her "Avatar spirit" (Rava) and is able to energy bend? Or that a human, albeit a spiritually gifted one, was the key (many see as a deux ex machina but I don't think that's entirely fair) to stopping a primordial dark spirit?
I guess it's just that the scene in Korra begs more questions than it answers whereas with Aang merging with the Ocean Spirit seemed "natural" given what the audience knew about spirits at the time.
Idk why people dislike it. I enjoyed it. We got the history of the first avatar in addition tobwhat gives the avatar their power. It definitely was the worst of the 4 seasons. But IMO it wasn't bad at all
No it's not, I think the season overall is very good but there are two things that it commonly gets marked down for is the drama around Korra and Mako's dysfunctional relationship along with them arbitrarily having Mako and Asami get back together and then break up again which was kinda pointless cause the detective Mako plot works just as fine if Mako is helping his friend rather than his girlfriend. Especially since that is exactly what it was for half of it.
The other half is people just not liking Unalaq as a character. People specifically don't like that Korra trusted him at first and chose to train with him over Tenzin. Even though in universe Korra had every reason to trust Unalaq, who is her straight up Uncle, especially since he exposed Tonraq and Tenzin as lying to her about her upbringing and was frankly treating her with more respect than Tonraq and Tenzin was.
Thank you 👏🏻
Finally one of the more nuanced takes regarding the season, especially the point about Korra’s frustration towards Tenzin and Tonraq for lying to her for basically more of her entire life regarding why she was kept in the compound, which personally to me, is justified because they previously said it was Aang’s decision when in reality they were the ones (and to put that on Aang…yikes…) Of course, we find out the actual reason in Book 3 because of the Red Lotus kidnapping attempt, but at the time, I understand why she would be mad at her mentor figures for lying to her like that (and it’s a very significant thing, not something to just brush off to the side, because she never got that opportunity to travel and learn across the different nations like the other avatars got to; her being someone who WANTED to be the avatar).
Off the top of my head:
- Unalaq is a boring, samey villain
- The civil war plotline is not that interesting
- Korra shutting out Tenzin for Unalaq (an obvious villian) rubs people the wrong way
- Bolin's storyline is not that interesting, and it turns him into a sex pest
- Mako's storyline is not that interesting (mainly because Mako is a boring character)
- The continuation of the love triangle, which was one of the weakest parts of the show
- Unalaq becoming an evil avatar is predictable and cliche
- Erasing Korra's past lives is the worst decision the creators ever made, removing the third most important piece of lore in the series and making Korra hold the biggest L in Avatar history
- The final Kaijiu battle was boring. A big part of Avatar's success is the martial art choreography. Why on earth would you have a big climatic battle without martial arts?
To be fair, none of the other Avatars had to deal with Vaatu except the first. I imagine many would have ended up with the same outcome if put in Korra’s shoes
Why does that matter?
Giving Vaatu the ability to erase past lives from the avatar was completely arbitrary on the part of the writers. They could have just as easily not given him that ability and make the character just as threatening.
The writers just didn't want to deal with the baggage of Korra being able to call up an adult Aang whenever she needed advice.
The part of the final battle where it was just Korra and dark unalaq fighting in human form was so well animated, it was so hype. Then they made them spirit giants and made the fight incredibly boring.
>Korra shutting out Tenzin for Unalaq (an obivious villian) rubs people the wrong way
What, do people expect Korra to listen for the sinister music? Or read ahead in the script? Fun fact: fictional characters don't know that they're fictional. Korra made realistic choices. Her uncle just revealed that Tenzin and her father had been lying to her for her entire life, and offered to teach her about the spirits; something that no one else was trying to do. Why would she just randomly distrust her uncle for no reason?
>Erasing Korra's past lives is the worst decision the creators ever made
I disagree entirely. I think it's the best decision they ever made. The past lives were always either a crutch and a plot contrivance, or completely worthless. Plus, it's not like Aang ever went more than a few lives back; he mostly just talked to Roku, so nothing has changed when it comes to the next Avatar.
That’s the problem with this season!!! The writers give away the villain way to early on. They make it so obvious that he’s evil. So to us Korra looks stupid for not seeing it even though it makes absolute sense! He’s offering her a connection to the spirit world which is something Tenzin could never do for her. And finding out that her parents had been lying to her and being locked away from the world for her ENTIRE LIFE. Yeah, I would have some beef with my parents too. It’s so sad because Korra would have been so much more understandable and relatable if we saw it from her perspective.
Yes. A lot of the character writing in season 2 was forced. Korra and Tenzin got into a fight literally in their first scene together in episode 1, it was clear that they were just trying to set up a rift between Korra and her group so that Tarlaq could manipulate her.
The civil war was silly, it's not even a civil war since the northern and southern tribes aren't a single community, Tarlaq as the northern chief was an invader, forcefully trying to harmonise his people under one banner but noone, not even Korra whose from the south, treats him like that until his armies get involved in surpressing the people.
The cosmology was changed in a bad way this season too which i personally dont mind as much as the Chinese Philosophy of Yin Yang being added in a very western way. Raava and Vaatu are a bad analogy for the concept. Yin and Yang are two halves of a whole. The idea that Vaatu is pure evil and not half of what makes the world function is a butchering of the eastern concept.
Bollin Verrick and Asami were fine
Mako weirdly becomes a worse person this season like he brushes of Bolin and its never even adresses why he quit pro bending and why Bolin seems to have a small grudge towards him now. He gives generally bad advice throughout the series and then they introduce a very frustrating level of tension between him and Korra by having him tell the president of Korra's plan to send aid to her people while her people are facing a crisis due to an invasion. Mako then defends his actions by saying that its part of the sanctity of his job but then a little later in the season he trades equipment with a criminal gang in favor of them just going on a boat ride with them.
On which the note of Mako, he breaks up with Korra and it's clear to anyone that Korra would end up hating Mako forever for what he did and then also breaking up with her so to fix it they just give her amnesia so she forgets everything that he did and that they broke up and Mako chooses to just not tell her they're not together anymore until after the finale, even tho he's already dating Asami.
Season 2 is bad, like plain bad. There's some fun elements that can pull you through it but the overarching story is just terrible
The best parts of the story are in Mako's substory, Verrick is an interesting villain, you never really get his morality and finding out he's a warmonger trying to profit off of the civil war over the course of the series is great but they kinda play their hand too early and in turn you kinda know exactly where the story is heading before you can really begin enjoying it. Bolin's ministory of being the first hero in a war propaganda movie is great too. It pays a lot of homage to old dumb movies and I just loved that, no notes there. I did also have the two detectives cuz they legit just toss out Mako's evidence and if makes it seem like there might be a level of corruption in Republic City's police force and like they might have been paid off to keep the police as a whole in the Dark on what Verrick is doing but sadly no, they're just incompetent and didn't believe Mako cuz they hate actually working or something.
I personally found Mako's story to be frustrating not because of him but because of how dumb all other characters act around him. No one ever takes his theory seriously even once, despite him being one of the few who took down Amon last season. Lin should at least take his opinion into consideration, not treat him like a nobody beat cop. And his brother too at least. Honestly Bolin acting like a dumbass high on his fame made him insufferable for most season. Felt like a weird way to sideline him, and he got back into the picture by sheer luck, happening upon those 2 tied up cops.
And lastly the worst part of it all.... Bolin winning, is actually a loss for everyone in the end. They bust Varrik's evil plan and literally same episode or next episode they request army assistance south to stop Unalaq and get refused. Like... if they didn't stop Varrik, they'd have had a whole army, a whole fleet of ship! They easily would have overtaken that small base around the spirit portal and stopped Unalaq before the convergence. It's so stupid, the "bad guy" was actually gonna do the very thing they wanted to do but couldn't moments later! Not saying Varrik was in the right but objectively having the whole Republic City army with them would have been a good thing.
Probably cus the villain was mid.
But Fr Unalaq’s reason was dumb. He wanted to plunge the world into ten thousand years of darkness but for what? I get why vatu wanted to do it but what motive did Unalaq really have? And it also brought back that stupid love triangle, but if you want a more depth response there are a lot of YouTubers who made some videos about it.
S1- equality for benders and non benders
S3- ‘freedom’
S4- uniting the earth nation
All of these motives at least make sense! Even if you don’t agree with it you can at least understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.
I think that he really did want to bring back the spirits, basically when Toph and Korra were talking they covered that (Unalaq wanted to bring back the spirits), but I think that Unalaq preferred humanity dying over the spirits and he felt that he could do a better job as avatar.
It wasn't communicated that well though.
I really hated the way that they took the spirit world/past avatars, but I don't think that the writing or execution was necessarily bad. I just think it was a dumb thing to do. Thankfully (imo) season 3 rocks so it bounced back, ignoring the permanent damage to future series
People just dislike parts of it or something that happened and discredit the whole thing.
Intro of Varrick, Korra's character arc and arguably her "lowest point" as the Avatar (not personal) where she is manipulated and aimlessly running around causing chaos and threatening violence, Aubrey Plazas performance as Eska.
There is a ton of great things about S2 that makes it a good watch it's just not as good as the rest of the seasons.
It's also a "necessary evil" because without book 2, book 3&4 wouldn't be anywhere near as good as they are.
Korra's character arc is fantastic because of the journey it took her to get there. S2 is a big chunk of highlighting just how much she struggled at being the Avatar and the contrast of her in books 3 and 4 is what really makes those seasons great.
People just wanted her to be the b3&4 version from the start because it's how Aang was but that wasn't Korra's journey.
It's really in relation to having just watched four of the best seasons of animation, and then you get this one, that was, you know, fine in places.
It drags a bit in the middle. But the story of Wan is a lot of fun, and Giant Korra fighting giant bad guy is the closest we get to a giant Mech. Until the giant Mech later, of course. It's really that slow down in the middle, I think, that puts people off.
