Ibrahim Noir

Legend of Korra

Book 1: Air, Chapter 11

We’ve made it to the home stretch lads! 🥳 This episode aired alongside the next as part of an hour-long finale for Book One of Korra. I’ll be covering them separately before going over the season as a whole.

War!

Republic City has pretty much been taken over. Mecha tanks run through the streets, airships patrol from above, the government’s been taken over, and Hiroshi Sato is giving a big ol’ speech about how bending has been declared illegal, the Avatar is on the run, today Republic City, tomorrow the world, blah blah blah blah blah. And there are still no people in sight.

Remember when Ba Sing Se is finally overtaken by the Fire Nation in the original series and we scroll past characters we saw throughout Book 2? We see the couple and their baby from “The Serpent’s Pass”, and even the girl Zuko went on a date with in “Tales of Ba Sing Se”. Mind you, these aren’t even developed characters, but it goes a long way to help us care about what’s happening to them and their city. Legend of Korra abandons the globe-trotting altogether to keep the action localized in Republic City, but can’t be bothered to put in half the amount of work to make us care about it and its people. What’s this show’s excuse? It’s not like we haven’t already met some of its inhabitants. A quick reaction from Skoochy, Shady Shin, Lightning Bolt Zolt, Tahno, or hell, even the cabbage guy could be nice.

But the funniest part for me has to be this.

The Equalists apparently represent an oppressed minority. Yet they somehow have the time and resources to create, store, and mount this goofy, giant Amon mask onto the statue of Aang…just to make a statement. It’s the most blatant display of the unaimed hypocrisy that went into writing the Equalists. And yeah, hypocritical villains aren’t inherently bad. In fact, great stories are often written with them. But I say unaimed because the show is definitely unaware of the hypocrisy. Bryke continues preaching about an oppression boogeyman. It’s benders that need to be taken down a peg even though the so-called “oppressed” non-benders have all the reach in the city, committing acts of domestic terrorism while having the richest man in the city in their ranks.

What’s more is that Hiroshi brags about how the Equalists will prevail over the United Forces. Is this supposed to be the culmination of Amon’s plan? He refused to take Korra’s bending because she would become a martyr to the other nations. But now he’s basically declared all-out war on the other nations. What changed between then and now? Some mecha tanks and airplanes? (oh wait we haven’t gotten there yet) How does he expect to win long-term?

In the back of the crowd, Korra and Mako disguised as chi-blockers exit through a hole underneath a large rock in the park. Korra’s pissed about being “on the run” and naturally wants to go up and fight. Mako tells her to calm down since General Iroh’s coming with a fleet of battleships. Korra petulantly says, “I hate this ‘being patient’ stuff.”

Yes, we’re well aware.

As it turns out, the group is hiding out in a little hobo hideout under the city. I’m not sure how this hideout could exist under the Equalists’ nose since it’s underground where the Equalists regularly operate. Asami is snippy with Mako over how long he was out with Korra. I honestly wonder why Mako doesn’t just break it off with Asami at this point if he’s not even going to pretend to be loyal to her. He regularly ignores her to get cozy with Korra right in front of her. He comes off as a total douche and I’m so tired of seeing Asami have to be so bitter about it all the time. The only “character” she’s gotten since joining Team Avatar has been bitterness towards her father or bitterness towards Mako.

Anyway, we see that the shelter is actually hosted by the hobo from way back in the first episode.

Remember him? He’s back.

He brags about how benders and non-benders already co-exist in peace, harmony, and hobo-ness right here. He feeds the group “street gruel” which is just garbage boiled in a pot. Bolin is impressed but a disgusted Asami surreptitiously feeds hers to Pabu.

That night, Korra rest against Naga and Mako sits down to join her. Korra reflects on how just a couple months ago she was taking her firebending test and now she’s in the middle of a war. Mako could talk about how he was fighting to live on the streets just a few years ago and is now fighting for the fate of his city, but takes the opportunity to stroke Korra’s ego instead. He says he didn’t even know her before, but now he can’t imagine his life without her in it. He strokes some more (not unlike the way Bolin did when he was trying to date her) by saying she’s “the most loyal, brave, and selfless person he’s ever known”. Korra returns the compliment and the two smile and lean in…before Korra interjects saying she should get to sleep.

Blah blah more shipping crap. All you need to know is Mako is hopelessly in love with Korra all of a sudden and this is all his character is going to consist of for the rest of the season.

