Korra good. (ALSO: *this DOES NOT MEAN any random non-bender can just search out a sky bison/the moon and learn the bend*. I think the ability to learn like this has been mostly lost as civilisation developed and they grew further from the spirit world. These guys lived isolated along sky bison for generations, airbending being the most spiritually connected element, and it wasn't even many of them. It would be so rare, so difficult and mystical at this point that doing so would be dismissed as rumour. ~ Tim
Korra’s dad destroying the spirit forest and not having much respect for spiritual traditions also fits really nicely into an explanation of why Korra struggled so much spiritually as an Avatar in season 1. Aang was raised by monks. So much of our flaws or strengths, ways of thinking about the world are a product of how we are raised
@@caffetiel in the show, we watch Korra get trained and attended by monks and Tenzin, but she still has a home with her family. I think that distinction's useful enough to say that her parents *raised* her, and the monks *taught* her. Whatever avatar lessons she drew from the White Lotus crowd, she'd still draw lessons from her time with her parents, too.
I like the reference to Aang as a "parent". A lot of people forget that the Air Nomads don't foster traditional parent/child relationships, but instead the entire temple would contribute to their care. Aang never growing up in this dynamic and not having an entire temple to rely on may have felt pressured with the extra responsibility in addition to his responsibilities as an Avatar and maintaining and rebuilding the Air Nomad Civilization. Dude had a lot on his plate, no wonder he died young. He was stressed. Heck he ended a 100 year war when he was developmentally 13 years old. Probably had a stroke.
He died young because he spent 100 years in the Avatar State and stuck in an iceberg essentially draining his life. Physically he was 152 when he died. Mentally he was 64.
Rise of Kyoshi novel spoilers ahead. I reccomend it highly, especially to anyone who is interested enough in the series to watch this video. I think that aspect of airbender parentage fits in really nicely with what we see in RoK as well. We learn that Kyoshi's mom was a renegade airbender, whom she was also abandoned by. Her parents kept her safe from their lives of crime but they still abandoned her. Aang isn't the first airbender to do (by other nations standards) traditional parenting but we can see that he's not alone in his shortcomings as a parent. Other airbenders who have come down from the mountains struggle with this as well.
@@SonGoku-bn5diThis is such goofy headcanon monsense. He was FROZEN. He did not age. He was not "physically 152" when he died at all. If this was even remotely true, he wouldn't have popped out of the iceberg as a 12 yo boy. He'd be a shriveled old man if he was "physically" over 100 years old. Stop spreading such nonsensical garbage throughout the community.
And you would be very cool if instead of the silly kites that we got in the series. We got something that resembled Hindu deities and I'm talking about the multi headed multi armed gods like Shiva and Vishnu.
@@itskevinjustkevinIronicly more interesting yeah If the first Avatar was born from the fusion of both eternal good and eternal evil, the Avatar by nature would be a neutral alligned entity kinda like Vishnu, while they do have a job to protect the world, they arent necessarly pure good or pure evil(I mean, look at how flawed each Avatars are, even Aang and ESPECIALLY Kiyoshi, Roku, and Korra) Deffinitly better than Kite Demons fighting each other because "Grr am angy"
Something I HATED about season 2 was that Unalaq didn't even feel like Korra's uncle. At no point in the show do they act like family and he seemingly has no love for his niece, so one dimensional. It's even more odd when you consider how big of a role the theme of family played in ATLA.
The guy exiled his brother & (as of season 3) was involved in trying to kidnap her because she's the new Avatar. Unfortunately he's just not a family guy
I adore how this delves into the sprituality of bending. There's so much debate over whether it's genetic or cultural or whatever, but this is a fantastic way to show that bending in this show has always been spiritual and thematic. The addition of southern waterbending focusing on the ocean rather than the moon is a great example of this. The subtle changes and reassurances of neither side of the civil war being "right" and Korra realising that it's not her job to pick the right side was also fantastic
Exactly! This must be more talked about in the Avatar community. Symbolism is too easily lost or thrown away in discussions, missing the point of the series about bending and the setting at large.
@@pn2294 this reworking of it made it very interesting to me. Thats kind of a major theme of a post world-war planet. It'd be boring if the two tribes merged without a bump anywhere along the way. The Civil War feels more like an Avatar theme than not.
@@pn2294yeah I would of went the other direction on focused more on the spiritual aspect and kora regaining her bending rather than the civil war, but then there would be no varrik and we can’t have that
I really like Rava and Vaatu combining within the Avatar. And Wan deciding that against Rava’s wishes makes it feel like the Avatar was a new force within the world that it truly needed.
Yeah I kinda felt Avatar Wun's story in the original made it clear that the Avatar wasn't a force of balance but creation taken to the level of cancer. (An interesting idea that healing can be used to harm by overstimulation to produce way to much tissue creating cancerous growth).
I'd just like to say, its always a bugbear for me that 'chaos' and 'evil' are so often conflated. As you point out, unchecked chaos can be dangerous and destructive but unchecked order is restrictive and stagnant. You need a balance of both for humanity to keep growing.
It's probably because order keeps the status quo while chaos could change hierarchies. Both have positive and negative effects, but people with power encourage positive views of order and negative views of chaos.
That's extra important considering it's Avatar. The themes have always been very emphatic about the need for nuanced, non-black-and-white morality and the importance of balancing tradition and progress.
I also hate how “order” is always conflated with “light” and “chaos” always with “darkness”. Fire is light, but also chaotic/uncontrollable by nature. Aang’s carefree nature was a perfect example of “chaotic good”. Snowflakes are orderly, frozen things are preserved (“safe” from the rot/entropy of time).
I had the biggest smile on my face when you described the little boy learning to Airbend at the end. I would've cried if I saw that on a TV screen back in 2014 and not BWAAAAAAAAAAAA
I love that each member of the team feels like they’re doing something, with Korra and the war, Asami and her business getting a bigger role, and the brothers doing their parts in Republic City. It makes each member feel like they contribute instead of just filling out the team ensemble. Everything was reorganized in a way that made the themes clear, satisfying, and in parallel with the first season you established. Nice job!
I hated the bait and switch plot of season 2 because we went from a interconnected Civil War story about the importance of culture vs collanism and the moral ambiguity of war. To just a generic story of good and economic I like how you incorporated some aspects of season 2 while still focusing on the Civil War plot. And I love the idea of the Avatar being a combination of chaos and order to bring peace in the world.
Yes, a perfect example of that are the corrupted spirits. Instead of being a result of humanity getting disconnected from the spirit world and forgetting their traditions, they ended up being nameless henchmen for the anti Christ
The reason for the big change in plot in the middle of season 2 is that the company who were animating the first half of the second season of LOK went bankrupt and fired all their animators so the creators had to scramble and plead with the animators of the first season to please take LOK on again (they dropped LOK originally because the animation was so detailed and the deadlines so tight that they were sleeping at their desks instead of going home and burning out as a result). With the previous animation company taking LOK back on they made changes to the contract, which unfortunately meant that the story had to be changed to meet the animators conditions so they didn’t burn out again.
