Headscratchers / The Legend of Korra - Book Two

Headscratchers pertaining to Book 2 of The Legend of Korra. Return to the index for more.

Why Didn't Wan Tell The Lion Turtle about the Chus' Dickery?

• Why didn't Wan explain to the Lion Turtle why he broke the rule about bringing firebending into the city? I know the probability of it doing anything about the Chus being assholes is slim, but he could have at least explained himself before accepting his exile.
  • His word against theirs. Given Wan is the thief here, why would the lion turtle be inclined to believe him?
  • Asking the other people present to vouch for him, since he led a whole (small) rebellion.
  • You mean the same people who wore masks specifically so they wouldn't expose their identities to the Chus during the heist? You expect them to come clean and admit their part in it—getting punishment from the Chus as well?
  • Also, the Lion Turtles didn't seem to have much interest in the societies on their backs. Their main concern was protecting humans from hostile spirits, not from other humans.
  • We also have no idea that the Chus are doing anything wrong. All they're shown trying to do at any point is defend their store of food from thieves, which isn't exactly vile or unsavory. It's not as if everyone in the city is suffering starvation in contrast; we're only shown that Wan and his housemates are.

Why didn't Aang ever fix the storm over the South Pole?

• Unalaq says that it's been there for a century. Aang was alive and Avataring during part of that time, and as the Avatar was supposed to be fixing spirit-world matters. Why didn't he ever fix that one? Especially if all that had to be done was to open a spirit portal? (Of course, it seems likely not all is as it seems here, Unalaq clearly has an ulterior motive, and there might be very good reasons the storm was left in place.)
  • Spirits didn't start attacking until recently, and who's to say Unalaq didn't try this with Aang? Aang may have rejected him out of hand, or knew better.
  • It seems that Korra broke the seals the first avatar, Wan, placed to keep the spirit world and physical world separate for the most part. Aang would have indeed known better, being in touch with his spiritual side. Unalaq was lying. The corrupted spirits are because Vaatu has gained strength after 10,000 years for the next harmonic convergence.
  • In fact, for all we know, Wan (or some subsequent Avatar) may have created the Everstorm specifically to keep prying eyes away from the portal.
  • The Everstorm is mentioned to have started during the war with the Fire Nation, so yes, we do know that's not what happened.
  • When is that ever stated? Tonraq says it's been there for decades, which places its origin as after the war.

Raava and the Avatar State.

• Back at the start of Book 2 of TLA, Roku states that the Avatar State's glow comes from the combined energies of the past avatars. This is all fine, except Beginnings implies that the glow comes from being in unison with the light spirit Raava - Wan obviously had no avatars before him to combine energies with. Guru Pathik and Aang both say that the Avatar State's power comes from cosmic energies, but Beginnings, again, makes it more seem that fusion with Raava is the source of that. Isn't this a retcon?
  • Nobody said that Roku was all knowing. Second, there's nothing stopping both the unison with Raava and the energies of the past avatars from both contributing to the glow. Third, the spirit of order and harmony doesn't count as a cosmic energy?
  • Seems to me that the Avatar State is about connecting with Raava primarily, but since Raava herself has united with all the past Avatars, uniting with her also unites you with all of them. So, both are true. Both ideas are really just extensions of each other.
  • "Darkness Falls" makes it pretty clear that Raava is indeed what links the Avatar to all of their past lives, as we get to see those links visibly break one-by-one as she gets chipped away by Unalaq's bending.

Spirits' Immortality.

• Are the spirits unkillable? In season 1 of the first show they said the moon and ocean spirit couldn't be killed until they crossed over to the material world. In "Beginnings, during the massive fight between the humans and the spirits it seems all of the spirits survived. However, before that the humans went on hunting raids and were presumably going to eat the cat/deer spirit. It all just seems kind of inconsistent.
  • A couple things: The moon and ocean spirit weren't mortal because they were in the material world, they were mortal because they put themselves in mortal bodies (the fish). And the cat/deer wasn't a spirit. It was just an animal.

What happened in the second season finale?