Moving on, we’re back at Air Temple Island, which has pretty much become Amon’s base. Amon de-bends a blindfolded guy. He then says, “Next” and we see a whole line of people (including White Lotus members) assembled to have their bending taken.

Uh oh.

The foggy morning after, Team Korra lies in wait for the United Forces to arrive so they can help in any way they can. General Iroh and Team Korra are confused to see that there are no airships or mecha tanks ready to meet them. We then get a shot of underwater mines rising to the surface, which explode conveniently after Iroh says, “Something’s not right.”

Damn right, something’s not right! Something’s not right about the fact that there were apparently no ships sent to scout for mines before entering a choke point. It appears that his fleet consists of only one type of ship: big. No smaller ships, no utility ships that might be able to check for mines or provide supplies, just big targets out in the open sea. Holy crap.

So Korra dives into the water, presumably to swim to the ships, before a bunch of Equalist biplanes show up. This is the big surprise the Equalists had in store for the conflict.

Bolin does a funny, but it opens up an interesting conversation:

[Bolin] Where does Hiroshi find the time to keep inventing new evil machines?!

With the secret out that Hiroshi is an Equalist manufacturer, you’d think his entire operations would’ve been shut down, abandoned, or seized. Hell, the man should’ve been arrested. And if Hiroshi isn’t on the run, then his manufacturing output should be far worse than it is, no? I have to wonder yet again why he would out himself the way he did instead of remaining covert. If Amon wanted not to alert the public to how big his ambitions were until the time was right, how could he sign off on Hiroshi capturing the Avatar, the only airbending master, and the chief of police, when going after Tarrlok is considered a “bold move” from him signifying his endgame? What’s funnier is that Hiroshi tells Asami upon her finding out that he “never wanted her to find out this way.” But if he orchestrated the whole thing, how the hell else could she find out?

Hiroshi’s decision to declare himself an Equalist to the public has only blown his life up on all fronts. It’s jeopardized his manufacturing company, it’s undermined Amon’s plans to stay under the radar, it’s downsized Amon’s attack on the city, and it’s torched his relationship with the only family he has left. Someone is on drugs here, either Hiroshi or the writers. You can take your pick on that one.

Anyway, the planes arrive and perform bombing runs on all the ships, which they’re pretty much completely unprepared to deal with.

Sigh.

One of the torpedoes even explodes right in front of Korra underwater. She’s fine, however, because she has some nice n’ thick plot armor. The United Forces begin to fight back with fire and earthbending. And so, it’s just as Amon envisioned: benders vs. non-benders. Because the United Forces has no non-benders. Every time there’s a discussion about the jump in technology in this show, I have to hear the same tired arguments about how it makes sense because there would be more accommodations for non-benders in a more unified world. So why in the world are there no guns or cannons that aren’t powered by bending? There are cannons that use firebending and honest-to-God earth disks straight out of pro-bending on these ships.

Is this the best the earthbenders have to offer in terms of artillery? Why not fire those surface-to-air rocks we saw in Ba Sing Se? What good are these puny earth disks in a naval battle?

Regardless, the firebenders are able to take some of the planes down. Korra even does a cool move where she uses waterbending to redirect a torpedo back at the plane that fired it. But Iroh detonates a bomb way too close to his face and gets exploded, falling into the water. Other than some damage to his clothing, he’s fine, because he also has plot armor. In particular, he has his grandfather’s plot armor passed down to him, as he also got blown up and miraculously survived.

Can’t say the same for much of his crew, who most definitely died at sea. Not that they’ll get any acknowledgement from the show.

Korra rescues him and they head back to the hideout so she can heal his arm. She’s annoyed about how Amon is always “one step ahead of them.” To be honest, it wouldn’t be so easy for Amon if our heroes made the slightest effort to anticipate their opponent’s next move and act accordingly. It’s not like Amon is exhibiting Azula levels of craftiness, just basic competence: think about your enemy’s plans and make the proper arrangements. So be it if no one saw the airplanes coming, but there’s no reason the United Forces should arrive with no scouting ships, proper artillery, or aircraft of their own.

Iroh tells everyone they’re not out of the fight yet. He just needs to send a message.

Cut to the hobo, who has a whole-ass telegram setup. In his underground hobo hideout. What incredible luck.

Even if we ignore how laughably convenient this is, I thought all communication’s been cut off? How is this hobo able to get a wire out when not even the police is able to do so? Kinda seems like Bryke doesn’t know what’s happening in their own show right now.