@@wolftears13 Man how can Nickelodeon allow all this mess to happen to one of their most beloved franchises.Really how the new avatar studios can make better content than ATLA
@@wolftears13What? None of this is remotely true. Studio Pierrot didn't go bankrupt and the season was already divided from the getgo between Pierrot and Mir.
Goosebumps when you described the child touching the bison and floating. THAT is how we needed airbending back. How airbenders first got it - by working for it. Not just a lottery. There's a reason every single air nomad was an airbender.
Literally every airbender ever after the ones who left the lion turtles got airbending by a lottery, namely being born into the air nomads. no airbender ever "worked" for their bending abilities. they just worked for their skills, just as the new ones in LoK did
The simple fact that you retconned that supreme bullshit of Korra losing the connections to the past avatars automatically makes this a top-tier fix. You could've literally done nothing else and it's still a win in my book.
Lol right? I'm still not over the fact they managed to run into one of the biggest 'unnecessary sequel' cliches of killing off previous beloved characters for shock value in a setting that necessitates said character being already dead so our new protag can exist. Let that sink in tho they wanted that shock value sooooo bad they found a way to kill ghosts...
It still amazes me that people miss the point of that scene so utterly, blinded by the nostalgia of characters that you've only seen for about 10 whole minutes in the original show. The losing of the past lives is a metaphorical necessity of the themes of a New Era starting with Korra. HFM didn't rewrite the losing of the past lives-he changed the second half of the season thematically, and so that consequence was no longer thematically relevant.
@@BillErak I see where they were going with it, but it's way worse for the world and future story potential than it is beneficial to the story being told in season 2. People can hate it without being "blinded by nostalgia". Hell, Aang did the theme of "new beginnings" better in the first show by listening to the advice of the old avatars, and then ignoring it, meditating, and focusing until he was able to find his own solution. Also, it doesn't mean anything to Korra since she never consults with the old avatars anyway, so there's not even any meaningful thematic resonance in the first place. If she consulted with them and then lost the ability, it might be meaningful to the story, but since she doesn't, it isn't. It becomes pointless shock value for the viewers and a club on the head about a new beginnings theme, but it doesn't feel real or earned in the story itself, because those past lives of the avatar never really meant a lot to Korra, at least not in a way that was ever demonstrated, except for one scene with Aang when she can air bend. Also, it's silly how extreme of a solution that is to the problem of demonstrating some metaphor or theme, when the overarching lesson of the show seems to be against extreme solutions. It's like they lost the lesson about balance in their own writing, leaning too hard on the themes of New Eras to think about balancing it with the values of tradition, culture, and history.
@@BillErak you can focus on the theme of new beginnings without dismantling a big part of what makes the avatar the avatar. I’m still confused as to how korra was able to enter the avatar state without being connected to her past lives. And how does she know the cycle will even continue? How does the work function without the “spirit of good” at all present? That’s lazy writing. Another comment mentions how Aang represented new beginnings by ignoring the advice of past avatars, and this rewrite shows how korra can still do that by learning bending the original way rather than it being handed to her. I think sure, they could’ve severed her connections to her past lives and it could still make sense and be impactful, but the way they handled was simply for shock value, lazy, and honestly disrespectful to the fans especially considering it was supposed to be the last season of the show.
@@faith4657 exactly. Because, going by the show, I couldn’t tell you what Asami’s personality is. She’s nice and has a “not like the other girls” vibe. But that’s about it. I didn’t get any quirks from her. Any thing that made her feel relatable or like a real person. Hell, Wu, had more personality.
@@rileybear836 true her character should have being built more on and the relationship that asami shared with mako shouldn't have been tainted cause his a bender and a fire bender which corresponds to her mom being killed by one, this would have been really interesting but no dice. They had the formula but they sold.
Can you PLEASE tell me what Asami said in minute 47:16 after "You send the assasin?". English isn't my first lenguage, and Tim sometimes talk way too fast and I dont understand ToT and that part is an important plot twist 😢
Thank you. I ALWAYS hated what they did with the "pure good" and "pure evil" spirits. It made way more sense to have a balance of spirits, just like you see in the first season of The Last Airbender, with the black and white fish. There was balance. And that balance is personified in the Avatar. This version makes so much more sense. So, thank you.
Yes, the spirit world in ATLA was also pretty much a neutral place, as spirits were neither good nor bad. An example of that is Koh, the faceless spirit, as it was a VERY dangerous presence for Aang, but it also helped him by giving the information that he needed
Korra good. I love all of these changes, except for one: Wan learning a second element before meeting Rava. It implies that "anyone" with enough dedication and an open mind could learn to bend multiple elements, which contradicts the whole thing with the avatar being the sole person who can. I think you can have Rava (maybe and Vaatu) be the key to this ability without having to bring back the whole lion turtles giving bending thing. Maybe living creatures and "younger" spirits only have the capacity to form a connection with one element, but Rava and Vaatu being some of if not the oldest spirits, older even than bending at all, have no such limitation. Wan, having combined with Rava and later Vaatu, still has to form his own connection with each element but thanks to them is no longer "locked" into the one he was born with/learned first.
@ShuffleKoh13 true but even in ATLA it’s was kind of hinted that having some sort of spiritual connection at all is what allowed people to bend to begin with(the 100% bending rate for the air nomads). But to be honest I agree with what you said because it just diminishes the mystery those with bending.
My head canon when I watched ATLA is the reason the avatar can bend multiple elements is because they're remembering how they did it in a past life. I think it would have been more interesting if the first four avatars each learn one more element than the previous. And the only reason the avatar can do it is due to Raava and Vaatu they are more connected to their past life
This is exactly what I was thinking, but I wouldn't give spirits any role in bending. A key theme of the series is that bending is an earthly thing. Water, earth, air and fire are elements of the material world, which is why spirits can't bend. In ATLA you couldn't bend at all in the spirit world, which I think they should have preserved. I like that they made lion turtles ancient creatures that are NOT spirits. It make sense that they would give humans the power (but not ability) to bend. If you'd ask me I'd retain that element but change that it would still take a lot of time and learning to do your first bending after you've been given the power by a lion turtle.
@ShuffleKoh13 people complain about this but then they miss the point entirely, Bending is spiritual and it is genetic, the original benders were highly spiritual people (not just random nobodies) who took up the cultures and ideals of the originals, they were with them for a long time. That's how they learnt how to bend. Spirituality is the first reason benders could bend before they could learn from those original benders, that's why every air nomad is an airbender.
