Ibrahim Noir

Legend of Korra

Book 1: Air, Chapter 9

We open shortly after the last episode left off. Tarrlok has kidnapped Korra and taken her all the way to some remote cabin in the mountains somewhere. He bloodbends her into the basement and locks her in a metal box…that he had built and ready seemingly for this purpose…

Okay?

Korra shouts at him that he can’t keep her in there forever. Tarrlok says nothing and drives away. To emphasize how far away from civilization Korra is, the camera zooms out the show how small the cabin is in comparison to the many mountains it’s surrounded by.

The next morning, Tenzin, asleep with Pema and Meelo, gets a phone call with disturbing news. He rushes over to City Hall and asks Tarrlok what happened. Tarrlok lies, saying that he and Korra were attacked by Equalists after she confronted him last night. He says he tried to protect her but was electrocuted into unconsciousness, and so they kidnapped her. A flashback reveals the truth, which is that Tarrlok planted Equalist weapons about as evidence and even went as far as to shock himself in the arm. Not a bad gambit, except that he left a glove behind as part of the fake evidence. Why would an Equalist, after subduing Tarrlok and kidnapping Korra, leave a shock glove behind? If a layman like me could catch an obvious hole like this, then the police should be able to piece together right away that Tarrlok is lying.

We then see Lin, still recovering from the injuries she sutained in “The Aftermath”. She hears the news of the “Equalist attack” last night and gets ready for action. She metalbends her uniform on, but ditches her badge.

We then cut to Lin busting Asami, Mako, and Bolin out of prison! How did she even make it to the prisoner area without clearance?

(from the DVD commentary of “When Extremes Meet”)

[Mike] I remember in the, uh, we had a whole-I think it made it to storyboarding, too; like, these are k—the kind of things that get cut in (laughs) an episode, like we had a whole scene of Beifong like going in the police station, and like confronting some officers, and… kinda stuff…

[Bryan] They were like, gonna stop her, ’cause she wasn’t authorized. You know, she wa-she had resigned.

[Mike] But she intimidated them too much, and they didn’t stop her.

[Bryan] ‘Cause she was like, s-they, you know, that was their boss up until like a week ago…

So they were going to write it so that Lin “intimidated” the officers into letting her through, (rightfully) concluded that that would be silly as an explanation, and instead opted for…no explanation at all.

Man, the magic of editing.

Lin explains that Korra’s been kidnapped and Mako has a particularly stunned and horrified reaction over the news. Bolin does a funny where he has trouble getting some privacy to pee and Lin zipping up his fly with metalbending. Hilarious.

After struggling to get out of the box for a while, Korra decides to try Tenzin’s advice for a change and meditate on the visions Aang’s been showing her.

Finally.

Korra gets a vision and we flash back to an adult Aang and Toph. 

The two talk among metalbending police officers. Toph tells Aang that she has the situation under control, but Aang insists his intervention since who they’re dealing with is no “normal criminal.” Toph finally acquiesces and calls Aang “Twinkle Toes”, the nickname she called him in their childhood.

[Aang] (annoyed) Toph, I’m forty years old. You think you could stop with the nicknames?

Oh…that’s Aang being a sour grump who resents his nickname. Not really what I was hoping for at the prospect of seeing this character again, but it won’t be the worst instance of this series mishandling Aang’s character. Still, this is not quite as insignificant as many defenders will make it out to be. The argument that usually comes up in defense of this is that is that it’s only natural for Aang to act serious in a serious situation, and that it’s unreasonable to expect him to act goofy 24/7. This is seemingly ignorant of the fact that humor and levity exist on a spectrum, and that we’re not locked in a dichotomoy of “serious” and “goofy”. You could easily write it so Aang gives a light scoff and smirks while shaking his head as he follows Toph. You could almost imagine him thinking, “Same old Toph…” as he does so. It wouldn’t undermine the seriousness of the situation and it works much better as an introduction to a much older Aang. He’s obviously become more mature with age but he hasn’t lost his good-natured attitude. Besides, if it really is the case that Aang is trying to remain focused on the task at hand, then why does he make it a priority to let Toph know he’s not happy with his nickname at all? Why would this be the time to bring that up?

