The Beifong sisters.
Per Su's suggestion, Korra begins to learn metalbending. Opal admits her reluctance to leave Zaofu due to her obligations to her family while Bolin deals with his fear of learning how to bend metal. Meanwhile, Lin faces her past during an acupuncture session, forcing her to relive the circumstances which led to her and Su's strained relationship. After a cathartic release of her repressed emotions, Lin makes amends with her sister as well as Opal, who she convinces to travel to the Northern Air Temple to train with Tenzin. Elsewhere, Zaheer and his group determine Korra's whereabouts shortly after escaping Republic City, deducing that she was under the Metal Clan's protection in Zaofu.
Tropes:
- Awesome, but Impractical: Varrick invents a suit of armor that has tremendous magnetic abilities, but is very cumbersome and forces the wearer into an awkward marching gait, and has to be plugged into a power socket with a massive cable.
- Berserk Button: Suyin suggests Tenzin dumped Lin because of her attitude. Lin does not take it well.
- Brutal Honesty: When Suyin wonders what her life would have been like if she hadn't left Republic City, Lin bluntly says that she would be in jail.
- Casting Gag: Young Suyin is voiced by Jessie Flower, who was Toph in the original series.
- Character Development:
- Suyin has gotten a lot off-screen, as we see what a Spoiled Brat she was as a teen.
- Lin finally (begins to) get over her anger at her sister.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends with Zaheer meditating and somehow finding out that Korra is with the Metal Clan at Zaofu.
- Continuity Nod:
- Suyin starts out the episode saying how Lin shouldn't have yelled at Opal like she did at the end of the previous episode.
- Varrick is still working on a project based on magnets.
- Korra mentions the events of the previous seasons when explaining why she hasn't learned to metalbend yet.
- The sculpture shows up again, getting smashed up in the fight between Suyin and Lin. Ironically, Huan decides it actually looks better smashed up.
- Young Suyin is sent away from Republic City to stay with Toph's parents. While they weren't seen again after Toph's debut episode in the show, Toph's father shows up in The Rift, and they try again to have a relationship.
- A Day in the Limelight: For Lin and her family.
- Defeat Means Friendship: After Lin is defeated by Suyin, perhaps realizing that Suyin's ability to curb-stomp her in her weakened state shows that her younger sister has truly grown up and all of those bottled up feelings Lin had are gone after the fight and she appears to be much calmer.
- Every Scar Has a Story: Lin got her cheek scar when Suyin cut the metal cable Lin was using to restrain her, causing it to fly back and hit Lin.
- Extra-ore-dinary: The sub-plot has Korra learning to metalbend from Suyin. Bolin also wants to learn, but it takes some coaxing because he's worried he can't pick it up since he's been trying unsuccessfully for years and believes the conventional wisdom that only 1 in a 100 earthbenders has the potential to metalbend.
- Famous for Being First: When Suyin learns that Korra never learned how to metalbend, she offers to train her. Korra manages metalbending pretty easily, much to Bolin's chagrin. At the end of Korra's training, Suyin responds thusly.Suyin: Congratulations, you're the first metalbending Avatar.
- Fell Off the Back of a Truck: In a flashback, when Lin asks where Su and her friends got a hold of all sorts of suspicious contraband, they use this trope word for word.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: This was how Su and Lin were when they were young, and it's how Lin believes they still are, despite all the evidence that Su has become responsible too, in her own way.
- From a Certain Point of View: Suyin summarizing to Korra about hers and Lin's childhood in the previous episode becomes this with the knowledge that she not only was a juvenile delinquent but also scarred her sister while being a Getaway Driver.
- Getaway Driver:
- Ming-Hua drives the van out of the city after the delivery driver they kidnapped escapes.
- On a lesser note there was Suyin in her Teen Rebel years.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: Lin's attempt to take on Suyin is this. She has just mentally and physically worn herself out and is in a rage over her negative epiphany. Their fight is over in a matter of seconds as Suyin does not break a sweat in fending off Lin while Lin is clearly struggling to block whenever she counters and gets swiftly knocked back a distance away. By the time Opal stopped the fight, Suyin is still standing pretty tall and only minorly tired while Lin soon passes out, leaving Suyin as the victor anyway.
