We last saw Korra at the edge of a cliff, clearly contemplating suicide. She sat down, crying. Then a man in airbender robes walks over. Korra tells Tenzin to go away, but it's not Tenzin; it's Aang. Of course, she's going to get help from her past lives to come to terms with her problem. Aang's going to offer counseling and advice that's going to help her overcome her hopelessness and make her realize that she can get past this.
In two minutes. That could happen in two minutes. Please?
Aang declares that she connected with her "spiritual self." Korra asks how, which is a damn good question. Aang speaks the page quote. Other Avatars appear behind him.
Then...
He puts his thumb on her forehead and his other thumb on her chest, and he glows. Then she enters the Avatar State, the music swells into the Avatar Theme, and her bending is restored.
FUCK! FUCK THIS FUCKING FUCK TO FUCK!! FUCK!!!!!!!!
Mako shows up, surprised that she's bending. Well, now that she's magically healed herself, she instantly gets over being de-bended and says that she loves him. And she kisses him. It gets better, as we cut to Korra laying on hands to Lin, who can now earthbend again. Wonderful. Tenzin congratulates Korra on gaining magical powers with neither effort nor explanation that make the last 12 episodes entirely pointless. And then he calls her "Avatar Korra."
Mercifully, the episode ends before it can defile the series even further.
Thank you, Endgame. Thank you for taking every good thing you did for 42 minutes and shitting all over it. No, scratch that; this shits on almost every good aspect of the entire show and Korra's character as a whole. Oh, and for the pièce de résistance, you re-used the same Deus ex Machina you used to kill the ending of your last show.
Oh energybending; everything you touch, you destroy...
Cheap and Lazy
I really shouldn't have to explain in detail why this is stupid. It's prima facie
stupid. It comes right out of nowhere; it happens for no character, plot, or thematic reason; it damages Korra's character development and growth; and it utterly destroys any of the tension around Amon's powers that the entire plotline of the show has been built around.
It overturns 9 whole episodes where we've been led to believe that Amon's de-bending is permanent. They spent time and effort beating us over the head with how it could not be undone. They had entire scenes dedicated to showing how Amon's debending was permanent. Hell, one could say that the character of Tahno existed for the sole purpose of driving this point home.
Thus, by saying that Korra gets to have magical fairy powers to make it all go away, it completely destroys the entire concept. This retroactively ruins the tension of Korra ever being captured by him. In fact, Korra was never in any danger from Amon at all. If she was ever de-bended, all she would have to do is feel hopeless and then poof: Aang would appear to make it all better.
Lin's heroic sacrifice? She willingly gave up her bending, and possibly her life, all to save Tenzin's family. She threw herself at the Equalists to buy time for their escape. And when Amon offered her a deal to save her bending, she wasn't even tempted. She willingly sacrificed her bending for them. And that entire sequence is utterly shat upon by this ending. She's fine because Avatar Korra gets to undo it, like it never happened at all.
A sacrifice stops being a sacrifice when you don't have to give anything up. Yes, she didn't know that at the time, but it still damages the moment because she never has to live with the consequences of what she's lost. It cheapens what she did and destroys any of the innumerable narrative consequences of this act.
Nobody knows that Amon is dead. This means that, while the Equalists were defeated (off-screen), the threat of Amon's return lingers over Republic City. Well, it would if Korra couldn't just lay on hands over anyone he de-bended. So no, there's nothing to fear from Amon anymore.
And then there's the worst part: the fact that this reward comes without any form of effort on the part of our protagonist. Like everything else Korra has gained, like her airbending against Amon, Korra did nothing to deserve it. The absolute most you could say is that she didn't immediately kill herself, but is that really the standard for receiving the ability to make the entire season's plot meaningless?
She was broken, then she magically got fixed. Aang's "explanation" about being open to change is nothing more than bullshit. Yes, being beaten down makes you more open to change. But it doesn't cause change by itself; you still have to actively choose that change. And Korra never did.
Some have suggested that Aang's "explanation" is based on the life of Gautama Buddha, one of the founders of Buddhism. I call bullshit on that. Why? Because at the end of the day, Buddha choose to turn to the spiritual to escape his lowest point. That was a deliberate choice on his part. Korra never choose anything. And we know this because she was surprised that Aang was there; if she'd chosen it, if she had called on her past lives and spiritual self deliberately, she wouldn't have been surprised by it.