• What did Korra do exactly in the Time Tree? Did she meditate and borrow the universe's power so she could retrieve Raava and restore balance? Since neither can exist without the other, does that mean Vaatu will return?
  • Yes to both. Energybending is bending cosmic energy, something that the Avatar has shown to be able to do repeatedly. Even without Raava, Korra still kept all her Avatar abilities except the Avatar State and her past lives (as evidenced by airbending herself up the tree ^note every Avatar is basically a Half-Human Hybrid due to Raava, and that doesn't go away when the spirit leaves, as shown in Wan's episode when humans stay mutated by spirits ), so she pulled her spirit out of her body, pumped it up to Kaiju size, and used spirit teleportation to reach Unalaq. As for Vaatu, unlike last time, he was destroyed. And just like how Raava was still inside the Dark Avatar, Vaatu is now inside Korra. It's unclear what, if any, effect that will have. From what Raava said, normally it takes ten thousand years for the defeated spirit to become strong enough to fight again. This was a special case since Raava was pulled out before the Harmonic Convergence was even over.
  • Korra brought forth her spiritual energy which we have already seen a avatar do when Aang took away Ozai's bending. But the reason it was so big and could leave her body was because of the Harmonic Convergence which had been previously stated to increase spiritual energy.
  • That said, what exactly did Jinora do that was so important to Korra's success, besides lending moral support by her presence?
  • You mean when she appeared out of the sky in a flash of light? She undid Vaatu's spirit corruption, brought Raava back to life and gave Korra the power she needed to free Raava from inside Vaatu. How is beyond me. Probably the writers were too lazy to come up with a reasonable way for Korra to win so they just threw in a Deus ex Machina and called it a day.
  • As described below, Jinora just lent Korra her spiritual energy. That gave Korra the strength to undo the spirit corruption, and find Raava—who was not dead, she can't die—and free her. Not that complicated.
  • The way Vaatu claimed she was dead made it seem like it was a Killed Off for Real kind of thing. Not that it's particularly important. Maybe he did mean it in the non-permanent sense, or maybe he was just wrong.
  • He certainly wouldn't be the first (or the last) villain to prematurely declare a good guy dead.
  • The most likely explanation is that he was just flat-out lying.

How did Tenzin know about the Tree of Time but not Vaatu?

• When Korra catches up to Tenzin at the air temple and tells him about Vaatu and Avatar Wan, the tone in Tenzin's voice seemed to indicate that he didn't know about Vaatu up until Korra tells him about her vision. However, in the finale, Tenzin tells Korra that Vaatu's tree prison is the Tree of Time from legend, and how he read that ancient men would meditate under the tree. Why is it that (apparently accurate) stories about the Tree of Time survived to the modern day for Tenzin to study, but no stories about Vaatu or his imprisonment in the Tree?
  • Simple. Tenzin can't go into the spirit world, so any knowledge he would have of anything in it would come from human sources (and Aang, but whether Aang even knew about Vaatu while alive is uncertain), and humans haven't been able to enter the spirit world since Wan sealed Vaatu. There might have been ancient legends about the tree of time that originated before Wan's time (possibly with the proto-Air Nomads) and survived to modern times.

How would Unalaq/Vaatu be able to rule the world when they both seem so different from each other?

• Unalaq and Vaatu were both evil, but it was manifested under different dispositions. Unalaq had many lawful evil tendencies, shown by his holier than though attitude, Knight Templar personality, and desire to implement a new world order where humans and spirits lived under his rule. Vaatu, on the other hand, was more chaotic evil: It looked down on humans, enjoyed corrupting spirits into causing chaos For the Evulz, and wanted to create a world of darkness that would last a thousand years. With such vastly different goals, it's a wonder how they're were able to work together so far, unless one side had more dominance than the other.
  • Both want to destroy civilisation, so they probably could bond over that. More importantly, the fusion completly put them both in alignment, to the point that their goals very explicitly mingled ("It's time to take back the physical world" and "I'll be the one true Avatar" are spoken by both voices in the Dark Avatar form), so what happened is that their fusion created a whole new personality whose goals and motivations are a mix and match of the two.
  • While it wouldn't be a very structured order Unalag could rule over the chaotic world Vaatu creates, there likely wouldn't be much of a chain of command, but in a world with no rules the strongest rule, and Unavaatu would have unquestionably been the strongest.

Why go and fight Unalaq in the Spirit World?

• In the finale, why does Korra enter the Spirit World with her friends to fight Unalaq during Harmonic Convergence, after they fight their way there? Why doesn't she just close the southern portal while in the material world, leaving Unalaq trapped on the other side and unable to force her to do anything, and then reopen it once it's all over and take on Unalaq without risking Vaatu breaking free?
  • Closing the portal could mean abandoning Jinora to death (or Tenzin's group if she closed it after they went after her) as they had no idea how much longer her body could survive without her soul, and Korra would be unlikely to do either even with the world at risk.

