Dethroning Moment / Avatar: The Last Airbender

Given this show's reputation as one of the best Nickelodeon series ever made and its sequel being considered just as great, it is hardly surprising that there will be times when fans wish that these moments will be bended out of existence.

Keep in mind:

• Sign your entries
• One moment per folder to a troper. If multiple entries are signed to the same troper the more recent one will be cut.
• Moments only, no "just everything he said," or "This entire show," or "This entire series" entries.
• No contesting entries. This is subjective and the entry is their opinion.
• No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
• Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment of Suck.invoked
• No Real Life examples, including Executive Meddling. It only invites a flame war.
• No ALLCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.

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Avatar: the Last Airbender

Season One:

• Loekman 3: How Haru got imprisoned in "Imprisoned". He got arrested because the old man he saved sells him out to the Fire Nation. In a cynical setting like Witcher this makes complete sense but in an idealistic setting like Avatar it felt out of place and mean-spirited. Wouldn't it have been simpler for the old man to disappear and have some Jerkass witnessed it and have that person be the one to sell him out? At least with "Zuko Alone", it can be easily explained by the fact that the Firebenders have invaded their continent and led the deaths of their fellow villagers but the old man has absolutely no excuse for him to do so nor do we even have any indication of his true nature in the first place. And to put the cherry on top, the old man is a complete Karma Houdini because he completely vanishes from the story after this scene.
• "The Great Divide"
  • Albertosaurus: As much as I adore the show, this episode makes me cringe. No meaningful character development or worldbuilding (the two tribes are never even mentioned again) and a childish story that is a far cry from what this show is capable of. I suppose it's meant to show Aang's role as mediator and peacemaker, but the story he tells to stop the tribes from fighting is ridiculous. Yes, I know he made it up, but the idea that anyone would believe it is preposterous - stories can change in the telling, but for a story to change this dramatically in just one hundred years is insane. The best thing one can say about this episode is that it is never brought up again. (Aside from a short Discontinuity Nod in "The Ember Island Players".)
  • Redmess: Seconded, because this episode's moral seems to go against the characters of not just Aang, but everyone involved who just accepts his lie as okay. Especially Aang, who is always so concerned with honesty, should not have been able to lie so easily, and then gloat about it to his friends as well.
• "Bato of the Water Tribe":
  • Wildstar93: Hey, I also like the show, but the episode turned into one of my least favorite episodes ever. It's the part when Aang hides the map of Hakoda from Sokka and Katara. Yeah, Aang sure did something stupid like that, and Sokka does have a point about Aang going behind their backs in hiding the map, but do he and Katara talk to Aang some more? Nope. Instead, Sokka basically abandons him, telling him to go to the Northern Water Tribe all on his own. And I know family's important to him and Katara, and Sokka has a reason to be upset, but was abandoning Aang like that necessary? Now every time I watch this episode on the DVD, I always skip that part.
  • Knight9910: Agreed, it is my least favorite episode and when I watch the series on Netflix, it's the only episode that I skip over. Sure, "The Great Divide" and "The Painted Lady" were stupid and meaningless but they're at worst moderately obnoxious, while this episode is actively painful to watch. Sure, hiding the map was a dick move and I can see Katara and Sokka being ticked about it. Still, he only did it because he was afraid he'd be left alone. You know, alone? Like he already kind of is? Because he's the last of his tribe and everyone he ever knew and cared about is dead except for one guy? Seriously, show a little @#%$ing courtesy, you selfish... yeah... The point is, what he did was perfectly understandable, even if it was definitely the wrong thing to do. But, you know, even if it hadn't been understandable, he still deserved the benefit of the doubt. I mean he'd been Katara and Sokka's friend for 14 episodes at that point and saved both of their lives almost that many times (9 times at least, by my count). He'd earned a little trust. Instead, they just toss him and his friendship into the garbage on a whim. Honestly, as much as I hate to admit it the characters being jerks to each other for half-ass reasons was kind of a theme in the first season, with episodes like "Jet", "The Great Divide", and "The Fortune Teller", but this episode was by far the absolute worst about it, because unlike all those other episodes the offending parties in this one are never proven wrong or made to apologize. I'm a very forgiving person myself, but at the very least Katara and Sokka owed Aang one damn good apology for that mess.
  • KashimaKitty: It also gets my DMoS rating for one particular reason. Before Aang receives the map, we see quite clearly, blatantly, that he's being ignored repeatedly by Sokka and Katara. If it was simply Aang being insecure this episode would be more forgiven, but it's quite clear that Aang has a justified reason for thinking that his friends would leave him to go find their father. Combine that with the above problems and you have a conflict that would be less out of place on a show like Family Guy.
  • Purple Eyed Guma: Agreed, mainly for reasons already stated. Sokka and Katara have a right to be mad at Aang, yes, but choosing to abandon their quest helping this lost boy, the last of his kind, because of this one mistake, is extremely petty and out of character. Aang even humbly admits to his mistake, and again, was being ignored the whole episode. This is also June's only appearance until the series finale, and it got utterly wasted.
• Eagal: Gotta be "The Waterbending Master" when the Gaang went to the North and Pakku refused to teach Katara. Now, I concur with Katara's position at least 95%; no legit reason for women to be excluded, and Katara in particular has immense natural talent that any master could see, and Pakku was being a huge jerkoff about it... but honestly, when Katara attacked Pakku after he refused her challenge to a duel, that's what lost her those extra points. Violence Is The Only Answer much?