@@lennart7002 I like that idea, it would have been much better to keep the need for practice and discipline to learn bending rather than the turtles giving you the full power. The turtles could have used their energy bending to unlock an element the target was "spiritually" close to but they'd still have to practice and apply, which would still require learning and living with the original animal benders. Perhaps the avatar being a reincarnated mix of spirit and human allows them to be the only energy bending human, giving them the ability to bend every element and why Aang could be re-taught the forgotten art to energy bend by a lion turtle, because they're alike in that regard.
I love how Tenzin’s story was handled in this rewrite, always in the background, but almost entirely disconnected from the main story until Beginnings came around. Probably setting up for it to take main stage in Book 3, and I really like how it was built up! Also, I like how Asami, a former twist villain, had to face a twist villain of her own in this season with Varrick’s plans.
The only thing about this change i would argue against is removing the idea that humans get bending from lion turtles, because aang got his energy bending, the thing that allowed him to defeat ozai without killing him, from a lion turtle.
The writers should have people getting bending from the original benders 💧 Water-Moon Spirit Koi 🐟 🪨 Earth- Badgermoles 🐽 🔥 Fire- Dragons 🐉 ☁️ Air- Sky Bison 🦬 Leave the energy bending to the lion turtles 🦁 🐢
How about bending itself being given by lion turtles? The different types of bending can be taught by the koi fishes, badger moles, air bisons and dragons.
@@_zenith_139It doesnt make that much sense. Its a perfect explanation that people who are connected spiritualy can learn bending. It only depends which spirit are you connected to. While the Avatar is connected to the most core spirits therefor she can learn all of it
What a splendid job you did here! Preserving and expanding on the key pieces that season first establishes to better follow through each episode. I do like that you kept the dragon turtle still involved in someway as more guidance and not as a "miracle" for Korra recovering her bending that happens with Ang's avatar spirit originally. It's also much appreciated approaching Vaatu and Raava as true Order and Chaos that require a genuine balance, even if humanity may always war against themselves, rather than Good Kite defeating Evil Kite because Evil Kite is bad lol. Bravo and thank-you for this!
Second this! Might've actually finished the show if the storyline was more like this rewrite. I am one of the few who liked the addition of Beginnings, at least until they made it good kite vs bad kite and weird godzilla? I just got so confused about that whole storyline.
A spin-off series/graphic novel I would love to see is Jinora learning about and practicing her spiritual abilities. Traveling around, finding people who can see spirits, spiritual sites, and even spirits and learning from them. All so she can better use her abilities and to teach the air nomads, as they were the most spiritual of all the peoples before the war.
Even though the finale of season 2 was terribly written and definitely felt underwhelming, I admit I actually still really loved the animation of Korra connecting with her deeper self in the tree and then her spirit pushing out of her body. I thought the music and the animation worked really beautifully together then. Even if it was ultimately not really good from a plot perspective Edit: oh and KORRA GOOD!!!
"Evil kite plot where Unalaq is pure evil and just wants to conquer the world and become Satan" What a beautiful abstract of Unalaq character arc in season 2. 😂😂😂
17:03 If there was any problem with Tonraq destroying the spirit forest, it was Korra’s original reaction to it and not the act itself. She demonizes him for making a mistake he owns up to and admits was his fault, blames her mother for not lore dumping her when she was a kid, and feels entitled to know every mistake Tonraq has every made when she’s made mistakes by that point too. It messes with his character because the writers want you to be on Korra’s side on this, but she’s wrong. And this rewrite kinda suffers from a major issue of the original. Team Avatar doesn’t feel like a team. Mako and Bolin acting like brothers again is an improvement, but Korra is even more isolated than originally. I’m not saying Asami should be inserted into the middle of the war but she only feels loosely connected to the plot, especially when all the actual investigating is done by the brothers.
I understand that this rewrite keeps the characters apart more than the original, but I question whether Avatar Korra needs a team in the same capacity Aang did. In ATLA, the character were just kids, nowhere was safe due to the fire nation hunting them, the world was divided and possible bending masters scattered, our protagonists couldn't separe even if they wanted to, or risk not finding each other again. In LoK, while I don't know their ages, Korra herself seems to be the youngest in her late teens, young adult years, while Mako and Asami feel like very established in the young adult group with jobs and responsabilities of their own. They can't, and don't have to, go on a physical, cross-country journey to either teach/protect the Avatar or learn more themselves. Also, especially in season 2, with the problem being the spirits and Korra's lack of knowledge of the past and spirituallity, the journey is more introspective (even if she does travel).Also also, in the mortal side of the conflict, it is primarly a cultural issue between the two water tribes (tradition vs progress). Even considering the 'civil war' aspect, Mako, Bolin and Asami are children of the republic with no ties to the tribes (being fire-, earth-, and non-benders themselves), if anything, I loved the way this video managed to give them good reason to stay involved that was not simply "Korra is our friend".
@@anushaamorim4104 I agree with the point you're making, but that's the problem with calling them 'Team Avatar' in the show and in this rewrite (as far as I remember it's been a while). It's not an unreasonable assumption that, when they go by that title, they'll be a team. It's not necessarily whether they should separate, but that if they're just a group of friends loosely connected with each other, it should've been that from the start. In S1 (of the show) the trio are massively interconnected with the plot and with Korra. Where she goes, the brothers go. What she does, the brothers find their way into helping her do or help her defeat her enemy/escape. Setting them up like this as main characters just to have them take a massive backseat in S2 is jarring, and even more so when S3 goes right back to treating them like 'Team Avatar', until S4 changes it's mind again and puts them all in different locations. It's the consistency that I have a problem with, and that's not the rewrites' fault since it's working off a base, but it's a little worse here.
You can only do so much with the ingredients given. Better to have each character have a meaningful développement even if apart, rather than nothing happening with them together. Atla did it with sozin comet, the gaang separated and it still felt fine. I guess you could argue for bolin to go to the south with Korra so tjat she isn t alone.
The biggest problem with Korra was that the plot didn't really serve the story. The broader thematic arcs were all great, but the plot that strung the points together got so muddled, especially in the 2nd season. Idk what happened in the writers' room but it always felt like there wasn't a single, agreed-upon thematic center for the seasons that all the plot elements would spin out from, like there were three different head writers who had different ideas or something.
You might not be far off if the rumors of studio interference is to be believed, and honestly I could believe that considering ATLA was a cash cow so Korra was up to bring in big bucks if marketed to the broadest audience
@@gloomygloomstalker3878 Except the problem is Nick at the time wanted to funnel more money into other projects which is why season 1 had to be so stand alone and it hurt it because they couldn't give Korra breathing room to relearn bending [instantly giving it back because it would have been poor to leave it off on such a strong cliffhanger]. Similar to season 2 not enough was given to them and I think that level of condensed time, chaos, and not knowing the future of the show made it so everyone was on different pages and ideas trying to fit in everything they could which got sloppy. The show wanted to be more plot driven, but when the plot falters and the characters aren't their to save it [again heavy in season 2] it sadly is the biggest damage the show can have. Nick I think wanted the money and success of ATLA without caring for the people making it.