Spirit advisers

• In Season 1 it was Korra's lack of spirituality that prevented any of her past lives from contacting her. All Aang could do to warn her about Yakone was to send her a few flashes of imagery whenever she was knocked out. But by the end of the season this is supposedly fixed, with Aang and all the past Avatars appearing before her and bestowing energybending upon her. This was, after all, the Series Fauxnale. But then the second season comes along and it's like they're not even there. Korra never consults them about anything, not even when she's unsure of how to proceed in her duty as Avatar. What gives?
  • I chalk it up to Korra not asking their advise because she feels like she can handle it. Early in book 2 showed Korra had a problem with criticism and wanted to prove to people she could handle it.

Really cut off from past lives?

• Destroying Raava undid Korra's spiritual connection to the past Avatars, but unless that came with a cessation of existence they should be in the Spirit World. Why couldn't they just do a little digging there? Spread the word around to gather in a certain place, and Korra could visit them anytime she wanted.
  • The Spirit World isn't the afterlife. Everyone doesn't end up there, and it's not shown that Avatars end up there, either.
  • Aang shows up to Tenzin in the Spirit World and Roku emerges from water in front of Aang while trying to find Koh in the first show. There's also the flash game tie-in Escape from the Spirit World for Book 2-3, which shows Aang encountering his last four past lives inside the Spirit World. Avatar Kuruk in particular acts as if he's actively hunting down Koh in the Spirit World, so that seems to suggest they do exist in the Spirit World. And before you question the canonicity of the online flash game, Michael Dante DiMartino considers it canon to the plot.
    • The Avatar is the bridge between the physical and spirit world, and they are shown to be able to manifest in the physical world at multiple point, its just easier in the spirit world, but once there souls were disconnected from Raava they would loose that connection and effectively became normal people,and would have passed on to whatever the normal afterlife of the avatar universe is

How did Raava and Vaatu exist at the same time?

• As I understand it, every 10,000 years, the two of them fight during Harmonic Convergence in order to determine which one of them will have a greater influence on the world. This apparently isn't a mandatory thing, as it was believed that the fight would not have to happen if Vaatu were imprisoned at the time, but they definitely fought at least once prior to Wan's time. But if that's the case, then... why are they both in existence for Wan to separate them? Since Vaatu is obviously not ruling over the Earth, then shouldn't he be regenerating inside of Raava, as she would have defeated him during the previous Convergence? Or do they not fight to the death? If so, then how is the winner decided? A tap-out?
  • As I understand it, it wasn't required that there be a winner, just that who was stronger would have the greater influence- Wan came upon the two of them as they were both fighting, after all. As long as they both existed, the battle would continue, and whoever was stronger would have the upper hand. Plus as Raava stated, "Even if I did destroy Vaatu, he would regenerate inside me for the next ten thousand years", which implies it's not so easy to actually destroy him (or her). Perhaps she thought it'd be easier to infinitely keep him in check as she did, and that way neither of them would have special influence over the world.
  • They probably just started fighting or even have been since the last few hours (the former most likely considering the nearby spirits reactions,) since it was Vaatu's time to emerge again and fight Raava.
  • It does not take 10, 000 years for either of them to regenerate.
  • Remember, Vaatu only became more powerful than Raava once Wan split them apart from each other, the implication being that it was something Vaatu couldn't accomplish on his own. We can presume that the display between Raava and Vaatu tussling with each other was one of the final stages of Vaatu reemerging from inside of her.

So who all knew about Wan, Raava/Vaatu, etc.?