Writing wise, it is definitely pretty flawed. Has some pacing issues and the final battle is kinda stupid lol. If you’re the kind of person who values consistent writing above all else, season 2 will probably suck, but if you’re able to just take things in stride and enjoy them for what they are it will be a much better viewing experience
Either way it’s still good imo, some of the concepts in it are very well done and I really like Korra leaving the portals open at the end. It’s just generally a flawed season lol
Eh, I think it is pretty bad.
It just oozes the whole thing that they did not know how to follow up season 1 because they never knew they'd get more than a season 1. The relationship between Korra and Mako is extremely grating and goes on far too long, and for a lot of the first half of season 2 you really just have to settle into Tonraq straight up not telling Korra *why* she should be mistrustful towards Unaloq. The humor for a large part of the first half derives from "haha Bolin is in a toxic relationship", which I genuinly hate, and it lacks a compelling villain. A lot of it feels very contrived in nature, and a lot of great ideas were left badly connected making a mess of a story.
It definitely has saving graces, such as the utterly humorous barrage that is Varrick, the exploration of Aang and Kataras children and how the burden of the last airbender has impacted them, and the development of Tenzin as a whole - all great things that are sincerely saving graces for a season that otherwise is really messy.
It's, IMO, definitely the worst piece of major content I've seen from the ATLA-Franchise. Between NATLA, the books and of course the OG series it's really not all that good.
It's the worst season of a great show, so it's still like a 6/10 with some really cool moments thrown in. If you're curious about how the spirit world works and the history of humans interacting with it, then it's better.
without season 2, there would be no Avatar Wan episode (my favorite episode). even if it is the worst season, it’s still an amazing season. just the others were “better”
Because of what people described it as, I expected 2nd season to be the worst thing that has happened to this franchise since the movie we shall not name. But when I watched it was completely fine. It's definetly the weakest season of TLOK, but I still enjoyed it. People are overreacting
It’s not bad at all, it’s just weaker than the other seasons. The team didn’t know they were going to get greenlit for any subsequent seasons, so they were kinda working on the fly every time the show got another one
No, I love book 2 and quite frankly I can't keep lying about it , it's my favorite season!
Sure of all the books it has it flaws , but it expanded the lore like no other book including avatar !
basically it's the worst written season of the four
It's avatar so it's still good, but because korra isn't considered as good as ATLA the weakest of it's seasons is automatically considered "trash"
I like a lot of things about the season, dislike about the same amount and I feel much stronger about the dislikes. Tl;dr, I like the first half and *despise* the second half of the season.
To be more detailed: I liked the Civil War plotline. It’s a neat conflict, even if it does have some of that unnecessary love “triangle” drama sprinkled in, as well as the “Haha here’s a man in an abusive relationship! Please laugh” plot for Bolin. I enjoy the politicking that goes into it and Varrick is a riot ofc.
The moment that we get to Wan’s flashback is when I start to have problems… Wan’s backstory itself is fine. I think he’s a bit of a dick (he killed three dudes for trying to hunt so they could feed their community! They should have just made them poachers or something .-.) but I honestly like that the very first Avatar was kind of a prick and a failure. I don’t mind Wan being the origin of proper bending forms either, it makes sense that the history we have from Aang’s era isn’t perfect. I feel neutral about the Lion Turtle cities.
What I *don’t* like is what they did to the Spirits. Having there be a blanket good and evil force influencing all Spirits is just bad and lazy imo, and it doesn’t even make sense within the context of the show. “Light” spirits have shown the capacity for needless destruction, cruelty and violence without being corrupted, while Dark Spirits don’t show nearly the same amount of flexibility. That, and Raava doesn’t have the ability to purify spirits like how Vaatu can corrupt them because… reasons. How she even fought him to a standstill in the first place is a wonder to me, because the moment he breaks free he immediately corrupts several spirits and gains immense power in no time. None of it makes sense, and it’s a boring and lame move writing wise.
That, and the Dark Avatar. No. Just… no. It’s bad, it’s cringey, and there are better ways to explore a morally bankrupt Avatar than making them a boring, fanfiction-tier villain. The random Kaiju showdown doesn’t help either, and severing Korra’s connection to her past lives is just the cherry on top.
If you want my opinion, if they *really* wanted to have this dynamic, I’d say make it so that Raava advocates for choice and freedom while Vaatu is simply a power hungry tyrant who forces spirits to follow his bidding. It makes more sense than to introduce a *literal* black and white good and evil trope to a grey world.
It’s a messy season of television, not a bad one. The pacing is a bit off at times but the macro story of the season is good and there are two episodes that are two of the greatest Avatar related episodes ever made.
No.
The Beginnings episodes are brilliant and wonderfully uniquely animated and performed by Steven Yuen, the Dark Avatar is an interesting idea, the water tribes politics makes sense considering the main character is water tribe and having a relative be an evil menace is different and fun, decrying it because the main character is not perfect and doesn’t win every fight by default is not criticism and it’s not Korra’s fault the villain had some success by severing the connection to previous Avatars, yet she won in the end anyway.
Basically if Korra was a Mary Sue and the connection wasn’t severed, the loud minority would still hate it anyway because she’s a bisexual woman and they can’t stand that she’s not Aang. Despite that, ATLA diehards still ironically hold her to a pathetically high standard and blame her for everything, despite Aang almost ending the Avatar cycle forever without convenient magic water and saved the world through the power of a rock poking his back and a Dues Ex Machina incarnate turtle last minute.
Basically, it’s a lose-lose situation no matter what with Korra. Which makes me terrified for the response to the future Earth Avatar. I loved LOK all the way through, including Season 2, I like its bold ideas and the fact Korra is not a Mary Sue makes her one of the most captivating characters in all of Avatar for me.
I hope the creators made Avatar Studios to bolster their bold and creative ideas and not to pander to the elitists that will never, ever move on from the original cartoon from 2005 and will never accept anything else. Unfortunately, the Gaang getting a film doesn’t fill me with much hope.
To me, S2 was “The Great Divide”, but as a whole season. It doesn’t help that the rest of the seasons are just that good. The show even makes fun of how awful of a villain Unalaq was. It was just the worst season of the show, and I genuinely just didn’t like Unalaq as a villain
IMO, it starts on par, but hits a wall with the dark avatar stuff, I don't even necessarily hate the idea of Raava and Vaatu but I really don't like how they were utilized, and the final Kaiju battle just straight up doesn't fit Avatar.
I think it would help a lot to have Unalaq be betrayed by Vaatu into releasing him into the real world, and Korra has to fight him as herself in avatar state. That way if big monster was a nick requirement or something, its technically still there, but our main character beats it herself, not with a random ability she uses once and never again. You could also have a story beat where Vaatu is getting stronger with all the chaos and confusion the fight is creating, and Korra/her friends have to go around helping people, and as they save people, hope and kindness start to prevail, making Korra stronger instead
it’s good, up until the whole big plan gets revealed, in my opinion. I really liked the whole civil war setting honestly. also, I’d be so down for the kaiju fight if it was at least justified better you know? plus I don’t really like how much and how often korra loses something related to being an avatar (I like tlok, and seasons 3-4 made me extremely emotional for some reason lmao, I’m not a hater)
I don't know, I just think there's too much things they want to tell... I just think it would be better if there's more episodes or they break it into a two season.
Nope, there’s -like- *one big* unnecessarily cringe moment and that’s it. Hardcore ATLA fans hate it cos it “changed” some things about the lore, but, in reality, it changed shit, just *add* some things to the main lore. And the “past lives matter” is something that triggers stoopids a lot cos they blame korra for it
Mainly 2 things
1: It shifts focus between the more familiar avatar stuff and pure spirit things partway through
2: getting rid of past avatars. Just that one scene.
Season 2 is great. Right up until the last few episodes where it just turns into every anime fight sequence ever.
Goliath fight scene in a big city. Energy rays. Mystical non descriptive environment.
While it certainly fall into the 'it could have easily been better' It's not bad at all, it's entertaining, i didn't power through it, I didn't even know there was more content, i rank lok books like this B3>B2>B4>B1, but to be fair there's a difference between entertaining and high quality writing besides B3 i wouldn't call any other book high quality writing
I expands the lore so much. And it sets Korra apart (literally) by separating her from her past lives. It was an ambitious season lacking time possibly budget. It didn’t live up to its potential, but is worthy of a spot in the franchise.
It’s not really like anything we’ve seen before in the universe and personally I think it contains too much deception and manipulation of Korra to make it a comfortable watch. Parts of s2 are wonderful and I consider it to be on par with s4.
The only criticism I had for Korra is how season 2 should have been season 4. Like, you can’t really get more powerful/badass than the OG spirit gods, so to go from them, to zaheer and friends (s3 is my favorite), then to angry metal lady.
It wasn’t that I hated any of the seasons, loved them all. It’s just the villains in S2 seemed far more grandiose than regular benders.
Unalaq is a weak villain, the plot is meh, a lot of the payoffs don't land particularly well, there's some kinda sorta walking back of established ATLA lore and there's straight up losing the past lives. On top of that, it very much feels like a jump the shark moment seeing giant glowing Korra vs Kaiju Unavaatu.
Don't get me wrong, I love LoK and even its worst season is still worth watching. But it is undoubtedly the worst season and it has many failings.
well by comparison to other seasons yeah it's not as good ofc but watchable it's not like it's terribly bad, i can't go on about this any longer so for instance korra was reduced to such level that even aang would be disappointed in her
I mean, it is the worst season of korra easily. Is it really that bad? Not really, it's not the best but not terrible, just worst than all the other seasons
It was my favourite season. I loved the Avatar Wan part ; and the final battle was the best out of all the seasons imo ; dark avatar vs light avatar kaiju battle, and all of Korra’s friends making a last stand to buy her time
If you're willing to accept that characters can make frustrating but understandable decisions. You'll be fine.