Season Two:

• Silverblade 2 Honestly, I’d rather rewatch "The Great Divide" three times in a row than rewatch "Avatar Day" one more time. Thought I already dislike the episode for bringing the possibility of the Avatar having past questionable deeds that would have draw some well deserved hatred then turning it into a ponderous comedy, I especially hate it for having the worst Out-of-Character Moment in the entire show. Long story short: Aang is put on a trial by jerkass villagers because his predecessor Avatar Kyoshi may have killed their leader Chin the Conqueror. It turns out that the court doesn’t care about evidences and only Kyoshi’s intervention reveals that she indeed indirectly caused his death in order to protect her village. The judge announces that Aang is guilty and must spin the Wheel of Punishment. Instead of running for his life as one can expect, Aang just says “I said I would face justice, so I will” and spins the wheel while Sokka and Katara do nothing to stop him and just stand there. After the wheel stops on “boiled in oil”, all three of them just bear an Oh, Crap! expression. Yes, Aang was willing to sacrifice both his life and the fate of the world, to fulfill an arbitrary decision and ignored the fact that Kyoshi acted out of self defence. He would have boiled in oil, had the Rough Rhinos not attack the village just in time. All of this is Played for Laughs.
• Vanilla Lime: I know "Zuko Alone" is one of the most beloved Avatar episodes, and I actually liked it too... up until the ending because of how the villagers reacted to Zuko being revealed as the prince of the Fire Nation. I understand that the village and the Fire Nation don't have the best history with each other and they wouldn't praise him instantly, but the fact that not a single villager shows an ounce of sorrow or personal conflict about Zuko getting thrown out in their faces, body language or dialogue pissed me off. You'd think they'd be a bit more emotional about the guy who risked his life to help them. But nope, he's Fire Nation, just exile him with zero regrets. I hope those ungrateful pricks got their village burned to the ground after that.
• BrightLight: "The Chase". Simply because Toph was an unhelpful brat who wouldn't pitch in with teamwork even when Azula and her cronies are closing in on Team Avatar. Nope, Toph has gotta hang back while everyone else is getting frantic. And if she's so competent, why does she only point out that it's Appa's shedding that's giving Team Avatar's position away when it's nearly too late to do something about it? Then Toph continues to refuse any responsibility, and picks fights with Katara and Aang. To top it all off, Toph never learns that she has to be responsible - and Iroh and Sokka give her their support. What the hell were the writers trying to shove down our throats here? To be a spoiled, lazy, stuck-up brat like Toph? Honestly, "The Chase" is hands-down the worst episode out of the entire show for me. Worse than "The Ember Island Players". Worse than "The Great Divide". And Toph is overrated and pretty much the worst member of Team Avatar. Even Zuko ends up nicer than her by the time the show ends. Screw Toph and screw this episode!
• PsychicSlayerNatrium: My pick goes to "The Desert" Now desert locations generally bug me, not only do most of them suffer from dragging on for way too long, and generally suffering from being almost exactly the same (IE: The characters are whining about how thirsty they are!) But what really set me off was when Aang blamed Toph for not being able to save Appa. That's right, he expected the same girl who was trying to support the collapsing library just one episode ago, to be able to fend off a bunch of Sandbenders! Not only did this paint Aang as a whiny kid, but it nearly ruined the character for me. Worst of all, Aang never apologizes for it and gets off completely scot free!
• Troper/Hodor! Now I love the Avatar franchise with all my heart, but the one episode that really pisses me off is "Appa's Lost Days" more than any other episode. The reason, it's all through Appa's point of view and serves little to no purpose to the plot. Of all the characters they could have developed, they chose a sky bison, but thats only a little bit of the reason it pisses me off. The only thing part of the episode that isn't padding and actually serves the plot is when Appa is found by the Kyoshi Warriors, who are then attacked by Azula and her gang, forcing Appa to flee. It's important because later it's revealed that Azula defeated them and was posing as the Kyoshi Warriors. So why I am pissed is because of one question: Why couldn't this episode be focused on Suki and her warriors. Of all the members of the Team Avatar, Suki was the least developed. With this episode they could have had a chance to develop these characters and even done some world building with them. The ending could have even just been when Suki finds Appa and they have to fight Azula. Without spoiling the reveal, they could have really made Suki a cool character and ended the episode the same as the scene from this episode!! But no, the writers decided a sky bison was more important than a human member of team Avatar and important figure in Sokka's life. Suki was a character who had so much potential and this episode is a slap in her face.