@@Unhappytimeaper and all that combined with a missing third writer, and many ideas after the success of the first series collided to make a show that was pretty good but really misses the mark in some places. Again I enjoy the show I think season 2’s second half is by far the weakest segment but everything else was such a nice continuation, it just shows that it was very fragmented
I think that the lion turtles giving the people the ability to bend makes total sense. Because otherwise that would mean that people could STILL learn bending from the original animals and anyone could become a bender (or even the avatar if they wanted to)
I would end the season with a little boy playing with an air bison alone in a field. The air bison notices a puffball of a dandelion and blows on it to watch it float in the air. The little boy stares at the group of dandelions beside him and reaches his hand out as if to grab one. A gust of wind extends from his hand and the dandelion puffballs separate into the air, floating up to the sky. The last shot is the floating flower fragments in a clear blue sky across the field. The shot goes immediately to black. End of the season.
I think this is better. The ending that Tim provided is of course well written, but it is very packed towards the end. This could be resolved with more episodes, but that isn’t the assumption of this video. So, wrap up the civil war with Unalock, Tonrock, and the conversation Korra has with her mother. after some time for things to settle has passsed the conversation between Korra and Asami happens, perhaps Bolin and Mako show up shortly after keeping the same ending Tim proposed with them all meeting up. Everyone is back together and the civil war has been resolved. Short fade to black to make you think that’s the end of the season then queue the transition to the scene with the little boy playing with an air bison in a field.
I'd actually like to see an inversion of the old "magic is fading trope" here. Sure, progress and technology are diminishing bending, but the avatar could do her f**ing job and bridge the divide inherent to progress vs tradition, and the next avatar could go full on urban fantasy with bending being very widespread with technology mixed with it in everyday life
I think that this rewrite very neatly sets things up to go in that direction if you want... like, now that Korra understands that spirituality is the key to bending (i.e. magic), and with the spirits now roaming the material world and sharing their knowledge and wisdom, I could easily imagine Korra and the spirits working together to help humans relearn that side of themselves, and bring back the "magic" of the avatar world. This story sets Korra up quite nicely to be more of a spiritual or mystical leader rather than a fighter, so having her spread the word of how to hold on to the magic makes a lot of sense! Yaaaas urban fantasy! I also think equating machines with anti-spiritualism is silly, you can be spiritual and still use technology
@@TheVivaciousNerd I think that's what he's getting at, have a season or show paint the idea it's not a basic binary, after all a theif with just their hands can be not very spiritual
@@TheVivaciousNerd It would also be interesting to see her walk a path completely opposite of Aang. Times demanded he be a warrior, while he was a more spiritual, "talk" kinda person. Korra is a brawler, but times demand a more spiritual, peaceful approach like you said.
I think that it would be better if instead of running into Katara who is upset about people forgetting traditional celebrations, it’s Korra who seeks her out to ask why people don’t know and aren’t observing the traditions. Korra grew up with Katara and was taught waterbending by her and is a southern water tribe member. I feel like your rewrite acts like she’s an outsider when she’s not. Sure she hasn’t been to the tribe often cause of her training, but Katara likely would have taught her or at east explained to her the traditions she observes. I like that you have Korra be excited to see the celebrations, and I think that still works, but I think it would be better for her to realize that this commercial celebration replaced the traditional one that Katara showed her growing up, and that people just don’t know that there had been anything different which upsets her and see seeks out Katara to talk cause of it.
That's a good point. Though at the same time, I feel as though Korra, raised around the traditional, more somber and spiritual version of the festival, would have been excited by the more fun-centered version. She wouldn't have immediately seen it as a bad thing, but she WOULD have immediately seen it as different from what she expected.
@@zoro115-s6b I keep saying this, but her lack of interest in traditions and spiritual manners matches closer towards an earth bender, not water. Earth is the least spiritual element of all of them. Her entire personality is more relatable to earth benders, not water so in a way, she is an outsider or a black sheep of the water tribe.
@@zoro115-s6b Yeah! I definitely agree! I think she would be excited especially cause she isn't very spiritual herself, I just think she would be surprised and shocked when she realized that there are people who don't know about the spiritual parts of the festival at all cause it was so important to Katara when she was growing up.
Nickolodeon was in financial turmoil. One of the head writers (of some of the best episodes) and producer, Aaron ehasz, had left, leaving only the two other authors. Plus the animation team was also disbanded. So it was hard to convince executives to invest money in an unsure bet. If it was nowadays, avatar studios could have gone for a fundraising and get the means to do a better job i guess. Buy when i see what they ve done with the live action despite a sizeable budget, sometimes, just not having the right people in the lead is enough for the whole to crumble...
I actually REALLY love how you did beginnings, and I think giving yourself the limit of keeping it even if you can alter it some made an extremely compelling version of a story we already have instead of the whole new story, like you said.
The more I think about it, the more I love the idea of the avatar being made of both chaos and order. Example - I think of Roku regretting his decisions. Him sparing Sozin could be interpreted as preserving order because killing him (or disempowering him in someway) would cause chaos in a way. But because of him refusing to lean into that chaos, it led to the 100 year war. Every avatar has made mistakes that led to consequences in the next avatar’s time, and the avatar being purely light/order takes away from the moral ambiguity that avatars can take part in.
While I love this, and I really do, there is one thing I would kind of like to do as like a add on/because they kind of missed this in beginnings too. Wan get’s banished, he leaves into the wilds, yadayada. He finds two more cities divided by a mountain but both are too aggressive for him to approach. Frustrated he takes shelter in the caves in the mountains where he meets the badger moles and respects them. After a few days he runs into a man. The man introduces himself as Shu and briefly later they meet Shu’s lover Oma. Oma and Shu teach Wan how to follow the way the Earthbenders move and thus how to Earth bend. But then one day Shu is killed and Oma flies into a rage, but Wan stops her, he explains to her to be peaceful and to the cities around them that they do not need to fight nor hide on the turtles. Some leave and all together they build the city of Omashu (at that point and mountain too settlement
I have personally never really considered the Omashu story to be true, it was just a Mythos within the universe. So i dont really feel the need to prove that. But I guess you could.
I’m inclined to agree but I feel like I’d the point is to work the Wan story better into the existing Mythos of Last Airbender maybe recognising some of the existing myths as well to help it along. For instance when he goes to meet with the people who are living alongside dragons, it’s an early encampment under those iconic peaks of the Sun Warriors, for water perhaps a small tribe with tents built around the spirit oasis of the north.