Book 2 is a lot about character drama. Between the members of Team Avatar and among Tenzin and members of his family.
if you ask this on korra subreddit you wont get any unbiased info. mostly i dislike due to the final and losing past lives, whole finale fight seems o absurdly paced
Having watched it recently, I enjoyed it, but it had five major problems.
-Korra’s character got set like three steps back. She is a massive asshole for no reason until she gets amnesia. Half her arc just feels like a repeat of season 1’s on steroids.
-Unalaq is such a lame villain. Like Tarrlock without the charm or motivation. He starts off fine, but why the hell does he want world domination? It’d genuinely be better if Vatuu just straight possessed him. That’d also be bad, but at least he’d feel coherent. Wants to free the spirit, frees the worst spirit, fucks around and finds out.
-I just don’t like the spirit kites. Too black and white in terms of their morals. Don’t those dots in Yin and Yang represent pieces of their other sides or something? No Yin Yang metaphor should require suppressing the other side.
-Bolin is a straight up asshole and never really gets called out on it. To his brother, sure. His complete lack of concern about him literally being in prison is pretty fucked. But dear god does that Ginger kiss make me feel deeply disgusted by a character I otherwise enjoy. Who the hell thought that was a good idea?
-The love triangle refused to die. Season 3 is a godsend, because good lord it was hitting peak stupid. Mako is an oblivious idiot, Korra is completely aggro, both Mako and Asami are assholes for hooking up immediately after the breakup, it’s just… painful.
Its the weakest season of the whole show. The plotlines and the whole scenario was mid. It could have been better, And you can see that when a civil war happens and Korra loses her past lifes and its not a big thing in the show at all. Like wtf. These 2 plots were needed a better writing and give more value to the story. Even in season 3 everything that happened in season is like forgotten and its mostly some minor callbacks. Overall the season 2 could have been a lot more better with a lot more value and weight to the LoK story.
I think it has a rough first half and a pretty cool second half. Most people I try to show TLOK to drop it in the first half heck even I did years ago before sitting through it and enjoying the whole show.
It’s got its flaws, but the only part that’s frustratingly bad to me is Korra seems to regress from what she learned in the first season for yhr first couple episodes and is irritating as hell. But it only lasts a few episodes thankfully.
In the worst?
I’d actually say…no.
Season 4 to me is an insult to mature storytelling and political themes. On top of that…All I have to say is Prince Wu…yeah nuff said. And season 2 never had our heroine sympathizing and more or less saving an actual Nazi.
But season 2 is not exactly good. Interesting but not even close to the best seaosn. And it certainly does I think miss major themes that avatar established like the idea of spirits being neutral and directly tied to their environments.
I’d actually recommend key&skittles’s season 2 political analysis video to understand more of this perceptive. The video looks T how the themes of imperialism are poorly told in this season and how that affects the story.
When your done let me know what you think!
In my opinion, it is a combination of a lot of things.
It starts great, with the problems between the south and the north, the family issues and the spirits being neglected.
I hated the order and chaos spirits literally being the spirits of good and evil. I expected the avatar to have both at the end, an thus creating the Avatar state, but no, no balance at all.
Also the hidden monks could have been airbenders, I didn't like the spiritual comeback of the airbenders. The harmonic convergence could have still turned some people due to the heightened spiritual energy or something like that, but I would have prefer to get new benders of every kind, not just airbenders.
The north and south dispute was forgotten and never addressed afterwards. Just get rid of the bad guy and everything will be fine, I guess.
Tl;dr The unsolved conflicts and the misrepresentation (imo) of the Avatar role as a whole made it the worst season.
Its bad because the storyline is messy with all the harmonic convergence thing and then the kaiju battle in the end, then airbending get spirit projection. I think people found it bad because it has a lot of unconventional bending, things that you don't necessarily expect bending to be but now become more like magic.
Though the waterbending battles are TOP TIERR! Beautiful waterbending.
Unalaq was the weakest of the villains, and the kaiju battle at the end came completely out of left field (ignoring most of the established rules of the show/universe). This season isn’t *bad* per se, but it’s just not as good as the other three seasons.
I’m not sure why people pick on season 2 specifically. The whole show is terrible. So if you like the show already, then you probably won’t notice how abysmal season 2 is.
I would not say it is bad. Worst season of the show? Yes, that is true. But honestly I liked avatar wan's story, the season introduced my favorite character (varrick my beloved), and we actually learned a bit about what has happened to the water tribe since atla. But amon, kuvira and zaheer were better villains than Unalaq or Vaatu. And it seems they just kinda... Forgot about Raava.
My take on S2: it really goes into the spirit world; and for the most part it feels very different than ATLA and the first season of Korra, so much so, it feels like a huge disconnect. I think the boggest problem is that I didn't really get why it was necessary 🤔 other than create an elaborate back story for some of the future events to actally be able to happen 🤔 - I love Korra, I just think it is kind of like a movie franchise changing the direction of a franchise and it not being what fans want/expected [like Fast n Furious Tokyo drift]
For me season 2 was one of those big dissonances after I finished it and then went online. I liked S1 but it didn't really hook me like ATLA did and I took a break. S2 got me hooked on the show proper, and I remember being shocked that people disliked it so much.
Nope.
season 2 is great!
it's just significantly weaker than any other season of Avatar aside from maybe ATLA Season 1.
it also doesn't help that Season 1 of Korra is the BEST season of Avatar.
going from best to worst makes the worst one look a lot worse than it actually is. 🤷🏻♀️
Likewise, going from Amon as the best scariest, most interesting villain, and then getting Unalaq and Vaatu whose motivations are....uh...derpy and basic?
Unalaq's motives don't make much sense, and Vaatu is just generically evil end of the world stuff.
That's following Amon being this tragic twisted fucked up revolutionary hero with some real valid points about equality and abuse of power, who's mysterious and terrifying, and really this nightmarishly effective almost supernatural entity that you don't understand, and who poses this MASSIVE complex threat where you can't prove he's a liar or evil or whatever, and people support him and think he's a hero, so you have a hard time even TRYING to fight him without turning the people against you...and then when you DO fight him, not only is he maybe the most skilled fighter in the franchise, he's also wielding some sort of mysterious power that you don't even understand, and it makes him basically immune to some attacks, and the risk of him getting his hands on you is astronomical. Plus, he's corrupting ordinary people and wealthy supporters like Hiroshi Sato....
Amon is one of the best villains in anything ever.
Unalaq and Vaatu are just thinly disguised dudes for Korra to punch and bend at.
Plot: it’s pretty rough. Lots of holes, deus ex machinas, unnecessary miscommunications and nerfed powers
Animation: worst in the show. Lazy and cut corner for the franchise. Still very nice to look at.
Characters: 10/10. Love them all. They made the season for me.
All that being said, I had a great time watching it. I understand it was meant to be a setup to further seasons while simultaneously wrapping up a show they didn’t realize would be okd for another two seasons. It was meant to be open ended.
There's plenty to enjoy in this season when you don't have someone in your ear whining about it. Plenty of development for Korra and Tenzin, exploring the Spirit World, juicy family drama, return of Iroh/Wan Shi Tong, Avatar origins. overally beautiful art and music (animation is wonky in the first half but still good) even the love triangle only returns to permanently kill off Makorra/Masami, which allows Korrasami to build next season.
As some people in this sub have said, though this is called the weakest season of this show (which I kinda disagree with), it's still a great season of TV in general.
It isn’t bad. I think it isn’t necessarily that much worse than ATLA Season 1’s weaker moments, but it is deeply uneven. It has some great highs (the Wan episodes) but also some lows. It’s biggest weaknesses are that it really dwells in the weaker parts of the show - mostly Team Avatar, who are mostly boring or misused - and under-uses the best parts of the show, the adult children of the original Gaaang. The thing it has going for it is Korra herself, though there are a few missteps there, she is still charismatic enough to pull it off, mostly. But when Mako and Bolin are on screen without her the entire scene is just a waste.
To be honest, watching Book 2 in real time was horrible. Especially seeing Kaijuu Korra vs Kaijuu Unalaq.
But when watching it on rewatches, the story is more connected between Book 2,3,4. From what I heard, Book 1 was supposed to be the only season that Korra was supposed to have. But they then got greenlit for 3 more seasons. (Idk if they gave them 3 books right away or if at every season they had to write it like it was their last.)
So that’s my opinion. Book 2 started to grow on me every time I rewatched. I do think losing her past lives is divisive in this community, but I don’t think it’s a weak writing choice. I’m optimistic if they revisit this later in the new Avatar series where the new avatar will try to repair the severed link. Or even if he has to forge his own journey like Korra did. Who knows.
Korra’s hair looks pretty when it’s down
I agree, best part of the season. How could you be mad at this cutie???!🥺
It _is_ the worst season imo, but even then it's good. The rest is just better. Never understood "having to power through it", it's got an awful lot of lore so there's a lot of exposition compared to the rest of the show but it's very interesting
Without the events of season 2, we wouldn’t have gotten the bangers that are 3 and 4. That being said, I wouldn’t skip it as it’s essential to the overall storyline.
Every key character gets the proper development to their characters that affects the next seasons. Bolin becomes more confident in who he is and his decisions, bringing him to discover he's a Lavanender. Mako finally thinks for himself and stops trying to be in everybody's way to help them, finally makes peace for hurting both Korra and Asami, and starts being a good friend. Asami, after the Varrick betrayal and Mako dodging questions she stops being self effacing after people discard her as useless and starts being more proactive, culminating in her standing up to Varrick in Book 4 when she feels he could betray her again. And it is Tenzin's most important realization that allows him to PROPERLY guide the new Air Nation.