Not to mention the fact that Yakone had the same opportunity to change that Korra does (though without magical Aang to take his problems away). But he didn't. Beneath the new life he led, he was still the same asshole he always was. So I'm not seeing much evidence of the inherent transformative power of loss. Once he had the chance to regain what he lost, he reverted to what he was. At least Tarrlok's change came mainly when he realized that Amon was Noatak, that their father's legacy had infected both of them.
So clearly there is supposed to be a choice, but we never got to see Korra make hers. There is a reason why we have that "Show Don't Tell" precept; you can't just say that someone has changed and therefore resolve the plot. We need to see it or it didn't happen. If you don't show it, it feels cheap and unearned.
Plus, we only get about 1.5 minutes of the post-change Korra, and she doesn't seem different from the pre-change Korra. She bowed to Lin slightly, and that's about it. So if she was open to change... what the hell was that change besides getting a superpower?
In order for this reward to be earned, she would have had to actually change. Korra previously expressed that everything wouldn't be fine. That she wasn't the Avatar anymore. And it is that attitude that needed to change.
Korra has always felt that she needed to be a bender; she defined herself by her bending. Her fear of Amon is rooted in that: she would be "nothing" without her bending. She believes that she must be a bender in order to be of any value whatsoever. Without her bending, she disassociates herself from everyone. The way she defines herself by bending is Korra's fundamental character flaw, the ultimate source of virtually all of her character issues.*
Once her bending is restored, she instantly reconnects with everyone and is 100% fine. She learns nothing from this experience. She never recognises the failing of defining herself solely by her bending. She never recognizes the idea that she has value beyond her bending. It would be like the Beast from Beauty and the Beast getting to turn human after he had a good cry about how unfair the witch had been to take his human form away. There's a reason why none of the many versions of the fairy tale end that way; he has to earn his reward.
In order to deserve having her bending restored, she needed to see that she still had worth. She needed to accept that this had happened and not consider herself "nothing" as her nightmare of Amon put it. In short, she needs to willingly choose to continue to be Avatar Korra, to be herself, despite her current weakness.
She must choose to not be destroyed. Because Amon could only break her body; it is Korra who chooses to allow him to break her spirit.
Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the reason why Korra was so poor spiritually weak was because her spirit and her body were always one and the same to her. Her spirit was linked to her body, so she could never free it enough to connect spiritually. And the same goes for her airbending; air is the element of freedom, and without that spiritual freedom, she couldn't achieve airbending.*
But when Katara pronounced her sentence, a life without her other three forms of bending? For Korra, her spirit broke when her body did. And therefore, to earn her bending's restoration, to earn this energybending, she needed to fully separate her spirit from her body. She had to prove that while her flesh might fail, her spirit never would. If she was strong enough to survive what Amon did, to continue to be the Avatar despite her handicap, then she will have proven herself worthy of having her bending restored via Deus Ex Machina*. Quite frankly, this is something that needs an entire episode at least to do right. You could build a whole season-long arc around this level of character growth.
Or you could do what the writers do here and just skip all of that character stuff.
Also, one minor point: Unfortunate Implications. How does our female protagonist save the day? By sitting down and crying until a man comes along and gives her the solution*. So... yeah.
Attack and Defense
In my Metroid: Other M review, I took time out to explain how the most common and powerful defense of the unspeakable horror of the Ridley scene (aka: the PTSD defense) fundamentally didn't work. Similarly, there are people who actually defend this bullshit. But they do it with an even more elaborate ploy: the Chakra defense.
The Chakra Defense is quite simple and incredibly intricate. The claim is that Legend of Korra, as a whole, has been about Korra opening up her chakras one at a time. Thus here at the end, she opens up the final chakra and assumes the Avatar State. Once that's activated, she naturally can get energy bending because shut up she can, which can undo Amon's damage because shut up it can.