- Instant Expert: It only takes Korra a few minutes before she begins metalbending and by the end of the afternoon she's able to make more complex shapes out of the metal, a fact that depresses Bolin who has tried most of his life to metalbend but has never been able to do so.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Although Lin is a Jerkass, the flashbacks reveal that Suyin didn't do so much as apologize for slashing her sister in the face while acting as a Getaway Driver for known criminals, even if said slashing was an accident. Suyin was committing a crime, and her only punishment was temporary exile to her grandparents. Lin chose the law over family, but she had a commitment to her job and to stopping the robbery.
- Jerkass Realization: Suyin maybe has one when Opal asks why they're fighting and trying to hurt each other, and Lin faints. It's only then that she swallows her pride and arrogance to apologize to Lin, several decades after the scarring.
- Karma Houdini: Lin believes that Suyin was one, with Toph sending her younger daughter to her parents. It's debatable how severe a punishment this was, given how Toph's family tends to be.
- Lampshade Hanging: When Suyin comments on the fact that Korra can't metalbend, Korra lampshades how busy the last few months were.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Suyin and Lin have an epic brawl. Korra even wonders briefly if she should stop them but Bolin tells her that siblings fighting each other "is all part of the healing process."
- My God, What Have I Done?:
- Suyin's face after Lin is hit by the cut wire certainly conveys this trope, though in the next scene, after the initial shock and getting arrested she seems to have gotten over it.
- Apparently, Toph's guilt over the entire incident is (according to Lin) why she retired from her position as police chief a year later. Lin is hinted to be biased in this matter, though, since Suyin claims she and Toph worked that out years ago (though still only occurring years after the entire incident and Suyin finally getting over herself).
- Never My Fault: Suyin after Lin arrested her refuses to take any blame for going around with thieves and driving the getaway car.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Toph tearing up Suyin's arrest and exiling her was The Last Straw in estranging Lin, to the point that Lin refused to speak to either her mother or her sister for decades. And it ended up being All for Nothing since Toph ended up retiring a year later, something that didn't improve Lin's mood on the situation.
- No Sympathy: Lin received none from Toph when put in the position to either arrest her sister or let her get away with a crime, receiving a painful scar in the process. In the present, no-one bothers to ask Lin why she holds a grudge, assuming that she's just a "bitter old woman."
- Not Helping Your Case: With the knowledge that Suyin assaulted a police officer that happened to be her sister, permanently scarring her, and didn't even bother with an apology, it's quite miraculous that Suyin is so arrogant that she assumes that showing she's mellowed over the years would make Lin forgive her. Then when Lin confronts her about this, Suyin then pushes her Berserk Button about Tenzin.
- Parental Substitute: Heavily implied. Teenage Lin acts as Suyin's dad, being the disciplinarian of the family and the one who notices that something is wrong. In the scene where Toph rips up Suyin's file, Toph and Lin act like parents feuding over how to discipline their kid.
- Poor Communication Kills: Suyin and Toph talked out their issues years ago, but because Lin wanted nothing to do with her sister, she didn't get the closure they did.
- Properly Paranoid: While she was ill from the pins, Lin suspects Zaofu isn't protected and Aiwei tells her there's nothing wrong. Considering that the episode ends with Zaheer finding out that Korra is in Zaofu it's implied that the city is nowhere near safe enough for the Avatar.
- Resolved Noodle Incident: How Lin got the scar on her right cheek is finally revealed.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: In the flashback, Suyin gets off with a slap on the wrist for crimes that would have landed any ordinary citizen in prison for years, and only because her mother holds a high rank in the police and uses her influence to quash the charges.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Teenage Suyin and Lin, Suyin being a Spoiled Brat and Lin a cop.
- Spoiled Brat: Suyin when she was a kid.
- A Taste of the Lash: Accidental version of this trope; Suyin cuts Lin's metal cable, causing it to whip back and cut her face.
- Took a Level in Kindness: After Taking a Level in Jerkass in the previous episode and after the fight, Lin gets calm, apologizes to Opal for upsetting her earlier, and finally makes up with Suyin.
- Turn in Your Badge: Toph retired a year after covering up her daughter's crime.
- Worf Had the Flu: Lin is beaten quite decisively by Suyin to display just how her younger sister is truly a powerful bender now after having had decades to work on her skills, but it is also justified as she has only just started the process of recovering after finishing the acupuncture treatments and is also emotionally blinded by her anger and disdain.