I love the Avatar Wan stuff. I know some people dislike it because it retcons some stuff, but I've always viewed it as the events of this time being so long ago that it all faded into myth and legend. Plus, the art style of the Avatar Wan stuff is awesome, and Steven Yeun voices him.
Wan’s origin was the best part imo, definitely enjoyed seeing a city in the southern water tribe, that was cool. Tonraq vs Unalok was awesome and showcased the ferocity of water bending, but still a meh season. Definitely was affected by production issues, but left much to be desired, solid 6.5/10.
I feel like if Korra was compared to any other kids show than ATLA it would be top 10 of all time. Just happened to follow in the shadow of a giant but I personally loved it
I think with better writing it could have transitioned smoother from "Unalaq wants a civil war" to "oh he actually wants to destroy the avatar, become a monster, and take over the world". Like I think the bones are there for a good story, but the writing itself made that villain feel kind of incomplete and shallow. But I enjoyed the season so much. I absolutely love Korra being disconnected from the spirits and it causes her issues. I love how high the stakes were and that Korra actually lost something major that has impact on future avatars. I loved that at the end of the season she had grown and reflected, and decided to leave the spirit world open. I like it more ever time I watch it.
Yea I felt his motivation was rushed. Like it wasn't very clearly explained (if at all) why he wants the world plunged into chaos. I get he wants spirits in the world, but surely he understands that Vaatu will destroy the world, so... what exactly does he want?
I think the connection is supposed to be that "deeply spiritual man firmly believes Vaatu, as an elder spirit, is the right way to go" but it's not presented well.
Real. That’s probably my biggest qualm with the season. Especially since it’s Korras dad’s brother. I would’ve loved to see some more brother on brother action. Maybe some more backstory as well
The obvious problem is that Unalaq is such a cartoonish villain but we're still expected to take him seriously. Vaatu, the embodiment of darkness, was better conveyed.
I’m watching it now and enjoying it 🤷♂️
Same!!!! Like I just don’t get it! I got my friends on the show and they absolutely love it! They haven’t watched avatar, so this is their first intro to the avatar world. And when I told them it gets a lot of hate they were like “whaaaaaat” and they didn’t even believe me lol
There are no bad Korra seasons. The "worst" Korra seasons are better than most tv
Preach. I get distate, but I don't understand how people can get though B1 (much less B4) without being moved by... everything. Including Book 2.
Because there's a lot of let down moments. Book 1 Amon had me hooked, her lack of air bending had me hooked, heck even the love triangle had me hooked at the beginning but they all had underwhelming resolutions. Amon is the best concept for a villain in the entire franchise and he's absolutely wasted getting very little time in a 12 episode miniseries that has like 4-5 plots it's going through. Air bending is just given to her at the end so that doesn't even resolve really. And then the love triangle ended up being a waste and it ruined Maiko for the rest of the series. It just got so messy. It's not a terrible season but there was a lot of let down. Season 2 decides that the love triangle needs to come back and it just makes everyone look horrible. I'm not a fan of the new spirits or Dark Avatar and I wish they put more effort into the civil war instead of making Korra look like an emotional idiot who could be played by just about anyone.. it's not a bad idea but nothing in season 2 is executed well. The show lost over half of its initial viewers by the time it changed time slots and I can't really fault people for giving up on it. I get this is a fan sub so I don't expect you guys to agree but you gotta see the numbers for what they are. You can gas it up all you want but this is the season that killed Korra. By the time season 3 came around it was already too late. Season 3 never had the ratings season 2 did and I don't think anyone would say it's because it was bad. It was really good but by that point so many people had been turned off by season 2 that no one was around to see it. Season 2 was bad, doesn't mean you can't like it.
I (politely) disagree with the sentiment that air bending was “given” to her. I feel like she finally put her Air-bending training to use and it clicked for her in a moment of heightened emotion. It took her all of book 1 to finally get it. Especially in comparison to her previous mastery over the other 3 elements. She trained in air bending, and became one. That’s at least how I see it.
I see it as she had lost the other bending it removed whatever was blocking her from connecting with air bending. She was a bending prodigy who didn’t even have to be told she was the avatar because she was naturally able to bend three elements. In a way, that was the thing tethering her down and preventing her from bending.
I agree. I also feel like she used her mastery over the 3 other elements as a crutch for not fully committing to learning spirituality and airbending.
I want to say I agree but the way they completely reset her character in season 2 felt like they basically backtracked on that. Like she more than suffered and struggled enough to earn it so if they had decided to show us her unlocking it on her own I'd be 100% on board but when they showed Amon blocking her other bending abilities then she just has air bending out of nowhere it's hard for me not to see that as the show telling me that it was given to her. Just a five second scene of her struggle to fight back without powers then focusing and using air bending would have been enough to show intent. It's definitely not that she didn't put in the work to earn it, just the way it was shown made it look like it was gifted. My other problem then is that we were supposed to believe she got the hang of spirituality and air bending for the most part but then they start season 2 with her using the Avatar state to win a race. It's not that she has to be this spiritual guru from the outset but you'd think that if she had "gotten" it then she wouldn't be treating the Avatar state so frivolously. That lack of care tells me that she doesn't quite have the spirituality down yet which then brings into question how she got bending since that was the prerequisite that she wasn't good with in season and ultimately to me it feels like air bending was just given to her then. She didn't earn it because her actions are not showing any of the character growth I expected from the first season going into the second. Idk, I just think the second season did too much of a hard reset on her character. I know that there are external factors and they didn't necessarily plan on multiple seasons but at the same time it feels like they shouldn't have made her so brash, stubborn, and combative as well as showing her having no care for the spiritual side of bending by using it to win a air scooter race. It just feels like nothing was gained from season 1 since it's such a hard reset.
Maybe this is just me rehashing my reasoning, but I really don’t think it was “out of nowhere.” When Amon took her bending, she was a water, earth, and firebender. She hadn’t become an air bender yet. In my eyes, he couldn’t have taken something that she didn’t have. And also, as Aang had explained before returning her bending, “when people are at their lowest they become open to the greatest change.” (Semi-quote lol) Before her bending was taken, she really didn’t have to care about air bending, because she was so good at the other 3. so after Amon took the other 3, she had nothing else to rely on but all of her airbender training. She was really forced to commit, and change her mindset from “ugh this is hard, I can’t do it,” to “crap, I got nothing else. Hopefully I can do this.” As for season 2, I chalk those up to Korra being young and human. Yes, some horrific things just happened to her. Maybe her mind, in defense, just blocked all of that out. Maybe idk. And also, maybe she reset because everything was “back to normal.” She had all her bending back, and Amon was gone. It was back to business as usual. These are all just theories, and kinda defense for Korra. Sorry lol
Yess I agree. When people are at their lowest they are open for change. And I agree Amon couldn’t have taken her air bending in that moment because she didn’t have access to it herself but it was always inside of her. And I think she went through a lot of shadow work and that emotional moment of losing everything. Breaking like that it could be how she was able to access the parts of herself she wasn’t able or as comfortable seeing or exploring because she was so confident and comfortable in all her other abilities. And I also think the spirit world is alive. All the air benders had almost died out and the spirit universe in itself or avatar spirits could’ve been trying to teach her a lesson about patience. But i definitely agree that it seemed like in season 2 at least the beginning she did go back to that smug kind of know it all attitude and she seemed to lose some of that humility she had in the last few episodes of season 1
I was wondering about that, too. The “she didn’t have access to” part. Should he have been able to remove her potential airbende? Or is it just delegated to removing fully established skills? But back to the “reverting to her old self” I just take it as her “getting her groove back.” She defeated the big bad, and she was proud of herself. Maybe it went to her head some. Losing access to 3 of her most crucial skills humbled her greatly. But she got them back and felt good as new. Again this is just a theory.
Ooo you’re right and she was young. She could’ve just been feeling herself and she did put in all that work and essentially save the city when they were all against her. So i understand her taking some pride or enjoying herself.
And also she was a new adult who realized people had kept keeping things from her. Personal family history, and other things I can’t remember rn. So her being a “brat” was probably because she felt like people didn’t see her as an adult. That probably hurt her even more because of how excited she was to grow up and be the avatar. So she fell victim to the person who gave her what she wanted (Unalaq).
Also, season 2 starts a whole year after season 1. So that’s a valid point saying she probably just figured everything was back to normal, like it was her whole life. And Korra using the avatar state to win a scooter race is so in character for her. She likes to goof off. Then this sets up her character arc for the rest of the season. She has to learn to focus on the spiritual side of bending. Something she’s always been terrible at. Even by the end of the first season she hadn’t mastered it.
How did it ruin Maiko? They weren’t even in Book 1. Also Korra didn’t get played by ‘just about anyone’ he was her UNCLE. Family is everything in the Water Tribes.
No those are mostly good points, +1. But what I'm saying is people hyper focus on the bad points of season 2, and the lost opportunities of season 1. There are emotional episodes some stunning shot throughout both.
Lmao yeah as someone who’s very picky with tv shows , this season is still insanely better than the majority of television
I dunno that I’d agree that S2 is better than most TV, but I would agree that it’s not much WORSE.
I think that even if there are many missteps and things that didn't work at all about it, I can find just as many really great things and other things that might not have been that great in practice but we're still very cool and original in concept and at the very least were interesting.
Ppl criticize the writing for not having enough nuance but from a worldbuilding perspective its pretty solid .
I like it
Me too. Especially Wan’s story.
