For years it has been heavily debated amongst both fans and critics of “The Legend of Korra” whether or not it stands up to its predecessor and when coming to its flaws what caused them to begin with. Its been mostly argued that the shorter seasons hurt the writing the most.
What I believe to be the main problem is what led to many of the other problems, that would be that much of “The Legend of Korra” didn’t utilize politics in the plot, characters and world building properly, in an entertaining way or even at all. This lead to several missed opportunities.
I’m not a fan of politics at all, what I am a fan of is good writing. Politics in media is rarely used to actually challenge your viewpoints or to develop the story, it is mostly just propaganda.
The one positive thing I can say is that the plots weren’t used as blatant propaganda trying to bully you into agreeing with the writer's view points, however use of politics were still not as compelling as they could have been.
Most of the politics in ATLA were short, to the point and mainly used as a backdrop. Everything the characters did was in self defense against the government or in spite of the government, not because of it. This is also why season 3 and 4 worked so well for LOK.
When politics not just in LOK, but in the comics in between show had become central to the plot the characters in their new positions made things happen far too easily. This made conflict often feel artificially planted in or resolved. The biggest complaint about “The Promise” was that Zuko completely lost all the progress he made throughout the show as soon as he became the Fire Lord.
The biggest problem with Season 1 of LOK is that as far the audience has seen, either everyone in the new team avatar all share the same viewpoints or don’t even have views on the occurring events. That’s not realistic nor is it compelling. The toxic nature of the politics could have been used to develop the characters better and show how they handled disagreements in the group.
Here are some scenarios that could have happened:
Korra’s relationship with Mako and Bolin could have been complicated by politics instead of a love triangle. When Korra joined Tarrlok’s task force, Bolin was shown to be frustrated and disappointed that Korra wasn’t showing up for practice as often as she used to. This is what should have put strain on the team, on a dating subplot. Korra should have been further chastised by her friends for not falling threw on committing to the team.
Speaking of Tarrlok and the cops, I have to address the elephant in the room that LOK awkwardly snuck past, that being police brutality. While there was the scene with Tarrlok arresting a large number of innocent non-benders, season 1 didn’t commentate on this issue past this.
Given Mako became a police officer in season 2, he could have expressed his desire to become a cop in season 1, but Korra who had a bad run in with the cops could have objected to this.
Come on admit it, the metal bending police went way overboard when arresting Korra in the first episode, even if she did destroy a part of someone’s property.
Asami could have been sympathetic towards the Equalists at first given her own mother was killed by fire benders, Asami may have argued at first that Amon was only taking away that bending from criminals until she saw that Amon wants to take away everyone’s bending.
Asami also dated Mako who is a fire-bender in spite of what one fire bender did to her family. Why is she this open minded yet her father isn’t? Another topic that could have been explored with nature vs. nurture.
The biggest complaint of LOK is there isn't as much character development. Had Mike and Bryan had done some research on the topics stated above and weren't afraid to write about them, season 1 could have been a lot stronger.
It could be argued that including any of this would divided the fans as politics inevitably do, have you seen the shipping wars that resulted from “Spirit of the competition”?!
In the past and even in season 1 of LOK, the story ended up successfully covering topics that are relevant today without alienating its audience.
The prison system, which still creates heated debates these days is shown for what it is several times in the franchise. Ozai, Yakone and Zaheer were all imprisoned and clearly didn’t learn their lessons. Yakone and Zaheer escaped prison and enacted revenge. Oazi in “The Promise” is shown to still be manipulative towards Zuko even after losing his power.
Not once in years have I seen or heard of fans flaming each other over this topic, despite its role in the plot.
Ironically the episode “Avatar Day” showed that even small government and democracy can be dangerous. A whole town wanted to punish a small group of children, Aang and his friends for something one of his past lives did. The town is the majority, so that makes them in the right according to democracy. It was only when the town was attacked did the mayor and the townspeople not torture Aang.
Other good examples of politics being used correctly is in both “An American Tail” and “Zootopia” which also used politics as a backdrop and showed politics were the problem to begin with in a subtle way. Quite ironic considering Judy is in law enforcement.
Judy developed negative views of predators just by being exposed to other people’s prejudice.
The plot twist was that the mayor and his assistant Bellweather were also the reason the predators were going feral the whole time.
Bellweather’s plan showed democracy to be flawed just like all the other systems the government. As she states herself, 90% of Zootopia’s population is prey and together would destroy predators and for something only a few of them did. These politics were supposedly to benefit the prey, but it never turns out that way if you go about trying to help people via politics.
The roadblock in Fievel’s goal to find his family were politics themselves and the entire reason his family even immigrated to America to begin with.
It could be argued that the shorter seasons were the main problem that contributed to this, but “Zootopia” and “An American Tail” were able to cover political differences in the plot within a few hours, on top of that these two movies were also aimed at an even younger audience than LOK so using the target demographic as an excuse for why the couldn’t cover these issues properly isn’t an excuse either.
Politics in stories can only be done properly in three ways:
- Be either full on propaganda, like anything in the movies or TV these days (well there’s another dumpster fire I just started).
- Throw everyone and I mean EVERYONE under the bus!, like in “South Park”
- My personal favorite- Put politics as a backdrop or as a metaphor and let the audience pick a side, like in “An American Tail” but even this can be botched (Looking at you OK KO “let’s not become skeletons”).
The political themes were done right with the villains, but not with the main cast members. Amon and Tarrlok’s backstory, as I stated before, showed what the problem with the prison system is. Not to mention the Equalists were basically communists. While I absolutely can’t stand Unalaq, his role was at least a well done metaphor for theocracy. Time for an unpopular opinion that is going to start a dumpster fire: my only beef with season 3 of LOK is that Zaheer was a straw man of Anarchism, even then, to give credit where credit is due he at least he perfectly demonstrated why you don’t violently overthrow the government.
Politics in of themselves are not important in any story. The most powerful moments in both series had nothing to do with politics, that being the moments Korra and Aang faced their fears.
There are fair criticisms of LOK and there have been very unfair criticisms of it, either way the adequate handling of political themes in “The Legend of Korra” only contributed to many of the other problems the first two seasons had. You can’t tiptoe around political subjects, which the main cast of LOK did.