Now, I could (and will) go though and show how the Chakra Defense doesn't actually apply by showing that Korra hasn't opened some chakras. However, as with my Other M coverage, I will again accept this argument as it stands. I will, for the purposes of this part of the discussion, concede that Korra went through experiences that opened her chakras, and that here at the end, she opened the last one. I will also concede the "shut up it can" parts I mentioned earlier. I will instead focus on what I focused on in my Other M coverage. Namely, this question:
Is this explanation actually supported by through development in the story, or is it a post facto ass-pull by people desperately trying to justify this garbage ending of a show they like?
What I mean by that is this. There are many justifications for this that could fit the facts of the show. To know which are explanations that the authors intended and which are just someone's post facto justification, we need to look at more than just whether it fits the facts. We need to see if other elements of the work support that explanation. If they don't, then it's likely a justification rather than what was intended by the writers.
Now, one could say that there are a lot of facts in the Chakra Defense, and that they all fit, as I willingly conceded. That's true, but there are also some missing corroborations that are very important, which if they were present would be indicative of the willful application of this by the authors. And most importantly, the lack of them strongly suggests that it is a coincidence, not willful intent. The biggest and most damning is this:
The Legend of Korra, for its entire 12 episode run, never once mentions chakras.
Chakras are not mentioned. The specific chakras and their various blockages are not mentioned. The fact that unlocking these chakras provides access to the Avatar State is not mentioned.
Without any of this knowledge, one would have absolutely no idea whatsoever that Korra was unlocking her chakras. Therefore, if the writers were trying to say that this is what was happening, then one of two things happened in the writer's room. They either expected everyone to have seen ATLA, or they fail at writing.
And quite frankly, both of those are the same thing. Yes, this is a sequel series, set in the same universe and so forth, but it is not the same as a fourth season of ATLA. It has its own name, its own setting, its own characters, its own unique story and storytelling style. It is as different as Goldeneye is from Casino Royale.
Take The Avengers film. While there is a lot that you won't necessarily understand if you didn't watch the 4-5 movies that preceded it, the film does take time out to actually explain the setting. It doesn't cover everything (where the tesseract came from, how Tony Stark got the armor, etc), but this is all background stuff. Every character gets enough of a character introduction that you will still have a basic understanding of what's going on without having seen the preceding films. You know you're coming into the middle of something, but you still get it.
The Legend of Korra, while it is a continuation, needs to be able to stand on its own. Any writer understands this. That's why the show doesn't dive into the backstory of the original series. That's why it focuses on new characters; so that it can stand on its own.
So, if the writers intended for this explanation to fit, then the writers must also provide the actual information necessary for understanding it. If they didn't, then it is very likely that this explanation is not what they were aiming for.
Let's consider that the writers did assume that everyone who would watch LOK has seen ATLA themselves and therefore know this. Here is how chakras were used in ATLA. In The Guru, the titular Guru tells Aang that he can access the Avatar State by essentially meeting 7 psychological challenges. OK, that sounds important; what episode was The Guru?
Episode 39. Of 61. This is a plot point that comes up (with no buildup or foreshadowing, mind you) almost two-thirds of the way through the entire series. And the only ramifications outside of The Guru are that Aang locked one of his chakras and can't access the Avatar State until he chooses to let attachment go. How long does that matter? Until The Crossroads of Destiny; the very next episode. Does Aang's confrontation with these 7 psychological ills matter after this point?
No, they do not. Aang is not a different character after this (well, not because of unlocking his chakras). It doesn't promote growth or any new behavior from him. Indeed, the psychological means of unlocking chakras are made irrelevant, because Azula physically blocks his chakra with lightning. And that only matters until he gets it physically unblocked, at which point he's completely fine and can access the Avatar State (despite clearly holding on to his attachment to Katara).
So we are talking about a plot point that was used for two episodes and was never mentioned again. Oh sure, it's there as part of the backstory of ATLA. And there was discussion of chakras on occasion (though only to point out that Azula blocked one of his), but not of the 7 psychological challenges needed to open them.
It is part of the world, true enough. But you can't tell me that it was important to ATLA's plot, character, or themes. It has no character effects, as previously pointed out. The only real plot-relevant effect of it is that Aang was able to access the Avatar State at will during the Azula fight, but he had to take a moment to meditate in order to do it, which gave Azula the chance to swing around and Avada Kedavra him when he'd finished. The exact mechanism by which this was done is ultimately irrelevant. And there is no thematic relevance.