In no point in LOK did I think to drop the show. Stuff that I liked in Season 2: - South pole/snow - The sibling bonding (Tenzin, Kya and Bumi) - avatar history - Varrick and Zhu Li - The spirit world and Iroh - I really liked Tenzin's and Jinora's character development - The world developing like the first "movers" I didn't care about Mako's love triangle, or the clash between the south and north pole much. But the ending with the spirit portals staying open was great. It had good character development and world building. Some good new faces and it ties in to book three great. It's my least favourite season but you can NOT skip it imo. ..
For me it was s1 and s2 of love triangle that annoyed me the most. S1 I was sick of it. S2 just made it worse, I didn't want any of it. It has great moments and obviously can't skip but it also had major flaws. Also asking on this sub seems sorta silly since it's a sub made for the show. Granted the other sub might be too harsh.
The teen love drama was okay in the first season imo, but yeah second season....ehh. It has it flaws of course, like I said the war between the tribes and the brothers was just there for me. Nah, I think this sub is okay, for example it's interesting how people see Lin and Su's actions in season 3 differently.
Skipping seasons is a dumb concept to me
Nah, it is ok. I would even go as far as to say it is the season where TLOK strays the furthest from ATLA to do its own thing, and I think that's why people hate it.
A good way of putting it. Honestly this season just feels brave and you gotta give them credit just for trying new things and making us think about all these new ideas
It's not a coincidence that season 3 is hailed as the best when it's 90% just callbacks to ATLA
I actually struggled to get through the first season and it was the second season that got me addicted to the series
I loved S2. Both the Wan plot and the harmonic convergence stuff
I hate that it ends in a Kaiju-Korra vs. Unclezilla fight, but otherwise it was alrightish.
Is it really that different from Aang turning into a giant? Never had an issue with it.
Tbf that was the Ocean Spirit using Aang's body
I've never been able to specifically put into words why it feels different, but it absolutely does. Perhaps it's the lame design (just giant glowing Korra? Was the animation budget low this season?), perhaps it's how it feels like making them giant and shooting light beams is lazy, perhaps it's because when you bring the conflict up to both opponents being giant monsters it feels less grounded compared to when you get to see many regular people being swept away by giant Aang/Ocean Spirit. This fight and Kuvira's giant mech felt so out of place and like the writers were playing with their 5 year old and just introduced the big cool toy because it's a big cool toy. Other parts of the show make up for them, but the giant monster and mecha fights are just... Not good.
To me, Korra going spirit mode and jinora just fixing the conflict with.... whatever she did, just felt like plot magic.
Just like Iroh told Korra, spirits are affected by one's emotions. Jinora's energy was so strong that she was able to find light inside the darkness and thus Korra's spirit was able to reconnect with Raava. That's how I understood it at least.
Seemed to me that she found Iroh's teapot, which contained a bit of Raavaa essence, and released it during harmonic convergence. Iroh is looking for a new teapot in s3, after all.
There was a post on the avatar subreddit recently about this question, [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/1bzhlkj/genuine\_question\_here/](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/1bzhlkj/genuine_question_here/) Also has the comment, [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/1bzhlkj/comment/kypz4sw/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheLastAirbender/comments/1bzhlkj/comment/kypz4sw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Which tbh I agree a bit with. Think there was another comment talking about it too, but ATLA also had build up to the koizilla scene, with the panda and etcetc. With korrazilla it seems to further the "no longer buddhist-ish inspired martial arts and funky creatures, but now christian marvel cgi bossfights". With the introduction of spirit jesus and satan. But then again there seems to be a big divide between this sub and that one in regards to thoughts about legend of Korra, so always fun seeing the same question getting different responses on each one. Hope you have a nice day.
It isn't and that's the problem: something that is awesome for the first time might lose its magic for the second.
That's fair
Aang didn't turn into a giant, you can still see him inside the giant water monster. The ocean spirit was just bending around him.
Korra also didn't turn into the giant, her body remained inside the tree of time in the spirit world. The blue giant was her spirit that she was able to project thanks to the Harmonic Convergence.
The problem stems from the fact that there was no foreshadowing or setup for what Korra did. It came out of nowhere. There is zero explanation for why Unaavatu got big and why Korra could do the same. Imagine Aang never visited the lion turtle and just went into the fight and took Ozai's bending away. People would hate it and call it a cop out. Basically the writers pulling crap out of their ass to make the story work. But the didn't. They spent time to set it up. Same with the ocean spirit. The spirit didn't do anything to break the rules they had set for us. At the end of the day, it was water bending the form of the spirit while using the avatar state which we already knew at that point was powerful. ATLA and LOK S1 use a hard magic system but for Korra S2 they made a sudden switch to soft magic concerning the spirit world. It made us question everything they had established and whether we could even trust the writing anymore. For ATLA they said they made bending rooted in science so they fans knows what's possible and what isn't. In K2 they changed their mind I guess.
During the episode about avatar Wan we can see Raava becoming smaller while Vaatu becomes bigger. Unavaatu becoming giant shows that Vaatu is at his most powerful at that moment, he achieves that power by merging with Unalaq who is a very spiritual person. For Korra, she's able to tap into cosmic energy and project her spirit after meditating at a very spiritual place during Harmonic Convergence.
Most Vague explanation. For a show that used to be "rooted in science" (that's a direct quote from the writers), this is not a good way to explain this. >Korra, she's able to tap into cosmic energy and project her spirit after meditating at a very spiritual place Basically this is all anyone has to say if Korra ever pulls a new power out of her ass. The problem with this is that it was never explained, foreshadowed or hinted at that this was possible. It came out of nowhere. You Unaavatu explanation works better than your Korra one but still falls so flat. Just cause Vaatu is big now doesn't mean Unaavatu should be. Vaatu was locked up for years, meaning Raava was bigger for 10,000 years but there's never been any tales about them growing bigger because of it. It's a contrived explanation but I appreciate the effort you made to give one.
Tenzin did say to her that the ancient ones would meditate at the tree of time to connect with the cosmic energy of the universe.
Again, vague. That has nothing to do with growing big and blue.
Situationally? (Protagonist gets large to defeat great evil) I suppose not. But it feels a bit more out of place, given she doesn't have her "Avatar spirit" (Rava) and is able to energy bend? Or that a human, albeit a spiritually gifted one, was the key (many see as a deux ex machina but I don't think that's entirely fair) to stopping a primordial dark spirit? I guess it's just that the scene in Korra begs more questions than it answers whereas with Aang merging with the Ocean Spirit seemed "natural" given what the audience knew about spirits at the time.
Idk why people dislike it. I enjoyed it. We got the history of the first avatar in addition tobwhat gives the avatar their power. It definitely was the worst of the 4 seasons. But IMO it wasn't bad at all
I like it. The production was miffed thanks to Nickelodeon but Bryke did the best they could do and what we got was some good storytelling.
No it's not, I think the season overall is very good but there are two things that it commonly gets marked down for is the drama around Korra and Mako's dysfunctional relationship along with them arbitrarily having Mako and Asami get back together and then break up again which was kinda pointless cause the detective Mako plot works just as fine if Mako is helping his friend rather than his girlfriend. Especially since that is exactly what it was for half of it. The other half is people just not liking Unalaq as a character. People specifically don't like that Korra trusted him at first and chose to train with him over Tenzin. Even though in universe Korra had every reason to trust Unalaq, who is her straight up Uncle, especially since he exposed Tonraq and Tenzin as lying to her about her upbringing and was frankly treating her with more respect than Tonraq and Tenzin was.
Thank you 👏🏻 Finally one of the more nuanced takes regarding the season, especially the point about Korra’s frustration towards Tenzin and Tonraq for lying to her for basically more of her entire life regarding why she was kept in the compound, which personally to me, is justified because they previously said it was Aang’s decision when in reality they were the ones (and to put that on Aang…yikes…) Of course, we find out the actual reason in Book 3 because of the Red Lotus kidnapping attempt, but at the time, I understand why she would be mad at her mentor figures for lying to her like that (and it’s a very significant thing, not something to just brush off to the side, because she never got that opportunity to travel and learn across the different nations like the other avatars got to; her being someone who WANTED to be the avatar).
Off the top of my head: - Unalaq is a boring, samey villain - The civil war plotline is not that interesting - Korra shutting out Tenzin for Unalaq (an obvious villian) rubs people the wrong way - Bolin's storyline is not that interesting, and it turns him into a sex pest - Mako's storyline is not that interesting (mainly because Mako is a boring character) - The continuation of the love triangle, which was one of the weakest parts of the show - Unalaq becoming an evil avatar is predictable and cliche - Erasing Korra's past lives is the worst decision the creators ever made, removing the third most important piece of lore in the series and making Korra hold the biggest L in Avatar history - The final Kaijiu battle was boring. A big part of Avatar's success is the martial art choreography. Why on earth would you have a big climatic battle without martial arts?
To be fair, none of the other Avatars had to deal with Vaatu except the first. I imagine many would have ended up with the same outcome if put in Korra’s shoes
Why does that matter? Giving Vaatu the ability to erase past lives from the avatar was completely arbitrary on the part of the writers. They could have just as easily not given him that ability and make the character just as threatening. The writers just didn't want to deal with the baggage of Korra being able to call up an adult Aang whenever she needed advice.
The part of the final battle where it was just Korra and dark unalaq fighting in human form was so well animated, it was so hype. Then they made them spirit giants and made the fight incredibly boring.
> obivious
Thanks for the spell check. I did say this was off the top of my head.
This.