30:30 I see your side on this and partially agree, but this was supported by TLA. "In the era before the Avatar, we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves." The Lion turtle (Sozin's Comet, Part 4 - Avatar Aang) This hints at the lion turtles giving and taking away bending, as one shows Aang how to do this himself and is able to take away the Fire Lord's fire bending. What they needed was to show how Wong learned the advanced techniques from the original benders: Bison, Moon, and Badger Moles; like they showed him learning fire from the dragon.
As much as this rewrite improves on the original, I'm still missing the extended, exciting finale. Don't get me wrong, the story around it was _atrocious,_ but there were elements I enjoyed that, in a different context, could've worked really well. So here's how I would've rewritten season 2 (keeping a lot of your changes): Early on, Unalaq starts to mentor her as he did in the show, but it's not working very well. Korra is very resistant to change. Even when she accepts, and even supports, Unalaq's side, she struggles to connect with the spirits. Even when she supports restoring tradition, she just can't get out of the framework of "I must pick the right side, and police the world". And eventually, as Unalaq gets more extreme and once her family gets involved, Korra ultimately sides against him. At which point, Unalaq does enact his plan to replace Korra as the Avatar. Not sure how he'd do it, I agree that the "good spirit vs evil spirit" duality is awful. Either way, let's say they set up a way for him to do that throughout the season. But the reason he does that isn't because he wants power. It's because he doesn't believe Korra is fit to be the Avatar. He tried to mentor her, to make her understand her place in the world, but she just wouldn't understand. He is still the villain at the end of the show, but his motivations are consistent with his philosophy. And perhaps his plan doesn't even involve Korra's death, so it's not all that villainous. From his perspective, it's as if a bratty teenager was put in charge of a large, powerful nation. And a well-meaning, seasoned politician goes "that kid will run this country into the ground unless I do something about it". First he tries to mentor the teenager, but when they don't listen, he decides that power needs to be taken away. It would still play into the ideological conflict of what the Avatar is supposed to be. Both Korra and Unalaq have a restrictive view of what that entails. And while Korra's view grows over time, Unalaq's doesn't. So the main stakes of the final conflict are about who should carry the mantle of Avatar. Korra can still open the spirit portal. And there could, and should, still be a key moment where Korra walks away from a conflict and lets others handle it. But they way you described it, the climax of season 2 felt a little lacking. What I described would still require some re-structuring of the season as a whole, but I think it'd make for a more intense and satisfying climax.
Honestly this sounds like a perfect way to continue off Unulak as a villain/character going into season 3 or even be brought back in season four as a parallel to Kuviea and the prince.
THANK YOU for addressing the whole outcry over the revelation that Aang wasn't a perfect parent 😩 People be out here acting like he never spoke to Kya and Bumi at all when all he did was leave them at home whilst he taught Tenzin airbender stuff I know people don't like accepting that a character they love grew up to be a lousy parent, but flaws are what makes a character at the end of the day Also Korra good
And even then, the end of the episode went out of its way to make it clear that Aang _wasn't_ a lousy parent; he was still a good parent despite his flaws and they were all still a happy family.
See, I don't have a problem with Kya and Bumi saying he played favorites and mainly paid attention to Tenzin to teach him airbending. My problem with it is that with it is that Aang not teaching them about their _heritage and culture_ really stretched my credulity. Like, I'm Indian, my culture is in no danger of going extinct anytime in the next century, but I would _never_ leave any of my hypothetical kids out of the equation when it came time to teach them their heritage. And I'm fully aware that not everyone feels so strongly, but it's difficult for me to believe that someone who is literally the last of his kind--and whose culture was so important to him--to leave two of his kids out of that. (Really, though, that whole aspect of the series has always been a bit wonky. The story has an unfortunate tendency to interlink bending with the nations' culture in a weirdly bioessentialist way, and it's one of my major issues with the worldbuilding.)
I actually get behind Aang not being the best parent in the world. For one he lost all of his family and even his time period which is HUGE for culture understanding. Aang had learned one way of life and then was thrown into an entirely diffrent lifestyle and second Aang was also consumed by his Avatar Duty to make sure that he was not going to be the last Airbender and also he had to accecpt the fact that he was not going to live to an old age because of his 100 year sleep so of course he wouldn't be the best parent. I think he did great given the trash hand he was delt. Was it a good job? No. But did he do what he needed to? Yes. And he did try to fix his flaws even though he never won against them. And lastly, it make logical sense that this would happen because of the state of the world he inherited. Aang had to do things that only he could and that costed him and those around him dearly but he never gave up.
It was literally established in the show that Aang was as good as never home after Tenzin was old enough to train, Katara had to give up all of her ambitions (skilled fighter, healer, diplomat, reduced to a trophy wife, instead of using her skills to either serve the world or teach the new generation) to keep the family together, as well as pretty much always having to swallow her own wants and needs for Aang to feel good, and the few occassions Aang WAS home, he never really bothered with his other two kids, nor did he teach them much in terms of history or combat prior to Tenzin's birth. That the family was a total mess is further cemented by the whole love triangle history between Tenzin, Lin, and Pema. Aside from Lin staying forever salty, it's a 1:1 scenario to Aang, Katara, and any random Air Acolyte girl avaiable during their time. Yeah, Bumi and Kya smiling for a second over a family photo totally throws all of that out the window, lol. They still had a loving mother, she managed to raise them to be good natured people, but they were never rooted to their herritage, hence why they were lost for decades, trying to find a place they belong (which tends to happen to people who grow up in a fatherless household). And the worst part is, as much as I don't hold Bryke's writing skills in high regard, this actually fits Aang's character perfectly well. Never understood why people choose to turn a blind eye to that.
@@newsystembad Yeah that’s really weird. Why did they make it so that Aang ignored his two other kids just because they couldn’t airbend? I mean we see in korra that it’s the air acolytes, non benders that are keeping the air nomads culture alive. And Aang was literally the one who started the air acolytes. Then he doesn’t teach his culture to two of his literal children because they’re a water and non bender? It would make sense that Aang would train Tenzin’s bending, but other than that he should be teaching them all as all his kids are half water tribe, half air nomad. People keep saying it makes sense for Aang to be a bad parent. But this makes him horrible. With writing you can write anything. Aang isn’t a real person. He doesn’t HAVE to be anything. They couldn’t easily made him be a good parent but didn’t for some extra unnecessary character drama.
I love how you had Korra learning a fundamental basic to regain water bending. Working towards my black belt in judo after spending most of my life doing it, and I've been finding that I've forgotten a lot of things over lockdown, and consequently having to relearn things I haven't thought about since I was a child. I think the way you worded it here, where she needed to relearn something so basic you stop consciously doing it is a really good way of portraying how some skills become muscle memory, and after injury, or a long break, you need to relearn something you had forgotten you were even doing.
I like your fixes given the rules you stipulated. I do feel like Bolin was left out of the plot, but then again, better left out than the whole actor and Eska thing.
