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lokgifsandmusings · 7 years

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Definitive Ranking of Book 4 Episodes, #2/13

2. 4x13 The Last Stand

Kuvira tears off her arm. Mako makes a Heroic Sacrifice and no one will heal him. Korra and Kuvira fight, until Korra freakin’ bends pure energy, rips apart the city, and demonstrates her growth in one quick spirit world conversation. Hasook fulfills his clarinetist destiny. We get the most ambiguous ending everrrrr.

You know, after going back through this whole season, I’m realizing that there were a lot of flaws with Book 4. A lot. It’s not to the point where I feel this episode ranking as second highest is unearned, but it is making really wonder about “what would this have looked like had Bryke been given more time?”

The thing is, with this episode, the emotional beats are nearly perfect for Korra. And that’s really what matters, given that the show is...well...the legend of *her*. Even for most other characters, this conclusion was (dare I say it?) dramatically satisfying. Thematically satisfying, too.

But at the same time, what didn’t work is only more and more glaring with each revisit, and especially after thinking through it.

Kuvira is probably the hardest character to reconcile, because she’s the primary antagonist, and yet up until Korra dropped the “oh you’re an orphan” truth-bomb that explained ~~all~~ of Kuvira’s actions, there was every indication that her guiding motivation was much more about her perceived rejection by Suyin, or a desperation to prove her wrong, or a mentor’s fall from grace when an inherent hypocrisy was shown...

Honestly, from just the perspective of Kuvira’s arc, dismissing everything as “you were sad about your parents (who you never talked about once) leaving you with the creepy thought-policing matriarch and you didn’t want to ditch the EK in the same way” is almost insulting. Kuvira like...made compelling points in the Suyin-filtered flashback about why Su should accept Raiko and Tenzin’s offer, and it seemed to be coming from a place of pure pragmatism, not compensation for abandonment or a way of gaining control. Actually, she framed it about sharing prosperity:

Kuvira: Suyin, I know this isn't my place, but I think you should do this. Zaofu has always been a beacon of modern progress, and now you can share that with everyone.

Suyin: What would you have me do? March into Ba Sing Se with an army? We'd be seen as conquerors and greeted with nothing but war.

Kuvira: There are already wars. The Earth Queen nearly destroyed our nation. This is our opportunity to change things.

Also, fun fact: Suyin didn’t even tell Korra that Kuvira was an orphan; she barely even implied it.

Korra: How did things get so bad between you and Kuvira? I thought she was your protégé.

Suyin: She was more than that. She was like a daughter to me. I took her in when she was eight years old and nourished her talents. Kuvira was smart, a natural leader, and quickly rose through the ranks. I saw myself in her.

Like, this could have meant anything. Maybe she took her into her School of Metalbending Dancing and Narcissism. Maybe this is a nitpick, but it just amuses me if there was some version of this scene where Korra is like “it must have been so hard being an orphan,” and Kuvira goes, “...wtf my parents are FINE.”

Back the main point here, the difficulty in parsing out Kuvira’s guiding motivations and meaning of her own arc is not made better by the fact that her political position and military campaign were incredibly poorly defined. This is nothing new for Bryke, but with regard to this episode specifically, there’s still the question of why Kuvira was even interested in reclaiming UR land when she was supposedly just a technocrat that opposed the Earth Queen’s unjust rule, and had spent a painstaking amount of time laying down tracks to connect the two nations in what seemed like a cooperative measure and to truly bring the EK up to speed with the rest of the world. Was storming Republic City always her plan? Would she have been able to without the super laser that she didn’t know was being invented (Varrick was just looking for clean energy, remember)? After successfully taking Republic City, was she going to lock up every citizen there not of EK origin?

The general idea is that she was supposed to be earnestly committed to restoring stability in the Earth Kingdom, while also pushing forth innovation, and that when Korra pointed out how horrible and out-of-balance she was, it was a comeuppance and reality slap. I guess in this respect, the broader strokes make sense, but then there was so much that seemed so personally motivated, like...everything to do with Zaofu (she even made a point of saying “when I return I’ll be greeted with open arms), and then wrecking all of Republic City.