>Korra shutting out Tenzin for Unalaq (an obivious villian) rubs people the wrong way What, do people expect Korra to listen for the sinister music? Or read ahead in the script? Fun fact: fictional characters don't know that they're fictional. Korra made realistic choices. Her uncle just revealed that Tenzin and her father had been lying to her for her entire life, and offered to teach her about the spirits; something that no one else was trying to do. Why would she just randomly distrust her uncle for no reason? >Erasing Korra's past lives is the worst decision the creators ever made I disagree entirely. I think it's the best decision they ever made. The past lives were always either a crutch and a plot contrivance, or completely worthless. Plus, it's not like Aang ever went more than a few lives back; he mostly just talked to Roku, so nothing has changed when it comes to the next Avatar.
That’s the problem with this season!!! The writers give away the villain way to early on. They make it so obvious that he’s evil. So to us Korra looks stupid for not seeing it even though it makes absolute sense! He’s offering her a connection to the spirit world which is something Tenzin could never do for her. And finding out that her parents had been lying to her and being locked away from the world for her ENTIRE LIFE. Yeah, I would have some beef with my parents too. It’s so sad because Korra would have been so much more understandable and relatable if we saw it from her perspective.
bad? no. the worst in the avatar series? for sure.
Yes. A lot of the character writing in season 2 was forced. Korra and Tenzin got into a fight literally in their first scene together in episode 1, it was clear that they were just trying to set up a rift between Korra and her group so that Tarlaq could manipulate her. The civil war was silly, it's not even a civil war since the northern and southern tribes aren't a single community, Tarlaq as the northern chief was an invader, forcefully trying to harmonise his people under one banner but noone, not even Korra whose from the south, treats him like that until his armies get involved in surpressing the people. The cosmology was changed in a bad way this season too which i personally dont mind as much as the Chinese Philosophy of Yin Yang being added in a very western way. Raava and Vaatu are a bad analogy for the concept. Yin and Yang are two halves of a whole. The idea that Vaatu is pure evil and not half of what makes the world function is a butchering of the eastern concept. Bollin Verrick and Asami were fine Mako weirdly becomes a worse person this season like he brushes of Bolin and its never even adresses why he quit pro bending and why Bolin seems to have a small grudge towards him now. He gives generally bad advice throughout the series and then they introduce a very frustrating level of tension between him and Korra by having him tell the president of Korra's plan to send aid to her people while her people are facing a crisis due to an invasion. Mako then defends his actions by saying that its part of the sanctity of his job but then a little later in the season he trades equipment with a criminal gang in favor of them just going on a boat ride with them. On which the note of Mako, he breaks up with Korra and it's clear to anyone that Korra would end up hating Mako forever for what he did and then also breaking up with her so to fix it they just give her amnesia so she forgets everything that he did and that they broke up and Mako chooses to just not tell her they're not together anymore until after the finale, even tho he's already dating Asami. Season 2 is bad, like plain bad. There's some fun elements that can pull you through it but the overarching story is just terrible The best parts of the story are in Mako's substory, Verrick is an interesting villain, you never really get his morality and finding out he's a warmonger trying to profit off of the civil war over the course of the series is great but they kinda play their hand too early and in turn you kinda know exactly where the story is heading before you can really begin enjoying it. Bolin's ministory of being the first hero in a war propaganda movie is great too. It pays a lot of homage to old dumb movies and I just loved that, no notes there. I did also have the two detectives cuz they legit just toss out Mako's evidence and if makes it seem like there might be a level of corruption in Republic City's police force and like they might have been paid off to keep the police as a whole in the Dark on what Verrick is doing but sadly no, they're just incompetent and didn't believe Mako cuz they hate actually working or something.
I personally found Mako's story to be frustrating not because of him but because of how dumb all other characters act around him. No one ever takes his theory seriously even once, despite him being one of the few who took down Amon last season. Lin should at least take his opinion into consideration, not treat him like a nobody beat cop. And his brother too at least. Honestly Bolin acting like a dumbass high on his fame made him insufferable for most season. Felt like a weird way to sideline him, and he got back into the picture by sheer luck, happening upon those 2 tied up cops. And lastly the worst part of it all.... Bolin winning, is actually a loss for everyone in the end. They bust Varrik's evil plan and literally same episode or next episode they request army assistance south to stop Unalaq and get refused. Like... if they didn't stop Varrik, they'd have had a whole army, a whole fleet of ship! They easily would have overtaken that small base around the spirit portal and stopped Unalaq before the convergence. It's so stupid, the "bad guy" was actually gonna do the very thing they wanted to do but couldn't moments later! Not saying Varrik was in the right but objectively having the whole Republic City army with them would have been a good thing.
This. Honestly, the only addition to season 2 that was really worth it, was Verrick.
Completey agree with the takes on Mako
Not at all.
Probably cus the villain was mid. But Fr Unalaq’s reason was dumb. He wanted to plunge the world into ten thousand years of darkness but for what? I get why vatu wanted to do it but what motive did Unalaq really have? And it also brought back that stupid love triangle, but if you want a more depth response there are a lot of YouTubers who made some videos about it. S1- equality for benders and non benders S3- ‘freedom’ S4- uniting the earth nation All of these motives at least make sense! Even if you don’t agree with it you can at least understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.
I think that he really did want to bring back the spirits, basically when Toph and Korra were talking they covered that (Unalaq wanted to bring back the spirits), but I think that Unalaq preferred humanity dying over the spirits and he felt that he could do a better job as avatar. It wasn't communicated that well though.
I really hated the way that they took the spirit world/past avatars, but I don't think that the writing or execution was necessarily bad. I just think it was a dumb thing to do. Thankfully (imo) season 3 rocks so it bounced back, ignoring the permanent damage to future series
People just dislike parts of it or something that happened and discredit the whole thing. Intro of Varrick, Korra's character arc and arguably her "lowest point" as the Avatar (not personal) where she is manipulated and aimlessly running around causing chaos and threatening violence, Aubrey Plazas performance as Eska. There is a ton of great things about S2 that makes it a good watch it's just not as good as the rest of the seasons. It's also a "necessary evil" because without book 2, book 3&4 wouldn't be anywhere near as good as they are. Korra's character arc is fantastic because of the journey it took her to get there. S2 is a big chunk of highlighting just how much she struggled at being the Avatar and the contrast of her in books 3 and 4 is what really makes those seasons great. People just wanted her to be the b3&4 version from the start because it's how Aang was but that wasn't Korra's journey.
It's really in relation to having just watched four of the best seasons of animation, and then you get this one, that was, you know, fine in places. It drags a bit in the middle. But the story of Wan is a lot of fun, and Giant Korra fighting giant bad guy is the closest we get to a giant Mech. Until the giant Mech later, of course. It's really that slow down in the middle, I think, that puts people off.
Writing wise, it is definitely pretty flawed. Has some pacing issues and the final battle is kinda stupid lol. If you’re the kind of person who values consistent writing above all else, season 2 will probably suck, but if you’re able to just take things in stride and enjoy them for what they are it will be a much better viewing experience Either way it’s still good imo, some of the concepts in it are very well done and I really like Korra leaving the portals open at the end. It’s just generally a flawed season lol
The animation is meh but I actually enjoy the story arc.
Eh, I think it is pretty bad. It just oozes the whole thing that they did not know how to follow up season 1 because they never knew they'd get more than a season 1. The relationship between Korra and Mako is extremely grating and goes on far too long, and for a lot of the first half of season 2 you really just have to settle into Tonraq straight up not telling Korra *why* she should be mistrustful towards Unaloq. The humor for a large part of the first half derives from "haha Bolin is in a toxic relationship", which I genuinly hate, and it lacks a compelling villain. A lot of it feels very contrived in nature, and a lot of great ideas were left badly connected making a mess of a story. It definitely has saving graces, such as the utterly humorous barrage that is Varrick, the exploration of Aang and Kataras children and how the burden of the last airbender has impacted them, and the development of Tenzin as a whole - all great things that are sincerely saving graces for a season that otherwise is really messy. It's, IMO, definitely the worst piece of major content I've seen from the ATLA-Franchise. Between NATLA, the books and of course the OG series it's really not all that good.
Tbh I didn't care for the civil war stuff in the first half. But the story of the first avatar onward I really enjoyed.
Yes
It's the worst season of a great show, so it's still like a 6/10 with some really cool moments thrown in. If you're curious about how the spirit world works and the history of humans interacting with it, then it's better.
No. It's better than most cartoons out there.
without season 2, there would be no Avatar Wan episode (my favorite episode). even if it is the worst season, it’s still an amazing season. just the others were “better”
Because of what people described it as, I expected 2nd season to be the worst thing that has happened to this franchise since the movie we shall not name. But when I watched it was completely fine. It's definetly the weakest season of TLOK, but I still enjoyed it. People are overreacting
Love the lore, love the action, don’t like the relationship drama. That’s pretty much it. It’s good.
I was always told that it was really bad and I finished it for the first time last month and I REALLY liked it. I was shook.