I think the idea of the avatar being fused with both vaatu and raava is so good. It just makes sense, the whole point of the avatar is to bring balance to the world, how can they do that without being balanced themselves
It does make a great amount of sense for Tenzin to be involved in Water Tribe traditions and to even attempt to veto who Korra should relearn waterbending from. He is, after all, a son of the Southern Water Tribe as well!
I love how Unalaq never outright seems like a villain here. Sure he's an antagonist but his goal is always protecting his people from spirits and preserving their culture. Plus he's still alive and probably doesn't have ties to the red lotus here, it'll be interesting to see him in book 3.
I agree. My one criticism would be that I don't like the idea of Unalaq being willing to use Varrick's tech and even seeing it as an ace up his sleeve. In this rewrite, Unalaq really is a hardcore traditionalist, so him being willing to use the tech, especially with Hello Future Me saying that its use would cause his supporters to falter and even turn on him, has much the same problem that Amon had in season 1: reducing the antagonist to a hypocrite so his supporters turn on him for easy resolution. I think it would make more sense for a plan built around tradition and the spirits to be the ace up his sleeve that raises the stakes (and no, not by him becoming a dark avatar; I'm talking about him using it in a way that isn't damaging to the lore). It would fit his character better and his refusal to use the tech would reflect how order without chaos can cause stifling and stagnation.
@@matthewmuir8884 So like him rallying the normal spirits to fight for the north or utilizing an ancient waterbending technique forgotten by the south? That could work. Personally I didn't mind him using the tech as much because it could be seen as way to show how much he cares for his people/culture, he'll sacrifice his own principles if it means his tribe is safe.
@@brandonhelcher3691 Yeah; stuff like that. I know what you mean about it possibly showing how far he'll go; personally, it was the moment where Hello Future Me said that his supporters falter and even switch sides because of the technology that made me think, "This sounds too much like the Equalists disbanding at the sight of Amon waterbending; it sounds too much like an easy way out", especially since this is not supposed to have an easy way out. I was even thinking; I know I said "not by him becoming becoming a dark avatar" but, with Hello Future Me keeping Beginnings and having Wan fuse with Raava and Vaatu, if I had to keep that idea of Unalaq using the spirits to make himself more powerful in the climax, as dumb as it is, I might consider trying it in a way that _might_ work, like maybe Unalaq, in desperation, tries to fuse with a spirit like how Wan fused with Raava and Vaatu, but because he's not in balance and he doesn't actually fully know how Wan did it, it goes horribly wrong. But this would only be if I was told I absolutely had to keep the 'dark avatar' idea in some form. Otherwise, I would just have him be using the spirits, not trying to fuse with him.
@@matthewmuir8884 Yeah see what you mean about the amon parallels, also similar to how Zaheer and Kuvira have real points but eventually go to extremes that invalidate them. I really like the show but that's an issue I'm just realizing: it brings two sides of an argument then throws one side out the window for an easier conclusion. Also as far as incorporating a dark avatar goes, not bad. He is pretty in tune with spirits, that could make him arrogant assuming that if Wan could do it then of course he could.
@@brandonhelcher3691 Thanks. Honestly, I don't think them going into extremes is the problem; they're supposed to be antagonists after all. I think the real problem is them going into the realms of _hypocrisy_ as an easy way to undermine them. "Amon has a point about systemic inequality. Oh, wait; he's actually a bloodbender. Never mind." "Unalaq has a point about the Southern Water Tribe and the industrialized world forgetting to respect the spirits. Oh, wait; he's actually pure evil and he wants to become a dark avatar and plunge the world into pure chaos. Never mind." Zaheer didn't have that problem, and was the best of the Korra antagonists in execution. He actually sticks to his ideology of anarchy and doesn't go into hypocrisy when it comes to it; the only hypocrisy he dabbles in is that he supposedly has great respect for the air nomads while simultaneously using them as bait and being willing to melt an air temple in lava. The way his plan fails with the Earth Kingdom even makes sense as a consequence of his actions: anarchic societies can only arise organically; immediately removing a long-existing power structure just creates a power vacuum waiting to be filled. Ironically, Kuvira had the exact opposite problem: she embraces an inherently toxic and hypocritical ideology (fascism) and yet the show treats her as being just as sympathetic as previous antagonists. She's a fascist; she's mistreating-her-children away from Ozai levels of villainy. Thanks. I still think the idea of a dark avatar is something to be avoided at all costs, but if I absolutely had to include it, that's how I'd do so.
Minor Spoilers: I absolutely like Korra, it has a lot of interesting concepts and really interesting and complex characters. I like a lot of the talking points it has, and it's reuse of Zaheer instead of his last appearance being his baby tantrum in season three. I love the final scene of Amon in season one. I really like Korra not being perfect and having to fight her inner demons. I found myself bored at quite a few points and skipping ahead, but the series is by no means trash like so many people seem convinced it is. Korra good :]
I think there wouldn't be such an aversion to Korra if it wasn't a part of the ATLA world. Like that's the setting and it's a good setting, and it does some interesting things with the setting, but it's basically being treated like a sequel where people expect it to be as good as ATLA and have the same sense of humour and pacing and feel and it just isn't. It's not Avatar the Last Air Bender. LoK is fine in isolation. It's not for me, but it's fine. It just looks worse when compared to ATLA. To me it's the same as the Fable series. Where they made 3 but each one is radically different in game play, story telling style and quality, and over all tone. They are totally different games that just share a genre, but depending on what your favorite of the three is and what you were introduced first, the other two are worse experiences for having that weight of expectation.
This just sounds like someone with an uncritical eye, who cherry-picks in order to justify liking something while ignoring/unable to notice its glaring issues. This is a pattern I've noticed with Korra defenders. You're not very deep thinkers so of course you'd think Korra is good. Shallowness is attracted to shallowness. Lol
@@squeezyjibbz7407 "Justify liking something" who tf are you? Anyone can like any piece of media for any reason, and you have absolutely no place to fualt them for it, _none_ whatsoever. Couldn't give les of a shit if you were a paid critic or rando from bumfuck nowhere, you're opinion on a show does not and and cannot dictate whether someone should like it or not ya fukin snob.
@@squeezyjibbz7407 I mean the show is a kids show, it doesn’t need to be obviously deep, no show or any piece of work needs to be obviously deep to be good. It still has good themes hidden throughout and deeper ideas hidden in it. It had flaws like every single piece of fiction, but it’s still enjoyable to watch and adds to the world of avatar
@@squeezyjibbz7407 Part of maturity is letting people enjoy things. When I hated Korra (which I hated for years), I wasn’t thinking for myself. I ignored the complex things I liked about the show just to fit in with y’all. In other words, I was shallow when I blindly hated the show, clinging onto videos made by E;R or Lily Orchard, instead of using my critical thinking to freely enjoy the show and acknowledge both the good and the bad. And I know I’m not the only one who was like this because when I try to form a healthy dialogue with someone who dislikes the show, they don’t read anything I say and just tell me to watch a Korra hate video (and I’ve already seen them all).