Season Three:

• Scabbard: For me, it was "The Painted Lady" hands down; and honestly, I can't believe more people don't hate this episode. It is just "Imprisoned" and "The Great Divide" with a splash of "Jet" but lacking any sort of depreciating humor, actual moral lesson, or any ambiguity that made those episodes work. At least "The Great Divide" showed a rare opportunity for the Avatar to play peacemaker between two groups even if it did fail and it did make me laugh at least once; "The Painted Lady" has, without a doubt, the most obnoxious character in the entire franchise who just has a really tacky split-personality schtick that they use to milk some really lame anime reactions from. Unlike "Imprisoned" where we were shown the plight of Haru's town and how much the people had been spiritually broken, and where Katara only succeeded because she was friends with the still optimistic son of the Earthbenders' leader; here, Katara is a preachy, self righteous brat who sabotages the Gaang's mission to be on time for the invasion to help a bunch of idiots who willingly stay in their polluted village, even when knowing that doing so is hurting them- the villagers just sit around suffering. She even has the gall to get all uppity with Sokka for being supposedly unfeeling (Aang even treats him like he's in the wrong), even though he is absolutely right when he points out that (a) helping the town is not their job, (b) doing so could endanger their mission, and that (c) ultimately, stopping the Fire Lord would help the town in the long run. But no, Sokka is treated as in the wrong, has to apologize to Katara, and even stands up for her actions in the end. Not only that, but the writers try justifying Katara's actions by having her preach that even though she took care of the town's problems, it's up to them to defend themselves, as if just talking about a moral makes it all right. Not only that, but the titular spirit shows up at the end to thank Katara (presumably the pollution was stopping her) making Katara even more in the right. The fact that Katara's most well known line "No! I will never, ever turn my back on people who need me... " comes from this episode (and isn't even accurate, considering that she was the only one of the Gaang who wanted to ditch Ba Sing Se) just adds salt to my wounds. But the worst part? People used to theorize that the writers would actually show Katara as being in the wrong by publicly appearing as a Waterbender, and that this would leak to the Combustion Man and that this episode would be how he finds the Gaang, and thus, justify the episode's existence and retroactively show Katara's constant heroism as being problematic. Nope, it's in an unrelated event where Katara brushes off Toph's concerns that someone might see Aang (which they do) and this is how they are found.
• terlwyth: The moment in the episode "The Southern Raiders" when Sokka objects to Katara going out to avenge their mother's death and Katara angrily tells him he didn't love her as much. Sokka was a victim of it and Aang has lost far more people and faced far more grief and yet she's got the audacity to ignore both of them, and doesn't even get called out for it.
• Melancholy Utopia: "The Ember Island Players" doesn't even come close to being my favorite episode. But, I can acknowledge a few of its strengths even then (such as Toph's and Zuko's talk, which was sweet). The DMoS for me was the mocking of Zutara in the play. I'm not a shipper of it, and I can accept that the creators do not like it. That far I'm willing to agree. What I can not tolerate however is to trash talk the fans by openly disowning it on the show. It's like when a fan runs up to you to gush how much they love you and you just blow a raspberry in their face. Think about this, Bryke; why do they ship Zutara? Because they love your show, they like to engage in it. It's very rude and arrogant to mock your fans' preferences, even if you don't agree. Stop butting in to their business and just let them enjoy whatever they want. It wasn't going to be canon anyway, so why are you kicking a person who's already down? This made me lose a great deal of respect for Bryke, and from the shitty writing of Legend of Korra, it was gone entirely.