Even ignoring motivations, there’s logistics, because Kuvira’s disappearing army (and the disappearing United Forces) was still very much evident here, especially since mecha tank officers came clomping back into view at the end, and she needed to instruct them to stand-down. It kind of makes me giggle to think that Varrick powered down these suits, and the morons just lay on the ground helplessly until they were up and running again. But there were also all those ground troops and shit, so...

Oh yeah, and Raiko formally surrendered. There should have been an entire platoon sent to the island as soon as Kuvira realized Baatar had been captured while traveling there.

None of this is a specific issue to “The Last Stand,” but it does make the resolution feel a little...convenient. As though all these things were just dismissed and swept under the rug. This is best exemplified in Suyin’s line as a response to Kuvira’s apology, where she goes, “you’re going to answer for everything you’ve done!” Like, that didn’t even follow what Kuvira had said! Though there’s also a chance that this was a place-holder line they never bothered to change (or ran out of time to change). It’s not the only one with this vibe.

At the end of the day, Kuvira worked fine for Korra. But the way she had been scripted herself, there was really no telling how she’d react to a given situation until after the fact. I could have seen her, stirring from the rubble, having the same exact spirit world conversation with Korra, rather than running away to find Chekhov’s very literal gun. She trashed an entire fucking city and nearly died already just with Mega Maid’s explosion, after all.

Most of the other challenges of this episode have to do with the wrap party, because it was pretty clear that Bryke had a case of “we have X minutes to conclude all of this.” Enter bizarre conversation after bizarre conversation.

It’s not exactly a secret that I’m currently writing on a fic that tries to make sense of “why the hell does this wedding feel as though it is simultaneously the day after the fight, and two months down the road?” Word of God is that the wedding is 2 weeks later, which may or may not have been made up by Mike on the spot. But it’s just all so wonky. Korra is acting as though she hasn’t talked to anyone, Wu and Mako certainly haven’t seen each other since the evacuation, Tenzin only just talked to Raiko, and yet Zhurrick planned an entire wedding and somehow world leaders were able to travel to the still utterly destroyed city to enjoy it.

It’s WONKY, I’m telling you. The worst case offender?

This is a terrible fucking idea. I get that it’s a Y7 American show and we have to be pro ~~democracy~~ as a general concept, but the logistics behind it make no sense. I suppose in the context of Wu’s arc, him stepping aside because he doesn’t feel qualified is fitting. Granted, I thought the whole “you were calm during the evacuation and also badger moles like you” stuff was to show how he does have leadership potential, so long as he plays to his strengths and allows those more informed than him to take the lead on other matters. But I suppose we can say it was part of a bigger picture: Wu learning to be less of an entitled asshole. He pushed himself and stepped up when the world needed him to, but in the end “sometimes a good evacuation is its own reward.” Nice.

Now go and create a horrible panic by tossing the EK’s political and legal structures out the window!

The Mako/Korra conversation was a very nice endcap to Mako’s season-long arc, and the series long relationship between these two characters. They were incompatible as romantic partners, but Mako found meaning in their platonic friendship, looking to Korra as inspiration to be more selfless. It’s just nice. And it’s nice to see exes being nice and not jealous or still hurt or pining or whatnot. Nice.

That said, Wu’s role in Mako’s arc is a headscratcher. Mako definitely had an influence on him, but the other way around...I’ve got nothin’. Unless we consider Wuko a possibility, because IT IS THERE, DAMNIT. Except, I really don’t think Bryke meant for it to be there. Which means that Mako played a bit more of a supporting role for Wu than the other way around. Wu had diddly squat to do with Mako feeling inspired and self-sacrificial...that was a decision Mako reached inside Mega Maid as a result of watching a clip show about his relationship with Korra.