• It occurred to me recently during a rewatch of Book 3, that the Red Lotus knew quite a lot about what happened 10,000 years ago when Wan and Raava merged to become the Avatar, defeated Vaatu, and closed the spirit portals. However, Korra didn't know about any of that until her vision quest in "Beginnings", and Tenzin wasn't familiar with the concepts of Vaatu or Harmonic Convergence either. But I would expect that, if the Red Lotus knew about them in such great detail, then the White Lotus would as well, and then I would have expected them to have taught Korra about it when they were guarding her as a child. I can't think of any reason why they would keep it a secret; you would think that they Avatar should know everything there is to know about what exactly they are and why. Heck, there is even a very accurate statue depicting Wan and Raava at the Southern Air Temple, among the other Avatar statues. It seems that there is no concentrated effort to keep the information about 10,000 years ago hidden from the public, so why isn't it common knowledge, with records such as those? Everyone seems to have forgotten about the lion turtles and the true origins of bending, but there are still records of what Wan did.
  • Most likely, the Red Lotus knew about it through Unalaq, who seemed to have had some pre-existing contact with Vaatu, who would have told him all about it.
  • Ten thousand years is a long time and it's entirely probable that there was no need to hide the knowledge from that long ago. It was just plain forgotten because it wasn't relevant to anything. The only part of the knowledge that served anything that could be called a practical purpose was knowing what to do with the Harmonic Convergence but that comes around every ten thousand years and the only person important to that scenario is the Avatar and can do exactly what she did and call up someone who had been there. It's just really, really bad luck that things were as hectic as they were when it came around.

Why isn't Raava Cortana?

• We've clearly seen that Raava can communicate with the Avatar whenever she wants; she talks to Wan constantly, and speaks to Korra after the poison is removed. So why doesn't she do this more often? She could be a very useful source of information, informing them of being the Avatar at a young age, helping them to train, guiding them and providing intel about the spirit world. In fact, with Harmonic Convergence on the way, why didn't she make contact with Korra and say "Yo, so I'm Raava, the Spirit of Light, and there's this Spirit of Evil who's going to show up soon and rek everyone's swag, so we need to start buffing up like NOW." In fact, this dynamic would have been kind of awesome.
  • One could argue that's exactly what she was doing, via past Avatars. As for Korra: As we saw, her connection to the spirits wasn't the greatest even after she came into her full power. Hence, why she had to go on the vision quest to find the Avatar's origins to even hear Raava. Once Korra knows and explicitly connects with her, Raava is a constant presence.
  • The same reason Aang almost always contacted Roku and not Wan, the most recent life seems to be the easiest to communicate with, and Raava is the oldest, she could talk to both Wan and Korra because both of them at that point had no previous lives in the way, just Raava, presumidly unless they devlop some sort of meditation to contact her it will become more difficult for the following few avatars to talk to Raava until none of them do

Korra's bloodline

• We know Tonraq, Korra's father, is a member of the royal family of the Northern Water Tribe, and that the current leaders of the North, Esna and Deska are her cousins. My question is: Is there continuity of bloodline between the North we saw in ATLA and Korra's time? Is Korra of Yue's bloodline? If this has been answered elsewhere, a link would be most welcome.
  • Yue died before she had any children, and it was never mentioned she had any siblings, so it's not likely Tonraq and Unalaq are direct descendants of Arnook (Yue's father). If Arnook had siblings, it's likely Tonraq and Unalaq are descendants of his brother or sister, and they inherited the throne because Arnook's family line had broken with the death of Yue. Though of course it's totally not impossible that Arnook and his wife had a new child (or children) after the death of Yue; we never seen Arnook's wife onscreen, so we don't know whether she's still young enough to be fertile. If Arnook had new children, Tonraq and Unalaq would probably be his grandsons, and Korra would be his great-granddaughter. So it seems quite likely Korra is related to Yue one way or another, even if she's not a direct descendant.
    • It would be unlikely that out of all people from the Water Tribes the Avatar happens to be a blood relative of Yue’s royal family. Unalaq and Tonraq probably became chiefs after it was revealed that Korra was the Avatar.

So will Vaatu be reborn as a good-guy?

• In the season 2 finale Korra was able to defeat Vaatu, just not by killing him. Vaatu and Unalaq tried to outright kill Raava. While Korra used Spiritbending to purify Vaatu like any other angry spirit, he even vanished in a gentle golden light. So does that mean if and when he comes back he won't be a hostile spirit anymore?

Raava and Vaatu's immortality

• It's known that Raava and Vaatu will regenerate within the other if one if killed, but what would happen if both were destroyed one after the other?
  • It's not entirely clear, but considering the fact that Raava and Vaatu are both powerful spirits that have lived more than 'ten thousand lifetimes', even if they were both destroyed, it's doubtful that it'd be permanent. If this occurred, perhaps a single spirit of light and darkness would appear, and at some point, split off into Raava and Vaatu again. Or something similar

What if there was no possibilities for the next Avatar?