I can thankfully say Toph’s response is 100% in-character.

[Toph] (smirking) ‘Fraid not.

But speaking of Toph, there’s the question of whether or not it make sense for her to grow up to become the chief of police. On one hand, Toph is a natural rule-breaker, so there’s an argument to be made against this choice. But on the other hand, I can pretty easily see Toph gravitating towards a career allowing her to exercise power over others/tell them what to do. So I think it just passes for me.

Anyway, Aang and Toph apprehend Yakone in a restaurant for alleged crimes supported by dozens of witness reports. Yakone, as he’s dragged away by the police, proclaims that he’s beaten every charge pressed against him before and he’ll do it again, ending Korra’s vision.

Lin, Mako, Bolin, and Asami group up with Tenzin to help find Korra. Lin deduces the Equalists must be hiding underground with Korra and her officers. Asami bitterly recalls her father’s underground factory and Bolin recalls it sounded like he was driving in a tunnel back when he was kidnapped. Two nice uses of continuity to advance the plot of this episode.

Out in the city, Lin uses seismic sense to find a tunnel the Equalists use. It’s a pretty cool ability, isn’t it? With an entire police force full of metalbenders, it’s amazing the Equalists have been able to hide out underground for as long as they have been. But of course, the show thinks that seismic sense and metalbending are two separate abilities independent from one another.

Asami notices Mako’s strong determination to find Korra and becomes uncomfortable. She interrogates Bolin if there are any feelings between the two of them, and Bolin folds and lets slip that the two kissed during the tournament.

Ughhhhh….

He pretty much says it was no big deal, which is interesting to me because he had a depressive episode over the whole thing. But Bolin is just “the funny one” now so we will not be exploring any of that. In any case, his downplaying obviously fails to calm Asami’s worries.

The group enters a large underground Equalist facility. They board a tram cart, taking them through a tunnel on the other side. They find a prison and Lin uses seismic sense to find her officers and break them out. We have another character moment for Lin. It’s small but I find it endearing, as it reinforces how much she cares for her men.

[Officer] (weakly) …Chief?

[Lin] I’m too late. That monster already took your bending, didn’t he?

[Officer] (nods)

[Lin] I’m so sorry. Come on, let’s get you out of here.

Elsewhere, Mako grabs an Equalist and demands to know where they’re keeping Korra while holding the poor guy at fire-point. The Equalist panics and says they don’t have Korra and the Equalists didn’t attack City Hall. Lin confirms that she’s searched the entire prison: no Korra. When Mako asks why Tarrlok would make up a story about being attacked, Tenzin deduces that he has Korra. He’s tricked them into a wild goose chase.

An alarm sounds, forcing the group to escape. They take a tram cart and Bolin is able to stop their pursuers with earthbending. But up ahead is a bunch of Equalists with mecha tanks and the Lieutenant.

Uh oh…

Luckily, Lin metalbends the pipe above into a ramp and pierces a hole in the ceiling, bringing them back to the surface.

Cut back to Korra who’s back in flashback land. Yakone is put on trial in front of the city’s council, among which is adult Sokka. I’m happy to report that this is Sokka’s only appearance in Legend of Korra and he’s in-character. The writers have preserved both his sense of humor and justice, and it’s nice to hear him talk fondly about his “trusty boomerang.”

The prosecution announces that despite holding massive amounts of control over the city’s criminal underground, Yakone’s been able to stay out of the law’s reach until now. The reason?

[Prosecution Attorney] An ability that has been illegal for decades: bloodbending.

There’s a reaction shot of Sokka’s eyes narrowing at this. He’s experienced bloodbending first-hand, after all.

Yakone’s attorney counters that bloodbending is a rare skill that can only be done during the full moon, contradictory to all of the testimonies claiming Yakone did so at pretty much every time other than a full moon.