And yeah, let’s actually talk about that moment, because it was probably the second most emotional point of the episode. For those who don’t know, it’s also the point where I realized, at 5:50 in the morning, that I was going to start bawling in the middle of Planet Fitness if I stayed, so I cut that short and went home to finish out the episode.

It was touching, even if Bolin’s “This isn't the time to prove how awesome you are. I already know how awesome you are... you're awesome.” lines were incredibly odd. However... Looking back, this was probably the dumbest thing Mako could have done in this moment.

The weapon was disabled (he knew Su and Lin were taking care of that), and Korra was in the “head” having a fight to the death. There was no pressing need to power down Mega Maid at that point (Kuvira initiated lockdown as soon as they got in, actually), and the only thing he knew was that he could probably get it to explode. With everyone still inside. All things considered, how Mako didn’t just kill everyone inside the tank is beyond me. How Mako didn’t die is equally beyond me, cause dude got shot squarely in the chest. I mean yes, Bolin came back for him (where did he even dump the other bodies? The legs?), but Mako has a heart and stuff.

I don’t want to detract from the message of “Mako is an incredibly selfless hero,” but the logistics get in the way. It’s like Bryke wanted him to have this moment, but they didn’t take the time to figure out a realistic way it could unfold, so it just happened. Which is jarring, especially since this immediately followed Hiroshi’s sacrifice from the previous episode. Snaps for Mako, but 10 points from Brykendor for the contrivance.

Also as a side note: poor Bolin, this episode. I mean yes, he’s in a good place, and he got to marry Zhurrick (I can confirm: officiating a wedding is mad fun), but the dude didn’t even get a Conversation of Significance with anyone. Needless to say I’m going to be fixing that with my final chapter...

Let’s just round out the Krew then and discuss Asami. And I 👏👏don’t👏👏fucking👏👏know👏👏 what to do with her.

I mean, you know what Asami means to me as a character at this point. And Korrasami. But going back through and watching this season, there’s a few things that are blindingly clear.

1. The scripting is bizarre. Not just for Asami—across the board. There are lines that feel outright unedited. For instance:

“When the queen fell, and everyone was asking you to help keep the Earth Kingdom from falling apart, all you wanted to do was hide in Zaofu, and let others deal with the consequences.”

It’s not as though lines like that don’t work, but it’s the kind of thing where if that were in fic I was beta-reading, I’d highlight “fell” and “falling” so the author would know to take out one of the repetitive phrases.

For characters with a lot of lines, the lack of polish can be overlooked, for the most part. For Asami, who had an incredibly limited screen presence during Book 4, things stick out.

2. Seychelle Gabriel’s voice acting was...different. It wasn’t bad, but some of her lines had a certain stilted quality to them. I’ve actually noticed that with just about every character in Book 4 that wasn’t Varrick or Bolin (that’s just John Michael Higgins and PJ Byrne falling back on their comedic chops), with a big exception in Korra. I sort of think Janet Varney didn’t settle into a consistent voice for her *until* Book 4, but that’s a whole other story, and yes, deeply subjective.

The best example I can point to for Gabriel is the way she delivers, “Thank you. I'm just glad I was able to forgive him.” It just had this awkwardness about it, and a good thing too, since I’m 95% certain that’s what spawned @progmanx’s entire fic, as well as my own views on her characterization (oh hey, we’re of one mind with that).

3. There really could have been more to Korrasami. Even with Russian TV restrictions. But I already talked about in my “Reunion” piece, so I won’t rehash here.

4. Asami’s scripting was pure *convenience*. I touch on it here for “Enemy at the Gates” and here for “Day of Colossus.” But it’s not really hard to recap.

Asami needs to open the lines of communication to her dad, so she does, and it is wonderfully, realistically hard on her. Then in a ridiculous scene, she spots a happy father and daughter, and decides she wants to work to forgive the man who tried to fucking kill her. We can assume she’s feeling conflicted about it because she snaps at Korra over it, but really, we have to just assume, because this shit is never talked about on-screen. Then Hiroshi pops in to save the day with his oddly specific technical knowledge of stuff he wasn’t working on. Then Asami tells him that she loves him before they go into a flying mecha suit to battle potentially to the death, and then Hiroshi dies.