• Apparently, the new Avatar is born essentially simultaneously with the death of the previous one. Presumably this is a spiritual thing, not coincidental - the mother goes into labor and gives birth slightly earlier or later than she should have to time it correctly. What if there are no babies being born at that time? With how small the populations of the Air Nomads and Water Tribes are, someone determined enough could kill all pregnant women. What would happen then?
  • Who said the death and birth have to happen at the exact same time? Plus, that would mean that the Avatar spirit essentially body surfs its way to an already existing and soon-to-be-born infant, which doesn't have pleasant implications. It's more likely that when an Avatar dies, their spirit is reincarnated into the next concieved baby.
  • When we saw Roku's memory of his death the memory immediately shifted to Aang being birn when Roku died. That suggests the rebirth is instant. We don't know how souls work in this world, it's possible babies are soulless until they're born or maybe Aang was born because the cosmic energy of the universe knew Roku would die soon and would need a new body for his soul to pass to.

When/Why did the Southern Lights disappear?

• In the episode of the same name, Unalaq says that the Southern Lights/auroras disappeared when the Southern Water Tribe became disconnected from its spiritual roots during the Hundred Years War. However, Korra opening the Southern portal seems to bring them back... but the portal was closed 10,000 years ago by Avatar Wan, long before the Hundred Years War. So why does opening the portal bring back the Lights and clear up the Everstorm, especially when the Northern Lights have been visible for all this time despite their portal also being closed? Is it that the portal being open somehow compensates for the lack of spirituality in the local tribe?
  • I suspect Unalaq was telling a half-true. The spirits were indeed angry that the Southern Tribe had become less spiritual after the Hundred Year War but Unalaq took advantage of this and manipulated Korra into opening the portal.

Discrepancy in the number of Avatars?

• In Beginnings Part One we learn that the first Avatar lived ten thousand years ago. If we presume that the average age of the Avatar is somewhere between 50 and 100 years, that would mean that in ten thousand years there have been 100–200 Avatars. However, in the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode "The Deserter" Avatar Roku tells Jeong Jeong that he has "mastered the elements a thousand times in a thousand lifetimes". Now, it's understandable Roku might exaggerate a bit for effect, but saying there have been 5 to 10 times more Avatars than what the real number is isn't just exaggerating, it's straight-up lying. So how many Avatars have there actually beem between Wan and Korra?
  • Short of the Powers That Be publishing a timeline, there's no way to know. Even if you assume about 100 years for a normal Avatar lifespan, you're going to have those like Wan (who died in battle), Aang (life technically cut short) and Kyoshi (over 200 years old). You can guestimate a number, but there's no way to know for sure. Hell, we don't even know how many years there's been between the Waterbender Avatars (Kuruk and Korra).
  • Chalk it up to a retcon, if you look at any of the pictures that show the spiritual past lives of the Avatar it's clear that during the Last Airbender the number of Avatars was supposed to be a number beyond counting going all the way back to the beginning of human civilization. Now it's true that there is no way of knowing for sure how long the average avatar lives but at least two of them Aang and Kyoshi got well past one hundred as far as how many avatars there were. His hundred years on ice does count in that regard. If the number is as low as one or two hundred Aang could and would have made the time to meet them all.
  • It'd be a little weird, since they talk about it like an actual number, but they presumably picked the arc number "10,000" because in Taoism 10,000 years is used in scriptures as shorthand for an unknowably large amount. When Wan and Raava joined "10,000 years ago" it could be a roundabout way of saying they lived incalculably long ago.
  • How was Roku lying when he said that? I think he just said "thousand" because it sounds more dramatic and impressive than giving an exact number which may or may not be different. It's not like he was giving someone a lesson on the Avatar and intentionally fed them false information. It's just a throwaway line.

Any human can be as powerful as Vaatu?

• In the season 2 finale, Raava has (seemingly) died and Korra's link with her is gone. But Korra is still able to connect to the energies of the universe and turn into a giant spirit capable of fighting Vaatu, and it's explicitly stated that this is not because of her Avatar powers (which she doesn't get back until she saves Raava and reunites with her), but because of her own inner strength. So are we to believe that any human with sufficient inner strength can become as powerful as the mythical, ages-old spirit of chaos and darkness?
  • At the very least a waterbender, but yes, that's the message this battle was trying to convey. Korra was losing only because she was trying to find Raava inside of Una-Vaatu, allowing him to get in a couple of blows. Since one cannot exist without the other, Vaatu is basically undestroyable until Jinora worked her magic and somehow brought Raava back, allowing Korra to destroy Una-Vaatu with the spirit-bending technique. Otherwise it would have been a battle of attrition until Harmonic Convergence went away.
  • Or maybe not. Remember that "Beginnings" showed that humans would retain certain attributes of a spirit who merged with them, even after that spirit left. I don't know if this is what was intended, but Korra was still part-light spirit even after Raava was forced out of her. That may've been what gave her the power to challenge Vaatu on her own.