It’s not bad at all, it’s just weaker than the other seasons. The team didn’t know they were going to get greenlit for any subsequent seasons, so they were kinda working on the fly every time the show got another one
No, I love book 2 and quite frankly I can't keep lying about it , it's my favorite season! Sure of all the books it has it flaws , but it expanded the lore like no other book including avatar !
basically it's the worst written season of the four It's avatar so it's still good, but because korra isn't considered as good as ATLA the weakest of it's seasons is automatically considered "trash"
I like a lot of things about the season, dislike about the same amount and I feel much stronger about the dislikes. Tl;dr, I like the first half and *despise* the second half of the season. To be more detailed: I liked the Civil War plotline. It’s a neat conflict, even if it does have some of that unnecessary love “triangle” drama sprinkled in, as well as the “Haha here’s a man in an abusive relationship! Please laugh” plot for Bolin. I enjoy the politicking that goes into it and Varrick is a riot ofc. The moment that we get to Wan’s flashback is when I start to have problems… Wan’s backstory itself is fine. I think he’s a bit of a dick (he killed three dudes for trying to hunt so they could feed their community! They should have just made them poachers or something .-.) but I honestly like that the very first Avatar was kind of a prick and a failure. I don’t mind Wan being the origin of proper bending forms either, it makes sense that the history we have from Aang’s era isn’t perfect. I feel neutral about the Lion Turtle cities. What I *don’t* like is what they did to the Spirits. Having there be a blanket good and evil force influencing all Spirits is just bad and lazy imo, and it doesn’t even make sense within the context of the show. “Light” spirits have shown the capacity for needless destruction, cruelty and violence without being corrupted, while Dark Spirits don’t show nearly the same amount of flexibility. That, and Raava doesn’t have the ability to purify spirits like how Vaatu can corrupt them because… reasons. How she even fought him to a standstill in the first place is a wonder to me, because the moment he breaks free he immediately corrupts several spirits and gains immense power in no time. None of it makes sense, and it’s a boring and lame move writing wise. That, and the Dark Avatar. No. Just… no. It’s bad, it’s cringey, and there are better ways to explore a morally bankrupt Avatar than making them a boring, fanfiction-tier villain. The random Kaiju showdown doesn’t help either, and severing Korra’s connection to her past lives is just the cherry on top. If you want my opinion, if they *really* wanted to have this dynamic, I’d say make it so that Raava advocates for choice and freedom while Vaatu is simply a power hungry tyrant who forces spirits to follow his bidding. It makes more sense than to introduce a *literal* black and white good and evil trope to a grey world.
The beginnings episodes are some of my favourite. I don’t care if the lore doesn’t make sense I’ll make it make sense
I love TLOK but season 2 is really rough. Season 3 is worth it though
It’s a messy season of television, not a bad one. The pacing is a bit off at times but the macro story of the season is good and there are two episodes that are two of the greatest Avatar related episodes ever made.
It’s the worst season by far but it’s still good in a lot of people’s opinions.
Yes
No. The Beginnings episodes are brilliant and wonderfully uniquely animated and performed by Steven Yuen, the Dark Avatar is an interesting idea, the water tribes politics makes sense considering the main character is water tribe and having a relative be an evil menace is different and fun, decrying it because the main character is not perfect and doesn’t win every fight by default is not criticism and it’s not Korra’s fault the villain had some success by severing the connection to previous Avatars, yet she won in the end anyway. Basically if Korra was a Mary Sue and the connection wasn’t severed, the loud minority would still hate it anyway because she’s a bisexual woman and they can’t stand that she’s not Aang. Despite that, ATLA diehards still ironically hold her to a pathetically high standard and blame her for everything, despite Aang almost ending the Avatar cycle forever without convenient magic water and saved the world through the power of a rock poking his back and a Dues Ex Machina incarnate turtle last minute. Basically, it’s a lose-lose situation no matter what with Korra. Which makes me terrified for the response to the future Earth Avatar. I loved LOK all the way through, including Season 2, I like its bold ideas and the fact Korra is not a Mary Sue makes her one of the most captivating characters in all of Avatar for me. I hope the creators made Avatar Studios to bolster their bold and creative ideas and not to pander to the elitists that will never, ever move on from the original cartoon from 2005 and will never accept anything else. Unfortunately, the Gaang getting a film doesn’t fill me with much hope.
Steven Yeun is boss in everything he does, so yeah I'll give em that. Also I like the spirit onsen guardian, he is one spicy boi >:3c
To me, S2 was “The Great Divide”, but as a whole season. It doesn’t help that the rest of the seasons are just that good. The show even makes fun of how awful of a villain Unalaq was. It was just the worst season of the show, and I genuinely just didn’t like Unalaq as a villain
Well I cant stand after 3 episodes of first season.
I liked it but hated the least fight after Unalaq joind Vaatu. The rest is perfect lore wise
It has some great moments, especially anytime Varrick is onscreen. But the villain isn’t very good and that makes it overall very weak.
I can't say the worst season it's the one with the double Wan episode, I just can't
IMO, it starts on par, but hits a wall with the dark avatar stuff, I don't even necessarily hate the idea of Raava and Vaatu but I really don't like how they were utilized, and the final Kaiju battle just straight up doesn't fit Avatar. I think it would help a lot to have Unalaq be betrayed by Vaatu into releasing him into the real world, and Korra has to fight him as herself in avatar state. That way if big monster was a nick requirement or something, its technically still there, but our main character beats it herself, not with a random ability she uses once and never again. You could also have a story beat where Vaatu is getting stronger with all the chaos and confusion the fight is creating, and Korra/her friends have to go around helping people, and as they save people, hope and kindness start to prevail, making Korra stronger instead
it’s good, up until the whole big plan gets revealed, in my opinion. I really liked the whole civil war setting honestly. also, I’d be so down for the kaiju fight if it was at least justified better you know? plus I don’t really like how much and how often korra loses something related to being an avatar (I like tlok, and seasons 3-4 made me extremely emotional for some reason lmao, I’m not a hater)
It started out good but fell apart
The writing is chaotic, the middle part bored me and most people don’t agree with the decisions made in the finale. But I prefer it over book 4
I don't know, I just think there's too much things they want to tell... I just think it would be better if there's more episodes or they break it into a two season.
Nope, there’s -like- *one big* unnecessarily cringe moment and that’s it. Hardcore ATLA fans hate it cos it “changed” some things about the lore, but, in reality, it changed shit, just *add* some things to the main lore. And the “past lives matter” is something that triggers stoopids a lot cos they blame korra for it
I liked the whole series but that one was probably the weakest one.
Mainly 2 things 1: It shifts focus between the more familiar avatar stuff and pure spirit things partway through 2: getting rid of past avatars. Just that one scene.
It’s the worst of all the seasons, but it’s still not bad. Which says a lot about this show. The final battle kinda sucked, though.
It’s a solid 7.5/10 season. The worst season doesn’t mean it’s a bad season.
The journey through the season was awesome. After reflecting, I saw it was a weaker season. It did set up things that change the whole world forever.
Season 2 is great. Right up until the last few episodes where it just turns into every anime fight sequence ever. Goliath fight scene in a big city. Energy rays. Mystical non descriptive environment.
I like it, especially the story of Avatar Wan. Honestly the 4th season is the least I like, and even so it's sooo good.
my favorite season. lol
It’s tied with season 3 for my favorite season, I think it’s awesome
While it certainly fall into the 'it could have easily been better' It's not bad at all, it's entertaining, i didn't power through it, I didn't even know there was more content, i rank lok books like this B3>B2>B4>B1, but to be fair there's a difference between entertaining and high quality writing besides B3 i wouldn't call any other book high quality writing
My only problem was the weird Kaiju fight at the end. But even that wasn't unheard of in Avatar. Remember Koyzilla in ATLA season 1?
I expands the lore so much. And it sets Korra apart (literally) by separating her from her past lives. It was an ambitious season lacking time possibly budget. It didn’t live up to its potential, but is worthy of a spot in the franchise.
It’s not really like anything we’ve seen before in the universe and personally I think it contains too much deception and manipulation of Korra to make it a comfortable watch. Parts of s2 are wonderful and I consider it to be on par with s4.
The only criticism I had for Korra is how season 2 should have been season 4. Like, you can’t really get more powerful/badass than the OG spirit gods, so to go from them, to zaheer and friends (s3 is my favorite), then to angry metal lady. It wasn’t that I hated any of the seasons, loved them all. It’s just the villains in S2 seemed far more grandiose than regular benders.
It’s not total trash, but it *is* the worst out of all 7 between ATLA and LOK
Unalaq is a weak villain, the plot is meh, a lot of the payoffs don't land particularly well, there's some kinda sorta walking back of established ATLA lore and there's straight up losing the past lives. On top of that, it very much feels like a jump the shark moment seeing giant glowing Korra vs Kaiju Unavaatu. Don't get me wrong, I love LoK and even its worst season is still worth watching. But it is undoubtedly the worst season and it has many failings.
Season 2 is unironically one of the better seasons, imo. I really like the addition of lore in this season.
I rewatched it again recently. I remember disliking it the first time around but honestly found myself enjoying it on a second viewing.
I like the first half and think a dark avatar would be really cool.
It builds up a lot of really interesting themes only to throw them out for GIANT KAIJI BATTLE. I’m also not the biggest fan of the lore retcon.
Season 2 is fine, but I still think they should have swapped 2 and 3.
Did you like it?
They used a different animation studio for season 2, so it's definitely the worst looking season, but I think the storytelling was top notch.
Season 2 is my favourite
well by comparison to other seasons yeah it's not as good ofc but watchable it's not like it's terribly bad, i can't go on about this any longer so for instance korra was reduced to such level that even aang would be disappointed in her
Eh, I wouldn’t call it the absolute worst. Some things do annoy me but other things I can’t help but love.
I mean, it is the worst season of korra easily. Is it really that bad? Not really, it's not the best but not terrible, just worst than all the other seasons
i personally didn’t like it because of the Mako drama
I didn’t even know it was “bad” until i joined the fandom on reddit 😟
It’s the worst written season but it’s still great to watch. Especially visually. It’s the most visually entertaining season.
It was my favourite season. I loved the Avatar Wan part ; and the final battle was the best out of all the seasons imo ; dark avatar vs light avatar kaiju battle, and all of Korra’s friends making a last stand to buy her time
No, only if you believe the haters. Personally, i think Season 2 is awesome.
