But what about that Godzilla evil dark energy antichrist fight with avatar punches and Deus Ex Spirit World superpowers of light and sparklies, huh?

HOLY FUCKIN' SHIT GUYS DID YOU SEE BOOK THREE?
JESUS IT'S ALMOST LIKE THEY ACTUALLY TOOK TIME TO WRITE A SCRIPT AND COMMUNICATE WITH THE ARTISTS OR SOMETHING CRAZY LIKE THAT.


God dammit this season was so enjoyable to watch, it recaptured the sense of adventure and excitement that the series has been sorely lacking up until now. Everything up to this point in LoK, aside from the Beginnings episodes which, while extraordinary steps up from the rest of the season, and a few sparse moments in the Season 1 finale, failed to increase the other episodes' quality, felt like Nerf Avatar. There were no steaks, balls or ribs to anything, it was like watching someone else play a shovelware videogame of a show you used to like. "Ok, let's take a few main characters and put them inside this area, we'll call it a "city", then have most of the gameplay consist of repetitive and unengaging magical dodgeball with a few short boss fights MMK?.


Book Three blew it out of the fucking water, in the first ten minutes we set up that there are actual Airbenders in the world now in a way that actually makes a little bit of sense. Thank god too, not a big fan of chancing Melo's chances to score or airbending incest, the only two other real alternatives to repopulation. I really love how they set up the villians, the Red Loutus, in this season. Instead of forcing down another "these guys are bad because they are bad and want to control the world aslo did we mention that they are bad?/THIS DUDE WANTS REVENGEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeee", we have some developed villians with actual motivation that would make sense even in reality. I really like how they connected the harmonic convergence's effect on airbending to the villains as well, which ties in the entire seasons overarching theme of Change, which is neither inherently bad or inherently good. This
is such an enormous, welcome departure from Book 2 that it amazed me when it really started to piece together later. Sure, the fact that we have a chance to finally see a new air nation is amazing, but we also see new benders abusing the power, which we first see in Kai in the form of petty theft, but then later in Zaheer fucking asphixiating people.

Then they FINALLY tell Korra to get the f*ck out of the stupid city they've spent four years in, which is again an incredibly welcome change. They live in this amazing world scupted out of incredible abilities, and all we've seen is pretty much either a) spirit world, or b) HEY LOOK AT THIS INDUSTRIALIZED CITY THAT REALLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH BENDING BUT FUCK IT BLIMPS ARE COOL, RIGHT KIDS??!?1

We get to see Ba Sin Se, and enters one of the most important characters in the season, The Earth Queen.
When the show introduces her, we learn that she's a maniacal, corrupt and spoiled assface of a Tyrant who is drafting innocent people for a private army. When fans learned of Zaheers plans and motivations of anarchism, a lot of them were on his side. Every time the Earth Queen is on screen, we as an audience just want to punch her in the face, whether she's kidnapping party members or scamming the avatar or yelling at cute lil' animals, the show makes us want to kill her.

Then Zaheer shows up and He Fucking Does.

She was a terrible person, no doubt about it, but remember that in the original show, Ozai's line committed genocide and Aang still couldn't kill him because of his Airbending ideals. Now we see an airbender show up and murder a tyrant in seconds. This whole brilliant scene sets up just how nuts Zaheer is and how different his ideals are from Aangs, even though they both followed the same people.

The book doesn't hold back and keeps you hooked with its brutality, and I love it for that. After Long live the Queen, I seriously thought that Tenzin was going to die. His whole "My last breath" line at the end of the episode was really numming.


Ok I just spent a good half hour typing that out, now I just gotta squeel about some of the highlights quick.

My only real complaint about the season, aside from a few nitpicks, is that Bolin's lavabending seemed kinda unnecessary. It was cool, don't get me wrong, but it helped him in one fight and escaping a tunnel, plus we don't see much of an explanation on its sudden appearance other than adrenaline. I dunno, I don't really even have a problem with it, just a minor nitpick.