[Defense Attorney] It would be a mockery of justice to convict a man of a crime that is impossible to commit.

I mean this guy sounds correct, but we’ve already seen proof that bloodbending doesn’t necessarily need to be done during a full moon. Let’s see how this is justified.

After a period, Sokka comes to the stand to deliver the final verdict. He explains how in his day, he’s met some extraordinary benders, citing Toph’s discovery of metalbending, thought to be impossible, and Comubstion Man being able to blow things up with his mind. He concludes that Yakone is one of these highly “unique” benders, and sentences him to life in prison. This is the only justification the show provides for why Yakoke, and by extension Tarrlok, are able to bloodbend without a full moon.

*sigh* We need to have a chat.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is built on the premise that a portion of the world’s population can bend one of the four classical elements. It was also demonstrated that benders could manipulate things composed even partially of their element. For example, waterbenders could bend the water in plants, slurry, or mud. As you might imagine, it didn’t take long for fans to wonder, “Hey, the human body is 70% water…what would happen if a waterbender bent that?” We got our answer in “The Puppetmaster” where we met Hama, a vengeful woman from the Southern Water Tribe who invented bloodbending while imprisoned. It was a dark technique that was about as sick and horrifying as the fans imagined. Katara wants nothing to do with the power when she learns about it, but by the end of the episode she’s forced to use it to defeat Hama. Although she wins and Hama is captured, she can’t unlearn what she now knows, and the episode ends on a dismal note.

[Hama] My work is done. Congratulations, Katara. You’re a bloodbender.

But hey! What’s done is done, and luckily there isn’t any moral complications in using it on the Fire Nation, right? Katara even later uses it on a man she believes to have killed her mother. And why wouldn’t she? It’s extremely useful. Katara (or really any waterbender) shouldn’t really be able to lose a fight with this kind of knowledge. So why not?

Well, outside of the fact that using this regularly could make our heroes seem like psychopaths, the writers had the sense to realize that this might remove all stakes and break the story a little bit, and so they added a hard limitation on bloodbending. It was readily established that it could only be done during a full moon, when waterbenders get a slight boost in power, and even then it’s implied to require a high amount of skill on top of this, explaining why only two known benders in the show are shown to do it.

Works quite nicely. Bloodbending can exist in this universe without ruining the stakes of any story set in it.

But then, everything changed when Legend of Korra attacked. Now we have the story-breaker power we so conscientiously avoided before.

🤓☝🏿 “Weren’t you paying attention, Ibrahim? It’s not like the rules of bloodbending have fundamentally changed! Yakone and Tarrlok are just highly exceptional benders that can bend outside the rules like Toph and Combustion Man are! Metalbending and combustion-bending did the same thing. Why do they get a pass?”

Metalbending never violated the rules of earthbending. There’s an important distinction that the show outlines and needs to be stressed here: Toph never bent the actual metal; she bent the unrefined earth inside the metal, which is absolutely fair game. Even Legend of Korra understands that there is no bending metal that is completely purified, which is why the writers introduced platinum as a counter to metalbending.

The reason metalbending was thought to be impossible is that no one had the means or motivation to find the bits of earth, let alone get it move. Toph always had the means to find it. Being trapped in a metal box gave her the motivation to look for it, and after that it was just a matter of bending it. The reason the moment she succeeds is such a highlight of the show is because it’s earned not by breaking the limitations established by the show, but by forging an inventive way around them.

Also, Toph is just awesome.

Admittedly, Combustion Man is harder to defend, because he actually does stand out as an exception to regular bending. I realize I’m stretching here, but a firebender’s power comes from the breath. If fire-breathing is possible, sending miniaturized explosions (with the appropriate focus and training) is something I can kiiiiiinda buy. Sort of. It also helps that the show makes it clear that Combustion Man is an anomaly in-universe, and it benefits from the character being a one-off whose background is left entirely ambiguous. He’s just meant to be a scary contract killer with an unexplainable power and the viewer is left to theorize and draw their own conclusions based on his third-eye tattoo and his metal limbs and whatnot. And he’s disposed of by the end of the series.