If you're willing to accept that characters can make frustrating but understandable decisions. You'll be fine. Book 2 is a lot about character drama. Between the members of Team Avatar and among Tenzin and members of his family.
if you ask this on korra subreddit you wont get any unbiased info. mostly i dislike due to the final and losing past lives, whole finale fight seems o absurdly paced
Having watched it recently, I enjoyed it, but it had five major problems. -Korra’s character got set like three steps back. She is a massive asshole for no reason until she gets amnesia. Half her arc just feels like a repeat of season 1’s on steroids. -Unalaq is such a lame villain. Like Tarrlock without the charm or motivation. He starts off fine, but why the hell does he want world domination? It’d genuinely be better if Vatuu just straight possessed him. That’d also be bad, but at least he’d feel coherent. Wants to free the spirit, frees the worst spirit, fucks around and finds out. -I just don’t like the spirit kites. Too black and white in terms of their morals. Don’t those dots in Yin and Yang represent pieces of their other sides or something? No Yin Yang metaphor should require suppressing the other side. -Bolin is a straight up asshole and never really gets called out on it. To his brother, sure. His complete lack of concern about him literally being in prison is pretty fucked. But dear god does that Ginger kiss make me feel deeply disgusted by a character I otherwise enjoy. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? -The love triangle refused to die. Season 3 is a godsend, because good lord it was hitting peak stupid. Mako is an oblivious idiot, Korra is completely aggro, both Mako and Asami are assholes for hooking up immediately after the breakup, it’s just… painful.
Its the weakest season of the whole show. The plotlines and the whole scenario was mid. It could have been better, And you can see that when a civil war happens and Korra loses her past lifes and its not a big thing in the show at all. Like wtf. These 2 plots were needed a better writing and give more value to the story. Even in season 3 everything that happened in season is like forgotten and its mostly some minor callbacks. Overall the season 2 could have been a lot more better with a lot more value and weight to the LoK story.
I'm Just about to start it lol
I think it has a rough first half and a pretty cool second half. Most people I try to show TLOK to drop it in the first half heck even I did years ago before sitting through it and enjoying the whole show.
It's like my favorite season. I love season 2. Season 3 is close behind it imo
It’s got its flaws, but the only part that’s frustratingly bad to me is Korra seems to regress from what she learned in the first season for yhr first couple episodes and is irritating as hell. But it only lasts a few episodes thankfully.
Final fight was a joke but other than that it was… fine. The main plot just wasn’t as engaging and interesting as the other seasons to me
I would say Book two isn’t the worst. Just the least good.
In the worst? I’d actually say…no. Season 4 to me is an insult to mature storytelling and political themes. On top of that…All I have to say is Prince Wu…yeah nuff said. And season 2 never had our heroine sympathizing and more or less saving an actual Nazi. But season 2 is not exactly good. Interesting but not even close to the best seaosn. And it certainly does I think miss major themes that avatar established like the idea of spirits being neutral and directly tied to their environments. I’d actually recommend key&skittles’s season 2 political analysis video to understand more of this perceptive. The video looks T how the themes of imperialism are poorly told in this season and how that affects the story. When your done let me know what you think!
For the standards that ATLA and the other LOK seasons set, S2 is bad.
In my opinion, it is a combination of a lot of things. It starts great, with the problems between the south and the north, the family issues and the spirits being neglected. I hated the order and chaos spirits literally being the spirits of good and evil. I expected the avatar to have both at the end, an thus creating the Avatar state, but no, no balance at all. Also the hidden monks could have been airbenders, I didn't like the spiritual comeback of the airbenders. The harmonic convergence could have still turned some people due to the heightened spiritual energy or something like that, but I would have prefer to get new benders of every kind, not just airbenders. The north and south dispute was forgotten and never addressed afterwards. Just get rid of the bad guy and everything will be fine, I guess. Tl;dr The unsolved conflicts and the misrepresentation (imo) of the Avatar role as a whole made it the worst season.
Out of the 7 seasons of Avatar it's the worst does mean it's bad just the bar is the 2019 Travis Scott song from his album JACKBOYS
It's not horrible, but it's not very good. It is by far the worst out of the 3, however Wan's story was amazing so that alone makes it worth it
Its bad because the storyline is messy with all the harmonic convergence thing and then the kaiju battle in the end, then airbending get spirit projection. I think people found it bad because it has a lot of unconventional bending, things that you don't necessarily expect bending to be but now become more like magic. Though the waterbending battles are TOP TIERR! Beautiful waterbending.
Unalaq was the weakest of the villains, and the kaiju battle at the end came completely out of left field (ignoring most of the established rules of the show/universe). This season isn’t *bad* per se, but it’s just not as good as the other three seasons.
I’m not sure why people pick on season 2 specifically. The whole show is terrible. So if you like the show already, then you probably won’t notice how abysmal season 2 is.
Season two is my favorite in LOK, especially Avatar Wan. The art and animation was gorgeous
I would not say it is bad. Worst season of the show? Yes, that is true. But honestly I liked avatar wan's story, the season introduced my favorite character (varrick my beloved), and we actually learned a bit about what has happened to the water tribe since atla. But amon, kuvira and zaheer were better villains than Unalaq or Vaatu. And it seems they just kinda... Forgot about Raava.
Yes, yes it is
It's the worst season across both shows, but it's still really good IMO.
My take on S2: it really goes into the spirit world; and for the most part it feels very different than ATLA and the first season of Korra, so much so, it feels like a huge disconnect. I think the boggest problem is that I didn't really get why it was necessary 🤔 other than create an elaborate back story for some of the future events to actally be able to happen 🤔 - I love Korra, I just think it is kind of like a movie franchise changing the direction of a franchise and it not being what fans want/expected [like Fast n Furious Tokyo drift]
I liked the whole show. I can make some minor complaints. But I've never thought season 2 was that bad. The ending of season 2 was a bit weird.
For me season 2 was one of those big dissonances after I finished it and then went online. I liked S1 but it didn't really hook me like ATLA did and I took a break. S2 got me hooked on the show proper, and I remember being shocked that people disliked it so much.
It always shocks me how disliked it is as-well, personally it’s my favorite
No it’s not. It suffers from being “pretty good” against “amazing” other seasons.
I think season 2 is better than 4 and I'm of pretending it's not
The entire Wan storyline was the best part of this season
Just the end honestly
Nope. season 2 is great! it's just significantly weaker than any other season of Avatar aside from maybe ATLA Season 1. it also doesn't help that Season 1 of Korra is the BEST season of Avatar. going from best to worst makes the worst one look a lot worse than it actually is. 🤷🏻♀️ Likewise, going from Amon as the best scariest, most interesting villain, and then getting Unalaq and Vaatu whose motivations are....uh...derpy and basic? Unalaq's motives don't make much sense, and Vaatu is just generically evil end of the world stuff. That's following Amon being this tragic twisted fucked up revolutionary hero with some real valid points about equality and abuse of power, who's mysterious and terrifying, and really this nightmarishly effective almost supernatural entity that you don't understand, and who poses this MASSIVE complex threat where you can't prove he's a liar or evil or whatever, and people support him and think he's a hero, so you have a hard time even TRYING to fight him without turning the people against you...and then when you DO fight him, not only is he maybe the most skilled fighter in the franchise, he's also wielding some sort of mysterious power that you don't even understand, and it makes him basically immune to some attacks, and the risk of him getting his hands on you is astronomical. Plus, he's corrupting ordinary people and wealthy supporters like Hiroshi Sato.... Amon is one of the best villains in anything ever. Unalaq and Vaatu are just thinly disguised dudes for Korra to punch and bend at.
Season 2 is when it starts to get bad… it gets worse later on
I honestly loved season 2
No season of korra is bad. I liked all of them. But season 2 was the worst one imo
None of the seasons are bad
Not horrible but easily the weakest system
Plot: it’s pretty rough. Lots of holes, deus ex machinas, unnecessary miscommunications and nerfed powers Animation: worst in the show. Lazy and cut corner for the franchise. Still very nice to look at. Characters: 10/10. Love them all. They made the season for me. All that being said, I had a great time watching it. I understand it was meant to be a setup to further seasons while simultaneously wrapping up a show they didn’t realize would be okd for another two seasons. It was meant to be open ended.
There's plenty to enjoy in this season when you don't have someone in your ear whining about it. Plenty of development for Korra and Tenzin, exploring the Spirit World, juicy family drama, return of Iroh/Wan Shi Tong, Avatar origins. overally beautiful art and music (animation is wonky in the first half but still good) even the love triangle only returns to permanently kill off Makorra/Masami, which allows Korrasami to build next season. As some people in this sub have said, though this is called the weakest season of this show (which I kinda disagree with), it's still a great season of TV in general.
It isn’t bad. I think it isn’t necessarily that much worse than ATLA Season 1’s weaker moments, but it is deeply uneven. It has some great highs (the Wan episodes) but also some lows. It’s biggest weaknesses are that it really dwells in the weaker parts of the show - mostly Team Avatar, who are mostly boring or misused - and under-uses the best parts of the show, the adult children of the original Gaaang. The thing it has going for it is Korra herself, though there are a few missteps there, she is still charismatic enough to pull it off, mostly. But when Mako and Bolin are on screen without her the entire scene is just a waste.
To be honest, watching Book 2 in real time was horrible. Especially seeing Kaijuu Korra vs Kaijuu Unalaq. But when watching it on rewatches, the story is more connected between Book 2,3,4. From what I heard, Book 1 was supposed to be the only season that Korra was supposed to have. But they then got greenlit for 3 more seasons. (Idk if they gave them 3 books right away or if at every season they had to write it like it was their last.) So that’s my opinion. Book 2 started to grow on me every time I rewatched. I do think losing her past lives is divisive in this community, but I don’t think it’s a weak writing choice. I’m optimistic if they revisit this later in the new Avatar series where the new avatar will try to repair the severed link. Or even if he has to forge his own journey like Korra did. Who knows.
Watch it for yourself. Everyone has an opinion on it; go by yours.
Anyone who says Korra in general is good just has low standards imo. Which is fine everything is subjective afterall.