#the ethnic cleansing in this show feels like a shoehorned in afterthought

[likeabxrdinflight]

Season four needed a little work on the villains' motives. I don't just mean Kuvira, though she's certainly underwritten, but also Bataar and really the entirety of the Earth Empire supporters.

Reuniting a fractured Earth Kingdom makes sense as a political motive. So does taking back Republic City and the lands that were co-opted by Aang and Zuko after the war. But as a character motive...why does Kuvira want to do this? Why does Bataar believe in it and in her so much? And why does any of this require so much Nazi imagery and allegory?

There's something lazy about the way its all written. Why does she need a superweapon (because the atomic bomb existed in ww2). Why is she locking water tribe and fire nation people in prison camps (because the holocaust was a thing). Why does she go about reuniting the Earth Kingdom/invading independent states as a militaristic dictator (because that's what the nazis were).

It's like the writers wanted to use all this shorthand to explore fascism if fascism developed in the atla universe without one, considering very deeply why fascism even evolved in our world in the first place, and two, without considering why the characters doing the fascism were doing it in the first place.

It's like they wrote the events and forgot to consider why those events might occur. They wanted the cool mech suit battle with the atomic bomb gun but forgot to ask why Kuvira would want to take back Republic City so much that she would create this kind of weapon in the first place.

It's weak character writing and shallow world building. It says "do the thing" without explaining why the thing would be done.

#also they went too hard with the nazi allegory in a world that fundamentally CANNOT have nazis #nazis don't exist without antisemitism #and there's no good parallel to that here #the ethnic cleansing in this show feels like a shoehorned in afterthought #not a methodical and intentional reason for the ideology to exist in the first place #but hey what do I know #...I have more criticisms for this season than I did when I first watched it in college #lok