Anyway, Iroh sends a message to Commander Bumi (Tenzin’s brother) informing him of what happened and to wait until his division is told to move out and attack. Iroh describes Bumi as a “bit of a wild man, but the bravest commander you’ll ever meet.”

He then whips out a map and says they need to attack the airbase.

Could it be? Actual planning and initiative? From our general character? Sweet! I’m on board.

Mako deduces the planes flew out from the mountains and says they should head there. Iroh declares they’ll leave at dawn (because attacking under the cover of night would make too much sense I guess). Asami says bitterly that she’ll finally take down her father.

Uh, how do you know he’ll be there, sweetheart? Did you read ahead in the script or something?

Korra gets an odd look on her face.

She tells everyone that she isn’t going with them tomorrow. She says she’s tired of waiting around for Amon and that she needs to face him once and for all, on her terms.

Uh, Korra? You’re not waiting. You’ve all just decided on a plan of attack. You are going on the offensive right now, by definition. You’re leaving at dawn, for God’s sake.

Iroh bluntly tells her this isn’t a good idea, which, while an understatement here, could be said about a lot of Korra’s ideas. Korra’s only counter is that “her gut” is telling her to fight Amon. Because your gut has served you so well so far, right Korra? Like that time your gut told you to publicly challenge Amon to a one-on-one, and then he captured you, and the only reason he didn’t de-bend you was because you’d end up becoming a martyr? Even that was slightly better than this by virtue of Korra having a vague course of action even if it was reckless and poorly-thought out. Korra literally has no idea where to even find Amon, let alone how she’ll face him.

I’ll bring up here as well that Korra’s fear of Amon has pretty much been completely dropped. We worked over the course of an episode to get her to admit it to herself and Tenzin, but after that, other than some sweaty close-ups on hearing his voice over the radio, Korra displays no fears over actually facing Amon. I guess she worked it out off-screen.

So Iroh points out again how dumb this “plan” is but accidentally gives her an out by saying she shouldn’t be going alone. Mako then agrees he’ll go on this suicide mission with her, and Iroh relents, saying his grandfather’s always trusted “the Avatar’s instinct” so he will as well.

Welp. Sanity has left the chat. It was nice for the minute or so you were here.

We cut to the next morning, where Mako and Bolin bro-hug and tell each other they love each other. It’s a sweet moment and a nice reminder that these two are each other’s only family, and so they’d be invested in each other’s safety. Unfortunately, it’s damaged by the hobo obnoxiously crying in the background. Korra lends Naga to the others for their mission, telling her to take care of Bolin (but not Asami or Iroh for some reason). Mako then has a moment with Asami where he…doesn’t break things off with her. Not cleanly, anyway. He just apologizes for how “messed up things got between them” and says he wants her to know how much he cares about her regardless.

Yeah, how much is that exactly, Mako? You can’t even give the poor girl’s heart a mercy kill? Asami kisses Mako’s cheek and walks off.

So Korra waterbends a bubble around her and Mako so they can walk to Air Temple Island. It should be an absurdly long walk that would take pretty much all day, but thanks to the power of editing they make it there in the speed of a scene transition. Why Air Temple Island, anyway? They have no way of knowing this is his base of operations right now. But luckily for them, they catch him leave via airship just in time so they turn out to be right. Must be that Avatar’s instinct at work. Korra decides they should wait in the temple and ambush Amon when he gets back.

How do you know he’s coming back?

While in disguise, they get spotted by the Lieutenant, who asks what they’re doing here. This interaction is so they can be conveniently told about a rally happening at the arena. Korra assures him they’ll be there, and the Lieutenant just…walks away and leaves them be. This is despite the suspicious tone in his voice when he says,

[Lieutenant] You should’ve been briefed about this…

Somehow, I feel like the Lieutenant from earlier in the series wouldn’t have let them off so easily, but obviously that character is long gone. Oh well. Another lucky break.

They can’t enter the temple normally now, but luckily (yet again) Korra knows about a secret entrance. It takes them up into the attic where they find…

TARRLOK???

That’s right, everybody. An entrance we’ve never seen before leads our heroes to the room keeping the temple’s one and only prisoner! Why is Tarrlok even here when the cabin would work just as well and all but guarantee no one would find him? Luck is simply what’s on the menu today, boys.

Korra asks Tarrlok why he’s the only one here, and Tarrlok responds…

[Tarrlok] I’m Amon’s brother.