• "Sozin's Comet":
  • JorgeGrive: For me it's the ending. I'll call Avatar one of the great series of the last decade, but I cannot take the ending, nor can I see most of it again. It feels a little too moralizing for such an amazingly dark experience. Don't get me wrong, I can take happy endings, but this one feels rushed. Perhaps Aang refusing to listen 4 past Avatars and common sense was supposed to be messianic but to me it felt like little more than childish vanity, especially since Gyatso was a badass capable of killing as far as we can tell from the crime scene. My dislike comes as well from the off screen liberation of Mai and Ty Lee who along with Zuko were, for me, far more interesting characters. Additionally, the Agni Kai at the end was won by Azula. Once more, Zuko fell directly into her traps and Katara defeated her long ago, so it was sad for me that Zuko was, for one reason or another, never able to completely beat his sister, even when she was having a Villainous Breakdown.
  • Mockery: Aang's avatar state being unblocked by having his back popped. It was explained at the end of the last season that once he began unlocking his chakras, he wouldn't be able to access the Avatar State at all. Word of God clarified that he did not finish cutting emotional ties to Katara before Azula zapped him, and the Ember Island Players illustrated that he certainly hadn't let go of her by then, either.
  • Blazar: The amount of angsting Aang did over the prospect of killing Fire Lord Ozai after the sheer number of nameless, faceless Mooks for whose deaths Aang was directly responsible, and who probably deserved it a lot less than Ozai did. I'm not even counting the ships he wrecked at the North Pole, given that Aang was really not himself at the time, but what about the airships he took down when they were fleeing the Fire Nation, and after he deliberately crashed Ozai's airship, did he honestly expect the crew to survive? Just because it didn't happen on-screen doesn't mean it didn't happen or doesn't count, and just because he didn't personally strike the finishing blow doesn't mean he isn't responsible! Yet just because Ozai is a named character whose face we know, he gets offered mercy while everyone else who had no choice but to follow his orders turns into expendable cannon fodder - some Friend to All Living Things!
  • Ano Sa: This actually was what ruined the ending for me, particularly since the way they did it had it come off as Wangsty precisely because of the fact that large numbers of Mooks definitely died. It suggests that Aang at utter best really has no clue that he's killed them, or that Aang only actually is bothered by killing named characters. It doesn't help that, in many ways, him fighting Ozai at all breaks the intended Aesop that an entirely non-violent solution wouldn't have.
  • Baffle Blend: I had an entirely different issue with the ending — the scene where Aang takes Ozai's bending away just screams "New Powers as the Plot Demands". We didn't get any indication that the Lion Turtle taught him that until a flashback during the very scene it happened, as if the writers were saying, "oh yeah, we forgot to mention this". It arguably gets Justified later in Korra when it's Played for Drama, but in the context of the original series, it's such an Ass Pull.

The Legend of Korra

Season One:

• The Reveal that Amon is actually a bloodbender, or a bender in general, his defeat and how he's treated by his followers afterwards.
  • X Spectre Grey X: Seriously, they took one of the only likeable characters in the series, made him a generic villain who wants to Take Over the World and reveal that he's a character that nobody's ever heard of, whose existence wasn't even foreshadowed in the slightest. And of course, he's defeated by Korra learning to airbend, which is complete bullshit. They spent a few episodes detailing the nature of airbending, but Korra just becomes an Instant Expert out of desperation and nothing else! And since he knew she was the Avatar, why didn't he block it as well?! He had very good arguments as to why he was right, which we even saw, but of course, his followers immediately turn on him after it's revealed he's a bender. Screw the oppression, the guy's a liar! And they didn't even know that he was evil! The grey morality of the series is thrown completely out the window, in favor of some generic guy who dies because apparently the writers thought it was suppose to be the series finale and not the season finale. Still idiotic! If you're gonna raise all these interesting ideas, then at least do something with them! Seriously, horrible bullshit ending that made me want to throw up.
  • Kashima Kitty: Two reasons the S1 Finale was the biggest let-down. First, one of the things that made Amon such a compelling villain is that it's difficult to disagree with his cause. He's going about it in a really extremist way, but we see that Non-Benders are indeed oppressed and shunned by a society that favors bending. So to have Amon turn out to just be some waterbender who's bitter about his abusive father cheapens the significance of what Amon stood for. Second, when Amon is exposed as a fraud... suddenly the entire Equalist cause is disbanded? Everyone just gives up on their beliefs that they're regarded as second class citizens just because their leader was a bender? The Lieutenant could have at least been shown to still be out there, assuming the role of the new leader as a possible sequel-hook.
  • Mewlettucerush: I generally love LOK but the attempted redemption of Tarrlock in the season finale I disliked like dude, I can understand you had an awful past but that doesn't excuse that you were a manipulative douchebag that arrested nonbenders for no reason, bloodbended and kidnapped the avatar and lied about it and later bloodbended more people when it was found out and now despite the fact he's a terrible person we are supposed to feel sorry for him, what the fuck?
  • Pistols At Dawn: This. The ending ruined Amon and all of the great grey morality up til then. It was so bad I couldn't bring myself to watch anymore of the show after that episode, even though I loved the original series and the rest of season one. It would have been cool if Amon were revealed to be a bender who really believed in the Equalist cause, but no, generic villain. Blow him up.
  • Cailleach: Agreed with all the above, and in addition, the main reason I found this arc to be so interesting was the idea that a non-bender was capable of going toe-to-toe with the Avatar. Amon being a powerful bloodbender cheapened this. The reason Korra couldn't beat him wasn't because she was too reliant on bending, allowing him to outsmart her through other means. It was just because he was a more powerful waterbender than she was. Then it became just another brute force vs. brute force battle, and further hammered in the idea that a nonbender could never hold their own against a powerful bender, which was the complete opposite of the moral I expected to come out of the Equalist arc

Season Two:

• The relationships are problematic in general.
  • GamerSlyRatchet: The abusive relationship between Eska and Bolin. She was clearly abusing him physically and mentally, yet this is completely played for laughs. Not to mention we're supposed to cheer for them when they nearly get together near the end and be heartbroken when they do not. Just sickening to watch.
    • Strejda: What really kills it for me, is the Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other moment. That is just plain gross.
  • Shadow 200: His brother is no better. How about Mako taking advantage of Korra's amnesia? After the two break up and he goes back to Asami as a rebound and when Korra suffers amnesia, Mako dumps Asami in a heartbeat again and takes advantage of her and claims he's her boyfriend and the fights between them never happened. And these are the Protagonists? No wonder I'm an Equalist Fan and preferred Amon.
  • Blazar: The treatment of the relationship between Bolin and Ginger. One of the things I really loved about Avatar: The Last Airbender was that it actually addressed issues of gender equality without getting Anvilicious about it—in Avatar, female characters were treated as people rather than prizes for the men, and weren't afraid to remind anyone who thought otherwise that they could kick just as much ass as their male companions. Meanwhile, in Korra, a character who's supposed to be the Nice Guy not only forces a kiss on an unwilling woman who explicitly tells him "no" and insists that she must have liked it, he learns absolutely nothing about respect or boundaries and is ultimately rewarded by the narrative for his sleazy sexual harassment. Seriously? Korra might take place after Avatar, but it's as if the values have moved backward by a good 50 years.
  • Sunchet: Just to make things even worse, other character also shows sign of abusive behavior: Lin Fong said she trashed Tenzin's house after he broke up with her. And lets remember, she's suppose to be completely sane and positive character. To see such disgusting trope show up in Avatar of all places, show that works so hard to portray women as equal to men... It's just repugnant.
    • Raust BD: While the series as a whole is amazing, that one moment in Season 2 Sunchet mentioned above was one of the dumbest and most offensive things I have ever heard in any show I like. That one line utterly destroys Lin as a character, because it implies that she, when she was old enough for the reason for Tenzin and her to break up to be irreconcilable differences about whether or not to start a family, when they were old enough for Tenzin moving on to date Pema to not be extremely creepy or illegal, in other words, when Lin was a grown adult at the very least in her late 20s and almost assuredly already a police officer, her response to Tenzin breaking up with her was to go over to his house and go on a berserk rampage, trashing all of his stuff with metalbending. Words do not begin to describe how utterly terrifying and horrible that image is, and it's utterly irreconcilable with the Lin Beifong we know and love. Such a person, if there is any justice whatsoever in the Avatarverse, should have been fired from the police force and permanently barred from it at the very least. Whoever wrote that horrendous line has such a terrifyingly skewed perception of female perpetration of domestic violence that it defies belief.
• K 2 Misfit I love the series as a whole to death and obviously there was a whole laundry list of problems with Season 2, but the Retcon to the Avatar’s origin in “Beginnings” really left a bad taste in my mouth. Until that special, the canon seemed to be that the Avatar was the spirit of the Earth that was largely benevolent yet could be vengeful without being reined in by a human host/form to also make it relate to people, which fit with the Eastern philosophy. Yet in Beginnings, they introduce a Light Is Good / Dark Is Evil dynamic where, as opposed to the Yin-Yang where both sides are extremes and it’s up to the Avatar to balance them out, they use the dirt-common Western Good vs. Evil trope expected from a show far beneath this one. Energybending was certainly an ugly Ass Pull in the original series instead of letting Ozai die by failing to properly redirect lightning by it going into his heart, but it made sense as the original, pure form of bending that was harder to use compared to the element derivatives yet despite how it appeared in both the original series and even was a key factor in “Air,” it somehow doesn’t exist, is never talked about and instead, fire is Wan’s original element before he goes turtle-hopping, which also reveals the Broken Aesop of the theme of people being connected since every bender lived on their own turtles like they were other planets. It didn’t kill my interest in the overall show, but it’s a season I’ve largely erased from my memory and was so relieved when “Change” came out and fixed the messes of the past two seasons.

Season Three

• Ecojosh1: In the original series, there are plenty of non-waterbenders who are part of the Water Tribes, non-earthbenders who are part of the Earth Kingdom, and non-firebenders who are part of the Fire Nation. In this series, there are Air Acolytes, non-airbenders who have adopted Air Nomad culture as their own. I saw them as non-airbenders who are part of the Air Nation. When people throughout the world develop airbending powers in the third season, the heroes see it as a chance to rebuild the Air Nation. What about the Air Acolytes? Apparently, they don't matter. Throughout the season, I expected the heroes to appreciate the Air Acolytes more and realize the Air Nation has already been rebuilt, but it never happens. In the Air Nation, your contribution to society is measured entirely by whether or not you have magic powers.
• onpon4: For me, the series truly went downhill when Korra asserted that Anarchy Is Chaos, and then Zaheer just... agreed with her, and said that "chaos is the natural order". Really? That's his alternative perspective? Probably the weakest and most unbelievable character motivation I've ever seen.

