Kind of good. But had a lot of issues.
This is where more of the soap opera-level reveals come in. X character is secretly MY BROTHER!!! is a twist you see trotted out in lower-level TV shows. It's basic and lazy unless it's worked on properly. It's what makes me think they just kind of pasted Amon together instead of thinking about where he'd end up from the beginning.
The thing is, deflating Amon means the entire conflict loses its raison d'etre, so there's no nuance to the conflict, just some idiots who are wrong and the good guys who are totally right. The original was NEVER like that. That's what made it so good! They try to retroactively make him nuanced in later seasons by acknowledging the good intentions, but it would've been great to see it here too. And they also pull a double deflation by suddenly turning Hiroshi Sato into a heat-of-the-moment attempted child murderer, when the one thing that was constant about him is that he wanted his daughter on his side. Like Amon, it's just undercutting his present character for a cheap shocking moment. It just doesn't pop.
And then when Lin sacrifices herself to let the airbenders escape and then they're immediately captured with NO explanation by the next episode, it undercuts HER sacrifice for a cheap shocking moment. And then when after a season of nothing Korra suddenly knows how to airbend, it undercuts the rules of their UNIVERSE for a cheap shocking moment! Bending NEVER, ever worked because you wanted it, it was dependent on effort and technique.
If I'm totally honest, I think Korra not being able to airbend might never have been a good plan in the first place. It sounds like a good hook, but didn't have a satisfying conclusion. Perhaps a better angle would've been, "she can airbend a little, but frankly, is too immature to to ACT like an evasive airbender, so she can't advance past a certain level." With the season being about her adapting to a new place, adjusting to new people, and building worthwhile bonds, the airbending MO of evasion and outmaneuvering would've been a great metaphor to work with. Then she could've lost her bending, fought Amon in a no-bending fist fight 'cause she cares about her friends that much, and then we still could've gotten the same ending we had. Heck, you still could've kept the Amon backstory, just switch out the source of his bending removal for spirit powers and his point would've still stood. It would've all worked, been very moving, stuck to the rules of the universe, and been awesome. But we didn't get that, we got a bunch of jumbling.
Writing this helps me realize the real value of the Korra series, which is that it's a great case study in building a sequel series to a beloved and high-production-value property ... and improving substantially when it realized it wasn't landing like the originals did. Look at Star Wars. The people on it worked so hard, but fan reception all over has been variable and frosty, and it's not 'cause the creators are stupid, it's something else. And that something else is what Korra shows us. A sequel doesn't fail because it's TERRIBLE, it fails because it doesn't make a story that evokes the same themes the original did. The original was about fascism. It was about spirituality. It was about how regimes get built up. It was about China and Japan and martial arts and the annexing of Tibet and genocide and respect and balance and cultural responsibility. It was all of those things together, and that's what made it great. But Book 1 of Legend of Korra was not all that. Not enough of that. And that's why it landed so badly. But it landed well enough, 'cause I think it got so many darn views that the series got approved for three more seasons, and that's why I have three more seasons to write about on here! Onward!
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