Our heroes shudder-gasp at this grand revelation. Get comfortable guys, because the entire third act of this episode is going to be dedicated to exposition and backstory. We’re pulling a Glass Onion and bringing the story to a complete halt to explain the story.

Tarrlok explains that Yakone was broken out of prison by his old gang buddies, and he decided to get a new identity and hide out in the Northern Water Tribe. The plastic surgery is easily the most unbelievable new piece of tech displayed in The Legend of Korra so far. Just look at this.

One “plastic surgery” later and Yakone has an entirely new facial shape, structure, hair color, and eye color.

They straight-up gave the man a new face, “Mother of Faces” style. I’m not even sure we can do this in our world yet.

Anyway, Yakone settled down, met a nice lady, and started a family with her. They had two children, Amon, then called Noatak, and Tarrlok three years later. And because this show just has no shame, Tarrlok and Noatak both have features consistent with Yakone’s post-surgery look rather than his actual genetic features.

Noatak was a sweet kid who looked after his brother, and we get a visual of the two happily playing in the snow. It appears Tarrlok was a bit of a momma’s boy, as he presently describes her mother as a “warm, caring woman.” This is will inform a decision he makes later.

Things took a turn when the brothers discovered they were waterbenders. Yakone was harsh in his training, especially towards Tarrlok, who didn’t take to it as easily as Noatak. Noatak defends his brother from a scolding and Tarrlok narrates that Noatak, even then, was invested in fair and equal treatment. I think this is kind of a cheap line considering what we learn later, but we’ll get to that.

After some time, Yakone takes the boys on a hunting trip far from home, where he tells them about his true identity. He tells them about bloodbending, calling it “the most powerful and feared type of bending in the world.” He goes on to tell us it was “that coward Katara” who declared it illegal.

I’ve seen some discourse over this on the internet so I might as well bring it up here. There’s some contention over the outlawing of bloodbending since it could potentially be used for good, but I think it makes sense why it would be banned in all cases. Fundamentally, it’s a violation of human rights because it takes away a person’s bodily autonomy. I can see that being reason enough for Katara to disregard whatever good it could be used for. On that note though, what kind of political power did Katara invoke to declare the technique illegal worldwide? Was she a councilwoman or what? We didn’t see her at the trial, no sir.

Anyway, Yakone explains that their family has the strongest line of bloodbenders in history. This is interesting to me because it’s all but stated that Hama invented the technique during the war. Even if we assume Hama is Yakone’s ancestor, that’s only two generations at most between then and now. And besides, how many other bloodbending families are there for Yakone to declare his the strongest? This discrepancy means either 1) bloodbending’s been around for way longer and apparently kept secret until Hama discovered it incidentally, or b) this was a line thrown in without regard to continuity. I have my guesses.

Yakone tells the kids that the Avatar took his bending, and that it’s now upon them to learn the technique, take over Republic City, and avenge him by destroying the Avatar.

[Yakone] That is your purpose in life!

[Tarrlok] (narrating) The good days were behind us.

Since then, Yakone’s taken the boys on “hunting trips” every full moon to train them in bloodbending, keeping the truth from their mother. We see Noatak bloodbending some yaks, horrifying Tarrlok. The creators have said in commentary that they didn’t want the animal cruelty to be displayed in a superfluous and glorifying manner, so they made sure to balance it with Tarrlok’s reaction, which may match the reaction of audience members who are particularly uncomfortable by this sort of thing. Yakone snarls at him for his weakness, while praising Noatak’s skill. The two go on to learn full moon-less bloodbending, which Noatak picks up with ease. He even perfects the psychic bloodbending, but the training turns him cold and distant.

Obviously bloodbending can be taught, and I don’t have a problem with this. But I think it’s pretty lame that the most we get for how Amon and Tarrlok can bloodbend at any time is “they learned it from their father.” I don’t have the first clue about how one would go about teaching someone to circumvent such a hard limitation, but of course, I still take issue with the fact that it can be circumvented at all so there’s no need to whinge about all that again. And don’t get me started on the psychic bloodbending, which remains incomprehensible. I guess we really aren’t getting any sort of explanation on how that works. This is just how it be.

One night, Yakone decides to test the boys on bloodbending people. Namely, each other. Noatak bloodbends Tarrlok as instructed, but Tarrlok refuses to do the same to his brother. This pisses Yakone off and he starts to round on Tarrlok, but Noatak steps in and bloodbends him.