Why does Lin act like an idiot until episode 11?

• It's pretty clear to the audience from the start that Lu and Gang are either crooked or grossly incompetent detectives, but Lin doesn't get on their case until "Night of a Thousand Stars." And why wouldn't she hear out what Mako had to say? Especially since she was willing to follow up on a lead supplied by the Triple Threats.
  • They're definitely pretty crooked enough to know how to get away with their idiocy or at least hide it from Lin. That's probably how they got to the top, after all, screwing over anyone who got in the way. Lin had no way of knowing that Lu and Gang were keeping evidence about the bombing from her. She can't act on anything she doesn't know about.
  • Half of the problem goes to Mako acting unprofessional and making it harder for him. He walked in on Lin when she had a meeting with her boss. Again when she was interviewing a witness. Mako acted outside his assign role, overstepped his bounds, and muscled in on a case because it involved his friend Asami. Not to mention his breach of protocol with an unsanctioned investigation, illegal sting operation, hiring criminals to run it, and unethical methods like threatening bodily harm to coerce an admission.

How on earth did Lin manage to arrest Varrick so quickly in "Night of a Thousand Stars?"

• 12:30 into the episode, Lin tells her metal-bending cops to secure the president and call for backup. 13:45, Varrick and Zhu Li get up to leave their box seats, and see Lin standing behind them. When Lin first orders her men to spring into action, the film screen the mover is being projected on is to the right; from the viewpoint of Varrick's VIP box the screen is on the left. This means that Varrick's VIP Box and Lin's post were on opposite ends of the stadium, and she still managed to get there in under 75 seconds. I'm sorry, but that stadium is HUGE. How did Lin and her backup manage to get to Varrick that fast, especially when their first concern was securing President Raiko and his wife?
  • Because 75 seconds of screen time does not necessarily equate to 75 seconds of in-universe time.
  • But if the fight really lasted that long, why didn't any of the cops go down to the arena to help Bolin?
  • Because they were busy securing the president.
  • She has to follow up on a lead, and Mako suspected Varrick was behind the earlier attacks. It's possible Lin actually did believe him when he was arrested, but still arrested him because Mako had no evidence that Varrick was evil, and there was clear evidence that Mako was a criminal (the evidence was planted, but there was no way to prove that at that time). Anyway, Lin probably suspected Varrick, but didn't have reason to investigate him until the attack on Raiko.

How does Unalaq get fire, earth, and airbending powers?

• Raava and the Avatar have them specifically because Wan wanted to learn control over more than one element, but humans couldn't carry more than one so Raava collected them for him until he needed them. If Vaatu never visited the Lion Turtles to get the elements, why does fusing with Unalaq give him more elemental powers?
  • He doesn't, and it didn't. Unalaq never uses Earth, Fire, or Air. He only uses water and Vaatu's spirit power.

How was Unalaq going to get fire, earth, and airbending powers?

• Unalaq wants to rise up as the new, Dark Avatar...but one of the things that made the Avatar such a powerful and respectable force in the world was their ability to bend all four elements. As of the Avatar series finale, there's only one Lion Turtle left. Is he simply unconcerned with his inability to bend the other elements?
  • Apparently, since not once did he ever express any desire or plans to bend anything other than water. He doesn't care about being "respectable," he just wants the power that Vaatu offered.