Season Four

• CoCage: The episode Operation Bei-Fong made me stop caring about the Spirits altogether. They claim that asking for help makes Korra like Kuvira. What?! Not only does this makes a pointless "Not So Different" Remark between two characters that doesn't make any sense, but the Spirits comes off as such big cowards, that they make characters like fucking Starscream and Silvia Chrystel look braver by comparison. I thought the whole point at the end season 3 and beginning of season 4 was that humans and spirits finally got along as whole? If not, what fucking gives?! Why are they running away? Dumb-asses, if Korra and her allies had failed, what was going to stop Kuvira from harvesting more spirit vines and cause destruction on humans or spirits alike. As much as I like season 4, it's problems are side characters that act really stupid, sit around, and do nothing, but make things worse for everyone. They might as well be helping the villains at this point. The Spirits, and Suyin Bei-Fong^note Toph for being a neglectful mother that played favorites with her kids too, but I can only put in one entry for the matter, are Designated Heroes and not worth rooting for or sympathizing with. They're hypocritical twats who won't get involved, unless things are going on in their own backyard. Oh, and Korra had a point of the Spirits helping Vaatu, regardless if it was mind control or not (which is quickly thrown to the wayside and under minded). Wan Shi Tong helped voluntarily and he didn't care about the consequences at all. Writers, I hate the Can't Argue with Elves crap and forced Green Aesop/Humans Are the Real Monsters when things are done this poorly. That shit didn't fly with Shaman King (original manga) and James Cameron's Avatar, what makes you think you can get away with it.
• Jaydude 1992: Toph discovering in Book 4 that Korra still had trace amounts of mercury in her. Traces that Suyin - despite being Toph's daughter and good enough at metalbending to build a whole city based around it - somehow failed to notice. It comes off as Suyin being screwed over just to make Toph look good, as if the creators were trying to invoke Nostalgia Filter. The fact that Toph's already Unintentionally Unsympathetic from her questionable parenting really doesn't help. And the best part? Removing the mercury itself did nothing; the main point of the scene in question was to show Korra overcoming her fear of her old enemies, something that Toph could have helped with without mercury being a factor. All in all, a pointless act done to make Toph look awesome - as if we didn't already know she was - that made her look like a Creator's Pet, done at the expense of the current generations of characters.
• Troper/benthelame: The Moment that made me dislike LOK was the episode in which all of the Avatar's past lives are destroyed down to the very first one. Korra isn't really an avatar anymore. Aang was able to draw from the knowledge he gained during his previous lives and the implications were nothing short of fantastic but even assuming that Korra will still reincarnate and the chain has been restarted rather than completely destroyed, Korra really isn't the best Avatar to draw advice from IMO.
• Julia 1984: I lost the respect I gained for this series when Zaheer successfully helps Korra overcome the trauma he himself put her through in "Beyond the Wilds." That's like saying, if a woman was raped by a highly-renowned, successful psychologist or therapist, it would actually be helpful and effective if she went to him for Exposure Therapy to help her heal! He brutalized this girl and has the gall to tell her how she should be strong and better now... and the story lets him succeed! If she confronted her attacker in prison and left, that would be perfectly realistic. If he genuinely felt remorse for what he put her through and wanted to atone for his actions, it would be... slightly better. But he feels no guilt, no remorse, for what he did to her (only disappointment that it didn't achieve the greater good he envisioned — the act of torturing a girl to death itself, he doesn't regret at all nor pretend to), and yet submitting to him successfully helps her heal; even if that was what they both wanted, there's no way that realistically could have worked. The fact that he — her attacker — continues the season tradition of telling Korra to stop whining and just get over what he put her through could be considered hypocritical and evil... if the episode and outcome of the scene didn't validate everything he says! It's the most unrealistic scene in the series, and the most disgusting, sickening, horrifying display of blaming the victim I've ever seen in fiction. If being poisoned and nearly suffocated hurt her, it's her fault for being weak, not his fault for doing it — she's wrong to blame him, she needs to be lectured and taught not to feel pain, and he's allowed to give her one of her most effective lessons on that.
• Catmuto: There are quite a few things I don't like about The Legend of Korra, but I think my big DMoS is how the shipping-war, which felt dragged out through majority of the series, was resolved with Korra hooking up with her best friend Asami. It felt completely out of nowhere for me, was not properly built up or foreshadowed and ultimately came across like the creators just wanted to say 'Yeah, we have a bisexual/lesbian heroine' and be patted on the back for it.
  • Melancholy Utopia: Seconded. I'm not a big fan of LGBT being forced into a cartoon because it feels more like a political statement than anything else - but this moment took the cake, no question. I could've taken it with a pinch of salt if there had been a realistic build-up to them getting together, but there was none, because they had originally planned for there to be no final couples. Doesn't that say a lot about the writers' attitude towards the subject? "Hey, let's throw in some politically correct bullshit while we're at it, that will win people over.", "Excellent idea!" It was a really cheap and greedy way of pandering to the LGBT fanbase. At least Steven Universe (Though I personally don't see the characters as lesbians, I see them as space rocks with no clarified gender) handled this with more dignity and less obnoxious attention-grabbing crud. Also, as icing on the cake, what does people now remember about LoK? "That show ending with the lesbians", not as a sequel to the original series. Way to dig your own grave, Bryke.