Oh, and we haven’t even covered the full scope of the problem with Yakone. It’s two-fold. Not only does he bypass the limitation on bloodbending, but he bypasses a limit on bending in general. After Yakone’s sentence, he, while handcuffed, bulges his eyes and bloodbends everybody in the room. Yakone can bloodbend an entire room full of people, without a full moon, and without even necessarily freedom of movement.

Actual telekinesis. In Avatar. For God’s sake.

This is about as fundamentally broken bending gets before Beginnings comes in to deal the killing blow. Bending has always been mind and body over matter. Bloodbending still required the motions of waterbending, because that’s all it was at the core. It was consistent. Even the slightest motion of Combustion Man taking a sharp inhale before firing kept this consistent. Even Bumi earthbending with his chin kept this consistent. This is a writing nightmare. You cannot carry over the most broken form of bending and remove all limitations like this. Yakone is essentially a psychic god, and he can’t even get the benefit of being a one-off because his power is inherited by two of the season’s central characters. The show presents us with this, and basically asks that we just accept it on the grounds of “We’ve broken the rules before, we can do it again”, showing a disastrous misunderstanding of those instances and this universe’s rules.

Sigh.

So Lin, Tenzin, and the rest of Team Korra go back to City Hall to confront Tarrlok, who’s there with Saikhan. Tenzin accuses Tarrlok of kidnapping Korra. Tarrlok feigns shock and repeats his fabricated story about getting attacked by Equalists. It ain’t working this time, though, as his assistant, who he dismissed from his office the night before, confirms that Tarrlok is indeed lying. On his way out last night, he saw Tarrlok put Korra in his truck. Lin asks the assistant why he waited until now to say something, and he admits he was afraid of Tarrlok’s (gasp) bloodbending!

It’s unknown what the assistant is doing back here now if he’s afraid of Tarrlok, or why he couldn’t just send an anonymous not, but what’s important is that if he had taken a sick day today, or had left the night before too quickly to catch the tail-end of Tarrlok’s fight with Korra, this revelation might not have reached our heroes at this moment. Pretty gosh-darn lucky, yet again.

Tarrlok then abandons all pretense and knocks out everyone in the room with bloodbending before making his escape. The group comes to after a while, Bolin does a funny, and they try to follow Tarrlok’s trail.

To conclude the flashback, Yakone forces Toph to free him of his restraints and knocks out the courtroom full of people with just a flick of his wrists. He promises Aang he’ll be back one day to claim the city and knocks him out as well.

I’m now wondering how they all planned to convict the man if he can control crowds of people any time. Without freedom of movement.

Yakone makes his escape via ostrich horse, showing once again how internally confused the Republic City setting is. This is just 42 years ago in-universe and the ostrich-horse is the most popular form of transportation in Republic City with no signs of decline. I guess we just have to assume Hiroshi Sato arrived onto the scene and dropped the Satomobile with basically everyone in the city being able to afford one sometime between then and now. Were the police getting around by ostrich-horse or what?

Aang enters the Avatar State, chases down Yakone, and runs him off the goddamn road with an airbending slice! Continuing the trend of not thinking things through, Aang simply gives Yakone a stern talking-to instead of knocking him out or restraining him in any way. And so Yakone, angry and harried, bloodbends Aang again while promising to “put him to sleep for good.”

Probably should have “put him to sleep for good” when you had him at your mercy back at that courtroom, mate. What made you think you were gonna escape the Avatar?

Yakone twists Aang pretty good (just long enough to kinda feel uncomfortable), before Aang enters the Avatar State again to escape. He then takes away Yakone’s bending with his energybending. Notably, the process is a lot quicker than it was in Sozin’s Comet and doesn’t require any sort of battle of wills.