As you were talking about the Raava/Vaatu fight, I was REALLY hoping you would retcon the "Satan trapped for a thousand years" thing with Vaatu AND Raava being inside the Avatar, AND YOU DID! Love your writing Tim. Lots of fun.
This is truly amazing! My only very small question is why would Tenzin initially be so upset about the air acolytes appropriating his culture when his wife Pemma was an air acolyte? She says so in the show, that’s how they met. It seems like he wouldn’t be so dismissive of them when he literally married one. Obviously not a big deal in the grand scheme of this amazing narrative Tim has crafted. Well done overall!
Same reason anyone is upset with someone appropriating their culture, they assume they'll do it wrong or that it's not made with honest intentions or that because they're not them they shouldn't do it. You see it a lot in different forms from scoffing at the non Asian family taking their shoes off and putting slippers on to the people who get mad about non Africans wearing dreads. What people often forget is cultures evolve and that their race doesn't dictate culture it's a part of it yes but it isnt a pass card into the culture.
Nah, I mis-described what I meant there. Tenzin grew up around the acolytes. He'd be fine with them. But I reckon he could still feel a strange sense of ownership over the sky bison, an entitlement almost, insisting it needs to be *his* Air Nomad culture and not this one they've developed on their own. Given they developed independently, they'd have some stuff in common with Air Nomads, but it wouldn't be identical. It's like, who owns the kebab: Greeks or Turks? ~ Tim
@@HelloFutureMe Hello again( if you've read me before) Question: What are you planning to do with the Red Lotus? If you've already read my comment, then you know my worries regarding not introducing their existence sooner.
My favourite change is not keeping Unalaq as 1-dimentionally evil. In the original, you knew he wasn't what he seemed and was clearly suspicious - but for his actual motivations to just be comically supervillian were very silly.
30:10 Omg it would make so much sense for Vaatu to just REALLY be Chaos. Chaos will always sneak into any system, and you have to work against it. This is basically what the Avatar does - the world regularly becomes more chaotic and out of balance, and the Avatar works against that. There is never balance forever, with time there comes new chaos.
I was always bothered by Korra losing her connection to past avatars and I’m glad you fixed it. It seemed like a consequence with no repercussions b/c she still had the avatar state and she barely talked to her past lives. I personally would have had her choose to sever the connection and have that be the reason the airbenders returned. That way it is a choice she gets to make and it shows that the air nomads are more important for balance than the avatar. But your way is fantastic!
I do feel like with how people are able to learn bending through understanding the element's nature and empathizing with the natural bending animals, which does go along with the original show's themes. But does that undercut Asami's Role and the equalist cause in general? Because now it seems like we got a bunch of non-benders that are going to be told just "learn how to code", to be equal with rest of their society, which is seems a little weird
Having non benders being able to bend just like that is weird and undermines the whole inequality thing between benders and non benders especially since he chose that to be the main issue in the 2 books , also he forgot that after the war a lot of northerners went to the south so them not having a normal amount of benders is not logical (but I guess if for him bending only comes from spirituality it follows some logic since they're supposed to be less spiritual...)
i think non-benders having the ability to learn bending would be an interesting idea. there's still a large divide; imagine having to put in years of dedicated work and training just to master the same level of skill as a child who's naturally a bender.
I think it’s still made clear that some people can bend and some can’t. The spirit portal just helped unlock a new group of people who could potentially learn it.
Asami always felt like she barely had a role since past the first season, like other then providing transportation and money and occasionally fighting a couple of goons she barely has a point in being in the team at this point. Wished they kept her original character of being an equalist spy, at least from there she could have redemption arc of sort and make her more unique to the group.
The only change I would have added to yours is the attention of which spirits communicated with Korra. I would have Princess Yue and, the Korra series version of, the embodiment of the Ocean connect with Korra. They could have had a similar relationship to the North and South to help Korra see it more clearly for herself. Have her intervene as a mediator rather than an aggressor then step aside when it's their turn to put it into practice just as HFM had Korra do with the conclusion of the conflict.
I absolutely love this rewrite series you're doing and look forward to season 3 and what you're able to strengthen with the narrative between Korra and Zaheer
Great video! Getting their actual powers from the lion turtles always made sense to me cause that’s how Aang got his energy bending in The Last Airbender.
I love how this rewrite (all of yours really) gives us more interactions with Korra and Asami, even non-romantically, so that at the end when they're together suddenly (the company would never let even hints happen) it still won't be such a sudden slap to the face because they had build up and chemistry and we actually got to see them interact and get to know each other. It wouldn't make me go "huh? for real???" when it happened, I'd just go "oh, they just couldn't show it until then." A lot of what made people dislike them -other than homophobia- was that they didn't really even have a friendship before they made them a couple. They could've gotten "just gal pals" past the censors. Had a little more interactions at least. Plus Asami being an equalist, still coping with her idea of benders while not an extremist anymore, is incredibly interesting and a wonderful thing to explore when being friends with the avatar, master of _all bendin._ And once again, all on top of her struggling with losing her bending and being happy she got it back. It's like a sandwich of cool ideas and character conflicts, something this show could've pulled off. Tho, 2 critiques I have on this rewrite is that Mako and Bolin are barely in it. If this version were on TV this would be the main complaint, but, given how good the rest of it is, it's forgivable and with the time restraints it's understandable. The other one is that with the benders learning their element bending from badgers, dragons, etc, instead of being gifted it from the lionturtles, and people being able to learn bending from those animals to this day, sets up a kind of "non-benders are just stupid/lesser than/inherantly inferior" idea, if bending can just be learned after all. Even if they can't do that until the portals are opened, now they can and now that idea will form amongst people for the future to come.
Another great rewrite! Loved the video. I have a few remaining questions tho; 1. So Wan can be considered both the first avatar aswell as the first bender in general? 2. So Wan is an earthbending avatar? Instead of firebending? 3. What is Bolins function this season? I believe he did not really have much to do. 4. So korra can still only Airbend at the end of the season? 5. Do spirits now cross over to the mortal world and cohabitat the world? Like they could and did at the end of s2?
Yeah Bolin doesn’t really do anything. At least in the Original run even though he was a goofy movie star and had a terrible girlfriend at least he had more of a role than in here. I really loved the scene where he saves the president
And Bolin’s adventure have the neat payoff of ruining the plans of Varrick because Varrick made Bolin into a hero, of which the henchman of Varrick believe. This also helps develops him as a people person and PR person, tying into his arc with Kuvira in Season 4 about unwittingly helping along nationalistic conquest because he seems reasonable.