In short, the whole 7 psychological challenges part was never emphasized. Yes, it was a plot point, but only of two episodes. And even then, it was one of four plots happening in The Guru, and quite frankly it was probably the weakest plot in that episode (due to how easily Aang conquered each "challenge"). It only mattered for ~3% of the show's total running time, and that's being generous. We spent more time learning how firebending worked.
Given these facts, what are the chances that a casual fan of ATLA actually remembers these 7 challenges well enough to recognize that Korra is facing and surpassing each one? Unless they're hardcore fans of pseudo-asian-philosophical stuff, not very likely. Most people probably remembered that there were chakras, that they corresponded to emotions, and that you need to open them all to access the Avatar State. The specific emotions and in which order are not exactly common knowledge. Not without looking it up.
In short, even ATLA fans needed a refresher course. Or to put it another way, I wrote a 1.3 MegaByte dissertation on ATLA that covered every episode and included several lengthy treatises and diatribes on various aspects of the series. And even I needed someone to explicitly point out the whole chakra thing. I don't consider myself an expert on the show, but I've studied it more than a lot of fans.
Now, you might say that the writers wanted you to discover it. That it was an added bonus, so they didn't have to explicitly point it out. This fails for one very important reason:
Without the Chakra Defense, this ending is one of the purest examples of a Deus Ex Machina: bullshit whipped directly out of the writer's asshole to resolve the plot. If no explanation is quickly forthcoming, then it is shitty writing. You need the Chakra Defense, and you need it quickly, or else the ending is shite.
At the end of the day, it is not my job as an audience member to find a justification for your bullshit plot elements. The idea isn't that we sit around and accept some bullshit until we solve the Riddle of the Sphinx and figure out how it makes sense. If you're going to put forth some proposition that looks like Deus Ex Machina, it's your responsibility as the writer to explain why it isn't. And that explanation must be presented quickly and in a clear and reasonable manor.
They did not provide the information needed for this Chakra Defense to be a clear and reasonable explanation.
So either this isn't the explanation they intended (and therefore it is just Fanwank), or the writers failed at their jobs by not properly explaining it within the context of the story.
And there's an even more damning point: even with the Chakra Defense, everything I said about how this ending negatively impacts the series remains true. It's still unearned, because Korra doesn't do anything to open that last chakra except feel sad and suicidal. It still makes all of Amon's threat retroactively pointless. It still renders Lin's sacrifice meaningless. Etc. So even if the writers wanted it this way, they were wrong to do so, because of all of the negative consequences of providing a quick and easy escape hatch.
So even if the Chakra Defense were the intended justification, the ending still represents a complete betrayal of the entire show.
The Unopened Chakras
So the Chakra Defense is bogus even when we accept that it's tenants are correct. But what about when we examine what it actually says? So let's go through it, chakra by chakra. I'll be quoting Pathik's description of each chakra, so there can be no waffling or dithering about what these challenges are.
First chakra... when did she open that? I'm serious.
It certainly wasn't when Korra was crying on Tenzin. There's a difference between accepting that you're afraid (and thus overcoming her pride and ego) and dealing with fear. When did she "surrender those fears?"
The portrayal of Korra's fear of Amon was so inconsistent over the series that it's hard to say whether she dealt with it at all. Indeed, her hopelessness at losing her bending comes from the same source as her fear: the idea that she is nothing without her bending. Until she dealt with that, I would say that her fear isn't going anywhere.
And don't say that it's when she decides to attack Amon in the finale, because that came right out of nowhere*. The moment when she overcame her fear needed to work like Aang's moment in The Guru: you needed to see that she was afraid, but then see her choose to release her fear. And there is no such moment in this series.
She could have spoken with Mako at some point and admitted that she was afraid of Amon, but her gut instincts kept telling her to go fight him. He would say that he trusts her to make the decision, either way; then she could tell the others the next day that she was going to face him. We'd see that she was afraid, but she overcame it and went with her instincts. And while the instinct thing would come out of nowhere, it would at least serve character needs by giving her some impetus to deal with her fear.