Leaving the spirit portals open

• Let's ignore the fact that Wan had a very good reason to close the two portals, as opposed to Korra, who had no reason at all to keep them open. Shouldn't allowing them to remain open be something the leaders of the world decide on together? She doesn't even tell them about it, basically forcing them to coexist alongside a group of beings who confined humanity to the Lion Turtles the last time they encountered each other. I thought one of the morales of Korra's arc was supposed to be not abusing her powers just because she has them, and yet it seems that's exactly what she's doing here.
  • She is the link between the Spirit World and Physical World. This decision is the Avatar's jurisdiction more than anything else in the series. She wouldn't ask the nations of the world the same reason the Southern Water Tribe doesn't have the Fire Lord make decisions about about it's border policies. It's not their decision. Korra saw that the chaos that plagued human-spirit relations in Wan's time has mulled over, and they can co-exist peacefully. And now that humanity has a better handle on bending, any conflict wouldn't be entirely one sided like it was before.
  • She should consult the world leaders, though, because her decision affects all of them. Her being the Avatar gives her authority, but not absolute power. If the chief of the Water Tribe realized that his people had run out of living space and decided to try relocating them into Fire Nation territory, you can bet he wouldn't be able to move forward with that without consulting the Fire Lord about it first.
  • Korra did NOT abuse her power. The other nations do not dictate what happens to the spirit world. That would be just as bad as the spirits doing it. Yes she doesn't have absolute power but the world leaders do not have any power over spiritual matters. This is not like the Water Tribe / Fire Lord example because that was merely a political manner and as we've seen in Avatar, just because you consult a world leader the Fire Lord doesn't mean said leader's decision is right.
  • While the other nations have no authority over what goes on in the Spirit World, they DO have authority over what goes on in their own world; letting Spirits loose in the material world arguably ends up effecting humanity a lot more than it does the Spirits. Setting aside the idea that Korra, as Avatar, had the absolute right to unify the Spirit World and the Material World at her own discretion, why exactly does she think it's a good idea? We have no evidence that anyone, either Spirit or Human (outside of Unalaq, and he had his own reasons)had any desire for the two planes to merge. Everyone seemed more or less to be getting on fine under the old status quo. All she says on the subject is "Maybe Unalaq was right," and "Maybe Wan was wrong to close the portals," which completely ignores the fact that he closed the portals to keep anyone from trying to free Vaatu. Even with the threat of Vaatu removed, why SHOULD the two planes merge?
  • They're not "merging," any more than your house "merges" with your backyard when you open the door. What Korra is likely thinking is that the world is losing its connection to the spiritual world — that the separation has led to conflict and misunderstanding with the spirits that do crossover. In these types of world, "losing your connection to the spiritual side" is typically a sign of decay or stagnation. She's thinking that if humans and spirits can live together, that will be a better world for everybody.
  • Given that the last time Humans and Spirits were so closely connected Humanity was confined to living on four lion turtles, unless the Spirits' attitude towards humanity has changed significantly, I think Korra's reasoning is sketchy and her actions peremptory.

Concerning Unalaq's rating

• How is it that Unalaq is Hated by All after his death (to the point where even his children don't care). Sure he was a horrible bastard, but so was Ozai, and he still had a bunch of supporters even after being dethroned as shown in the sequel comics, but Unalaq doesn't have any, even in his own tribe? Speaking of his children not caring, why are we meant to see this as a good thing? Even Zuko didn't act that heartless after Ozai's defeat (and he didn't even object to Aang's decision not to kill him).
  • The Fire Nation had undergone generations of indoctrination and their actions had been always described as being for the greater good. Zuko and Azula cared for their father because he'd spent their lives putting up the illusion of a loving father so it was hard for them to process that he wasn't. Unalaq's situation is very different, he was revealed to be a power hungry hypocrite fairly quickly. After engineering a civil war between the Water Tribes just to spite his brother and then becoming the setting's equivalent to Satan nobody is interested in him anymore.

Unalaq's family

• Isn't it a bit of a coincidence that Unalaq is the chief of the Water Tribes and the uncle of avatar Korra?
  • Why does it matter? It seems like Ravaa could choose who to reincarnate as, so "coincidences" are allowed to happen. The last Avatar from the Fire Nation was best friends with the prince of said nation, and if Unalaq hadn't gotten Tonraq exiled to the south, Korra might've ended up being the daughter of the chief rather than his niece.
    • If Ravaa chooses who to reincarnate as, how did she know avatar Roku will end up being best friends with prince Sozin?

Fusing with new Avatars

• Apparently, Raava can only fuse with a human by tapping into the spiritual energy of Harmonic Convergence; that's how she was able to fuse with Wan without killing him, and she has to do the same with Korra after Vaatu splits them apart. In that case, how is she able to fuse with each new child that becomes the Avatar, when the convergence only happens every 10,000 years?
  • Because, due to reincarnation, those new humans ARE Wan whom she's already bound to. Just think of it as being bonded to the soul rather than the flesh.

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