Hmm…

Korra’s vision ends and realizes out loud that Aang was trying to warn her about Tarrlok. During the Making of a Legend marathon, the creators revealed that he was, in reality, trying to warn her about Amon. To put it succinctly, I feel like this warrants a much more clear and direct message than simply streaming a series of flashbacks into her head. To be honest, I don’t know why Aang can’t just talk to Korra more directly like Roku would often do for him, but I guess we’re meant to attribute that to Korra’s spiritual ineptitude (even though by the time he is able to speak with her directly, Korra’s spiritual aptitude hasn’t improved in the slightest but whatever).

Incidentally, Tarrlok arrives just then and Korra clocks him as Yakone’s son. And there’s your explanation, folks! Tarrlok got his uber-bloodbending from Yakone, and Yakone got it from…somewhere!

Tarrlok doesn’t deny the accusation but says he had to “become someone else” to win Republic City. In short, Tarrlok has the same goal his father did, but is going about it in a different way. He criticizes his father for trying to take over the city from its “rotten underbelly”, and says he had the perfect plan to become a hero and savior to its people.

And he chose to do this by rounding up innocent people and locking them away. Uh huh.

But with the jig up, Tarrlok resolves to start a new life elsewhere and take Korra with him as his hostage. I’m not too sure how he plans to do this when everyone knows he’s kidnapped Korra, but I’ll give the writing the benefit of the doubt and go with the idea that Tarrlok isn’t thinking rationally right now. There’s no real time to think about it anyway, since he climbs the stairs and meets Amon, alongside his usual entourage of chi-blockers and the Lieutenant.

How’d they get here so fast? How’d they even know where to look? I guess it’s possible they had an Equalist tailing Tarrlok but this would’ve been nice to see.

Anyway, Amon is about to give Tarrlok the ol’ razzle dazzle, but Tarrlok’s ready.

[Tarrlok] You fool! You’ve never faced bending like mine.

But then this happens.

Amon is able to get within razzling distance of Tarrlok after all, and he delivers probably the coldest line out of his already impressive set.

[Tarrlok]: (whispering in horror) What…what are you?

[Amon]: I…am the solution.

Korra hears this from downstairs, including Amon’s orders to the Lieutenant to electrocute her box before capturing her. The Lieutenant would naturally know to do this of course, since the box is made of metal and capturing Korra while she’s unconscious would be the obvious thing to do, but it’s important that Amon give the instruction explicitly and loud enough for Korra to hear so she can sling her armband over the bars at the top and hoist herself to avoid the electric current. It’s a really cool and smart move from her, don’t get me wrong! But just imagine how much cooler it’d be if she’d thought to do that on her own without Amon so obviously telegraphing his next move. Oh well.

So Korra is able to get the surprise jump on the Equalists and burst out of the cabin in time to see Amon loading Tarrlok into his car.

Korra runs the hell away and I gotta say, it really is a damn shame Amon isn’t a bender. If he was, say, an incredibly skilled bloodbender like our friend Tarrlok, he could easily immobilize Korra right here and capture her. It’s not like any of his followers are around to see him. Right now, it’s just the two of them. Hell, even without bloodbending he could easily use all this ice and snow to his advantage. But alas, Amon can only do so much, being a non-bender, so Korra is able to escape.

Korra falls down a snowy hill and passes out next to a tree. Sometime later, Naga finds her. No, this is not contrived; Naga’s already been established to be a good tracker and she was shown to be worried about Korra in the previous episode. She’s actually utilized quite well here.

She goes back to Republic City with Korra on her back and howls so the rest of the group can finally find her. Tenzin and Lin start to question her about where she was and about Tarrlok, but Mako demands they all give her some space. He scoops Korra into his arms and reassures her she’s safe now.

Somewhere off-screen, Asami punches the air.

And that’s “Out of the Past”! While the plot isn’t as contrivance-dependent as others in the season, the worldbuilding takes a serious hit as the episodes bursts bloodbending wide open, and bending as a discipline. Character work is mostly okay with the bizarre exception of Aang of all people, considering how little screentime he gets. And Tarrlok has firmly passed the “antagonist” baton back to Amon. We’re in the home stretch, guys! I’ll see you guys next time, in “Turning the Tides”.