And yes, I’ve talked a lot about what an internal character Asami is, so it would have just been odd if she suddenly started expositing on why she was feeling the way she did, but at the same time... When *did* she decide to forgive him? Was it just because he was willing to save the city? Does she even know if he’s changed his opinion of benders, or if he just regrets not having her in her life? Does she regret not seeing him sooner? Did she ever READ THOSE DAMN LETTERS?

So for her to sit her ass down next to Korra and say that she’s super sad but glad she forgave him... Well yeah, of course she’s sad. But she’d probably also be confused and conflicted and angry and guilty and a million other things just by how inherently fucked up this situation is. The last time she and her dad were in a mecha suit at the same time, he TRIED TO KILL HER. This isn’t hyperbole. He also saved the city from being destroyed *this time*, despite being the man who bombed it before. You see what I’m saying???

I think this is coming at a bad time, because I am working over and beyond to make sense of Asami’s headspace during this specific point in the story right now with ‘Half the Pieces’. I even gave her and Hiroshi another pai sho match so they could talk this shit over, and am kind of getting at the idea of her forgiving him as more of like, she really wants to have forgiven him and to have that closure after three years of incredible pain relating to him. But for what we got on our screens, it feels rushed, there’s just no other way around it. Rushed and simplified.

The most frustrating thing about Asami’s character is her wasted potential—the way they could have been using her as a foil to Korra so much sooner, the way her unique position as an industrialist went largely untouched, the way there is so much packed into her and given a little space, she will come and wallop you with a bag of feels (“you tainted our past and destroyed our future together”).

Yes, she’s in a support role, and I’m not advocating her being foregrounded over anyone else on the Krew, and certainly not over Tenzin. But keep in mind, this was the season that gave a very complete and detailed arc to Varrick and Wu, while also pushing Kuvira & the Beifong Family Drama as the main tension. So excuse me for just a little annoyance with what could have been.

What *was* for Asami here was...fine. It’s not like I can’t remember what her conversation with Korra felt like the first time, or how could it felt that for once in her craptastic life, she was getting to be happy for a little. And for Korra too, realizing she had been disconnected for too long, realizing through her letters and the distance that she was in love, realizing she can take time for herself—it just all made for a beautiful moment, even if I do think that it felt a tad clipped. Given how much ground Bryke needed to cover here, it’s not shocking.

As a last note before I get to Korra and begin explaining why this episode is #2, I want to briefly touch on Tenzin. He was simply not a major player in this season, and I guess that’s fine. His relationship to Korra was in focus for Book 2, with her becoming *her own Avatar* at the end, and then his relationship to his daughter and the Air Nation at large was Book 3. I don’t feel like anything was incomplete with Tenzin here on a larger scale, though it was a notable decision. I wonder if Book 4 had been given another pass, would there have been a more imaginative way to utilize his character?

I think that may have detracted from the impact of his final conversation with Korra, too. Or maybe that’s why it almost felt like it had bizarrely romantic undertones for a second, because it was hard to have a handle on where *they* were at with how they related to each other. Also he said the phrase “big bumpy ride” so...

And that conversation was the most, “let’s wrap up this Y7 show yup yup” that fell victim to extremely unfortunate wording. The idea was to show that Korra had found meaning in what she had been through, harkening back to Katara’s remark that Aang “chose to find meaning in his suffering and eventually found peace.” What Katara did not say was that Aang NEEDED TO EXPERIENCE THE GENOCIDE TO FIND PEACE. Because who the hell would say something like that.