But no, we needed more time with Iroh Man.
Really, I could stop here, since you need to open all of them, but I'll keep going.
Some have suggested that this was covered when she "overcome her guilt when she got over the love triangle by forgiveness and got them through into the final." I might buy that, assuming that we're talking about her guilt over effectively leading Bolin on and then kissing Mako behind his back.
First... that's a pretty petty thing to be weighed down spiritually by. Aang's guilt was in his abandoning the world and accidentally physically injuring people. Is this really something worthy of gaining access to the ultimate power? Second, this guilt lasts all of one day. Aang had been living with his guilt for months.
Some have suggested that it was her guilt over lashing out at Tenzin in A Leaf in the Wind. Yeah, maybe, but again that's hardly burdensome guilt. Especially considering how fast she got past it. Indeed, I'm not really sure Korra does guilt, for the most part. I don't know, maybe not every person has every chakra blocked.
I'm willing to give this as pass.
Korra's shame was her fear. Which she dealt with quite well at the end of The Voice in the Night. Really, if any chakra was opened, it was this one.
Some have suggested "the Air Chakra was obviously opened by love, and I mean Mako." Sorry, but that's not how it works. The love has to overcome grief, and Korra proved pretty conclusively in the last episode that this very much did not happen. She rejected Mako's love (and everyone else's) in favor of her grief over her loss of bending.
You might try to say that her admission later and the big kiss make it work. But no, that was after she got her bending back. You can't retroactively open a chakra.
Generally, people try to handwave this one away by saying that she uncovered Tarrlok and Amon's identities, as well as pierced the lie surrounding his movement, and revealed Hiroshi. Wrong!
Uncovering other peoples lies does not lead to enlightenment. Guru Pathik was pretty clear that this chakra is about "The ones we tell ourselves."
The closest you'll get to this would be when Korra was putting on a brave front while secretly terrified by Amon. However, that's very unsatisfying narrativistically speaking, since it gives Korra a chakra two-fer. And other than her fear, she never really lied to herself about anything.
OK, so what illusions did Korra confront and peer through; what insight did she gain? Some have suggested that exposing Amon did it. Again, that's not how it works; she didn't peer through any illusions by exposing his lie.
Others suggest that it was when she realized that she could airbend. But that doesn't work because we are afforded no reason for why it happened. So it's not really that Korra was being deceived by something and she overcame it. She didn't use some keen insight into the situation to realize her airbending was available. It just happened.
So no, not buying it.
No. Just no.
Korra was not letting go of attachments out of some intellectual exercise in achieving enlightenment, or via an understanding of how attachments can slow her down, or whatever. Korra was not "letting go" at all; she was giving up. There's a difference.
Letting go would be coming to terms with what had happened. It would be accepting that these things happened and letting the pain of her loss flow out of her life. It would be Korra releasing her desires to be a bender, her need to identify herself as such. Those are the things that held her back spiritually, and those were the things that blocked her Thought Chakra.
She didn't let them go; she had them taken away. She still wanted them; she was still attached to them. She just didn't have them. It's the difference between Zuko's apparent Heel–Face Turn towards the end of season 2 and his actual Heel Face Turn in season 3. In the first, he had simply given up getting what he wanted, and only that because it was impossible to obtain. Therefore, once it became possible again, he took the opportunity. In the second, he actively stopped wanting it despite having it, because he saw that what he wanted was wrong.
So let's have a count of chakras here. 4 are definitely unopened, and it only takes one to upend this entire defense. However, I want to offer another quote from that page:
That's not how an argument works. You set up premises and then provide evidence and reasoning that lead from the premises to the conclusion. You can't just say that, well, it's difficult to pinpoint all of the points of evidence, but it all still works.
If you cannot pinpoint the specific moments when a particular chakra was opened, then you cannot know that this particular chakra was opened at all. And if you don't know that each one of them was opened, then you have no right to claim that she opened them all. And if she didn't open them all, then you cannot claim that she mastered the Avatar State through them. That's what your argument sets out to prove, and since your argument is missing key pieces of evidence, your argument falls apart entirely.
Thus, the ending is shown as the Deus ex Machina bullshit Bad Writing that it so obviously is.
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