[Yakone] How…dare…you…bloodbend…me!

[Noatak] What’re you gonna do about it? You’re the weak one. You always say bloodbending is the most powerful thing in the world, but it isn’t. The Avatar is. He took your bending away. What could be more powerful than that?

Noatak then declares to Yakone that his sons won’t be his tools of revenge any longer. He turns to Tarrlok and urges him to run away with him. But Tarrlok refuses, not wanting to leave their mother. Noatak dismisses his brother as weak, and tosses Yakone into a blizzard before running away.

Right. Well, we will talk about all of this.

To end the story, the family was never the same after Noatak’s disappearance. The mother fell into a depression and Yakone’s own dreams of revenge withered before he passed away a few years later.

We cut back to the present where Korra says, no joke, “That’s one of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard.”

Tarrlok apologizes for all he’s done, saying that for all he tried to be better than his father, his spirit ended up shaping him to be the tool of revenge he wanted all along. And the same has happened to his brother.

Mako asks the pertinent question of how Tarrlok even figured out Amon was his brother, and the answer he gives is incredibly silly.

[Tarrlok] When he took my bending, the sensation was somehow familiar. I later recognized it as my brother’s bloodbending grip.

You recognized his bloodbending grip…? I’d like to remind you all that Amon regularly puts people in the energybending stance when he de-bends people. Is that what you’re talking about? Haven’t you only been bloodbent by him once before in your entire life? How many “bloodbending grips” have you been in to be able to single out your brother’s? Why couldn’t the answer be something close to sensible, like, I dunno, his ability to resist your own bloodbending?

Tarrlok has a giant metal box in his basement and is weirdly familiar with bloodbending grips. Ikki was right; the guy is weird.

Anyway, Korra and Mako conclude that Amon uses bloodbending to take away people’s bending, and Mako points out that attacking him head-on won’t work because he’ll just “redirect it with his mind.”

I’m sorry, is this supposed to suggest that the reason Amon can face any bender is because he subtly manipulates their movements with bloodbending? That…makes him a lot less cool.

But the duo realize they finally have the upper hand over Amon for once: if they expose him as a bender at the rally, it will strip him of his followers and kneecap the revolution. Korra wants to free Tarrlok, and he has to point out to her that this would tip the Equalists off that someone found him. He urges her from his prison to “put an end to this sad story.”

Welp. That’s the penultimate episode of the season. It’s pretty bad, guys. First of all, the show has pretty much abandoned any semblance of cause-and-effect at this point. Everything just works out for our heroes because there just isn’t time left.

• Hiroshi just has airplanes manufactured and ready to go despite the fact that he should be on the run
• Iroh and Korra both survive separate blasts to the face
• The hobo just has an entire telegraph setup that works while the city is under seige
• The hobo hideout is able to exist underground
• Asami just knows her father will be on the mountains
• Korra is just right about Air Temple Island being Amon’s base of operations
• The Lieutenant just tells our heroes about the rally and doesn’t bother them any further
• A secret entrances just brings Korra and Mako right to the one person who tells them everything they need to know

The naval combat on display by the United Forces is pretty sad. Amon gets an easy W because Iroh couldn’t be bothered to bring more than one type of combat vehicle.

Things aren’t much better on the character side of things. Mako has gotten as bland as they come, reduced to Korra’s firebending Player 2. Bolin and Asami are as neglected as ever. And Korra herself is just as unlikeable. I’ve got nothing else to say here about Team Avatar.

Which finally brings me to the unmasking of Amon, because God forbid any character in this show be interesting. We just have to have Amon’s backstory, we just have to explain all his abilities (without the explaining). What we thought was an incredibly skilled non-bender with a gift from the spirits is just a bender with power that has no explanation. He was born with the capacity for goddamn telekinesis, was abused by his father, and then…decided to rid the world of bending altogether? How? Why? Why did he leave his beloved brother at the mercy of the same father who abused them both? When did he decide he needed to form a cult around the concept of equality? How did you get from A to B, Noatak?

The Equalists as a whole suffer as a faction because this show is allergic to worldbuilding. We still have yet to see the so-called bending oppression they’re fighting, and it’s becoming laughable how non-benders are consistently shown to have the advantage despite being the supposed underdogs.

I’d say this is easily the worst episode of the season, but we have one left. That’s right, guys. It gets worse from here. I’ll see you next time where we do indeed put an end to this sad story.