There are negative implications of Korra saying she “needed” to suffer to be more compassionate, especially since compassion was never a department she was lacking in before. However, as a result of what she went through her approaches to situations did change, and her “go-to” mode of operation, altered. We saw her trying to fight against the “old me” in Zaofu, and that was simply ineffective. In this final chapter, we saw her take action as she needed to, only to finally talk the antagonist down in the end. It wasn’t an increase in compassion, but it was a result of her empathizing over the fear of being vulnerable—a fear we’ve seen Korra struggle with since the start.

“I may not have been an orphan, but believe me, I understand what it feels like to be afraid. [Sits down so she is at eye level with Kuvira.] After I was poisoned, I would have done anything to feel in control.”

Look, there’s a wonderful narrative here, and it just...fell over itself on the way to our screens, and that’s unfortunate. Because it would have required so little to fix.

If you’ll allow myself and @progmanx to be hubristic here, we actually did rewrite this for my upcoming chapter (not finalized yet, but it will be something along these lines):

“I know I was in a pretty dark place after I was poisoned; all I wanted to do was feel like myself again. And I think it took seeing Kuvira being so angry and scared of letting everyone down, just like I used to be, for me to finally realize what I already knew: I can never just go back and to being that person again, and I don’t want to be. I’ve seen now what fear can do and what it can drive people to...what it drove me to do, even if it didn’t hurt as many people. That’s a part of me, and there’s no undoing it. I don’t think I want to undo it, either. Your mom told me that Aang found meaning in his suffering. I guess if I’ve found mine, that’s it. We’re all afraid sometimes, but that doesn’t make us weak. In fact, it’s what makes us stronger.”

It’s almost as if I like A Song of Ice and Fire, or something.

Would a more diverse writers’ room have resulted in a different end line? Who can say. But this at least demonstrates why a diversity of voices and a willingness to think through the implications (something Bryke aren’t incapable of) is helpful.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that #1 on this list is going to be “Korra Alone.” So I’m going to save fully gushing about Korra’s healing arc there.

But what I will say is that “The Last Stand” brought the series to a thematically apt, and rather uplifting conclusion. The season was about balance, but you could just as easily say that the series was too. This also tapped into “light in the dark,” only Book 4 took the time to explore that darkness rather than blow by it.

Seeing Korra so...at peace, was truly remarkable. We’ve seen her so insecure at many points in the series, and it really was just heartening to watch her be so decisive, so proactive, and also so *effective*, even if that meant switching approaches on the fly or, idk, leaping in front of a giant cannon and ripping open a hole in the universe and by doing so being so impressive that there was an instantly humbling effect on the megalomaniacal dictator to the point where Korra was able to talk her down with words alone.

It kind of makes me laugh, thinking of some of the Discourse™ as the finale ended: that Korra was “neutered” or “tamed.” Yeah those are great adjectives to attach to someone who threw themselves in front of a firing spirit cannon on an instinct. What we saw is a deeply matured and strategic Korra.

Remember, she was the over-eager hero who was told that the world didn’t need her. Her narrative was never going to be “I saved the day therefore I am,” but rather “Who am I when I’m not saving the day, and does that matter?”

Yes.

As for Korra, the world’s most powerful bender/spiritual leader of the masses/ with her ancient wisdom and sheltered upbringing ending up with the wealthy nonbending driver of modern innovation from the world’s biggest metropolis, well... that’s just the perfect endcap to the all-subtle balance theme. Nice.

Edit: 4/11/2017:

This entire piece wound up a little more focused on negatives than I wanted, so please read this reblog commentary for clarification/a few more notes on what was really great here.

#13: 4x08 “Remembrances”

#12: 4x11 “Kuvira’s Gambit”

#11: 4x09 “Beyond the Wilds”

#10: 4x07 “Reunion”

#9: 4x06 The “Battle of Zaofu”

#8. 4x12 “Day of Colossus”

#7 4x01 “After All These Years”

#6 4x03 “The Coronation”

#5 4x04 “The Calling”

#4 4x05 “Enemy at the Gates”

#3 4x10 “Operation Beifong”

Book 2 ranking/essays found here

#lok meta #korra #korra 4x13 #the last stand #book 4 ranking

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