1. Yes 2. Yes but idk why he wrote the video this way, as it retcons the Omashu story too 3. Basically he's a background character, yeah. Other than the stuff with Varrick, which is more setup than anything else. 4. Korra can waterbend and airbend at the end of the season, the way I understood it. 5. (in Sokka's voice)Y'know...It was really unclear.
1. Definitely first Avatar, and yes I guess technically the first bender, but only of one element! He only searches the world for other elements when other humans have already gone on to live alongside the spirits/original benders. So there would be other waterbenders/firebenders/airbenders before him. 2. Yes, though I can't remember *why* I had to make that decision. I think it was because we needed to see waterbending discovered last. 3. Bolin barely has any function in the original season either. He can be the propaganda actor if you want, but yeah, he's under-utilised this season. 4. Korra can airbend and waterbend! I'm thinking maybe a timejump to allow her to acquire the other elements. 5. Yes! ~ Tim
@@yetz2291 I dont think retconning the Omashu story is any problem. That story just is a mythos WITHIN the universe, it probably never was the real truth.
I definitely understand why you want to move away from the dark spirit aesthetic because I don't like the idea of good and evil spirits either although if I may add my two cents I love the dark Spirits from an aesthetic standpoint I just really love the designs of the dark Spirits they look very nice.
Wasn’t a fan of Korra’s dark spirit designs. I mean the dark spirits we saw in Avatar were really creative and cool (Hai By’s monster form, Koh, Won Shi Ton’s monster form) Korra’s looks kinda cheap by comparison
I really appreciate your attitude about this whole thing. As a massive TLOK fan myself (Someone who thinks Season 2 is actually pretty underrated) I’m grateful that your attitude from the beginning hasn’t been “Korra sucks” like many other people, but rather “I like that, but what if we tried it like this”. As you put it, it’s easy to be that guy lobbing insults from the cheap seats, but it takes real guts to put your own ideas and stories out there. 😌👍
What killed season 2 for me and my like for korra the show in general was them killing off the avatar state it made me hate korr for years despite enjoying it
@@theoutsiderjess1869 i disliked that plot point but i don’t understand the deep hatred some people have for it, it ruins the avatar formula to an extent but at the same time it makes the future of the avatars journey a very different one. we have a whole new set of past lives to be excited for, whether or not we ever get a follow up to korra or not is irrelevant to me. The way the avatar and korra worlds where set out really makes you feel like it’s a real world with real people in it and in my imagination they are still out there in their world continuing the avatar journey and bringing balance to the four nations.
i genuanly like the legend of korra, but there were certain things that buged me, for one, whenever she was in a fight she had a whole team behind her to do the heavy lifting, i am not saying she did not fight or anything, she did, but the writers made her more dependant on her friends, i would have made her more firce in a battle and i loved seeing her in the avatar state, she is a badass a tomboy example that i love. I also wold have loved if she had more conection to her past lives, in book 1 episode one she allready masterd the elaments at a young age, and personaly i LOVED that idea, how she wanted to be the avatar, and how her masters told her that being the avatar doesnt only mean mastering the 4 elements, (I CANNOT STRECH THIS ENOUGHHHH I LOVED THAT FACT AND IT MADE ME EXCITED TO SEE HER BETTER HER JEORNY WITH THE AVATAR STATE) but then the writers chose to ignore all her past lives. I would have focused more on her learning airbending and learning about the avatar state. It had a good drection honestly, the probending was not my cup of tea but i liked how they included it and how korra was not afraid to be a tomboy. Also i would have LOVED to see her personalaty slowly maturing a bit more and more, seeing her struggle with the spirit world a bit, and seing her awsome self in a battle without the help of team avatar. Book 2 was honestly my favorite season, we got to see her go in the avatar state and we got to see her master airbending and we got the origen how the avatar came to be, i would just fix it or rewrite it in this way, the whole season i enoyed SO MUCH so i would keep everything the same, the battle between Korra and Vatu kept me on the edge of my seat, but instead of her losing her past conncetions i would finally make her connect with her past lives in a deeper level, making her relive the battle with Vatu she had when Rava was in avatar Wan, so her avatar vision of wan to be while she is battling, with that entering the avatar state, i would keep the scene when she says "You cannot win" and i would add something simular like when Aang battled firelord ozai when he said "Fire lord ozai you and yur forfathers have devastatd the balance of this world and now you shall pay the ultamit price" so Koorra would say smth like "I am facing you again Vatu, but this time i am not alone" stating that she has the knowledge of all her past lives icluding avatar Wan. I would also keep the line when she says "I am inprisening you for another 1000 years" and with that she impresons vatu and before her uncle tries to pull Rava out of her she traps him in ice and takes his bending away, and closes the portal. if the season ended like that and if the writers allowed korras growth as the avatar the show would be perfect for me. We see Aang going from this 12 year old child that doesnt want to be the avatar to a responsable teenager that takes his avatar duty seriosly, it would have been nice to see Korra going from a stubborn teen to a responsable avatar that keeps the legacy of her past lives
Imagine if, for a while, they had to consider the possibility of using artificial means to airbend as a way to keep the culture alive. They already have artificial means of lightning bending (sorta) and several means of powered flight. Imagine what that could have meant for Tenzin as he was the last airbender for a time, especially with what it did to his love life lol
I always thought it made sense that Aang, probably unconsciously, did favor Tenzin due to him being the only Airbender in the whole world because let's not forget one of Aang's main character traits was that he would do anything to preserve what was left of the Air Nomad culture and probably knew he wouldn't live forever so he wanted to be sure the work he put his life into wouldn't die with him.
i quite liked aang being a bad father. it was totally in character. the hope he would have felt having an airbending son would absolutely make him neglect his other kids
@@annieandelsieofarendelle3294 "bad" may be a bit cruel, but certainly not a great dad. no one is perfect. least of all someone who had to deal with the trauma of a complete genocide of his people at age 12.
When it comes to Raava and Baatu, I felt that if they wanted to make the avatar a mediator or “good” there should have been a 3rd spirit that was the one that checked that neither of them overthrew the other. Kind of like a Zygarde esto Xerneas and Yveltal. But I quite like the internal conflict of having both chaos and order in the same being that you suggested :D
If anything, that should have been the Avatar, the wild card that can work freely, it would also make the whole conflict not just about spirits, but also about the humans stuck in the middle as a third side.
I was actually recently wondering if you'd decided not to continue this series, so you can imagine how excited I was to see this pop up! Overall, I really like this. I especially like the addition of the people learning to airbend. It's always something of a theory of mine that Micheal and Bryon wanted to use LOK, with the new airbender plot and Mako and Bolin in particular, to explore the relationship between someone's personality or "soul" or whatever and their bending but couldn't due to the behind the scenes drama. The one critique I would give is that if I were to rewrite season two, I would really want to keep the idea of Unalok being a religious extremist of sorts. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, I don't think all his talk about the south having lost it's way was just a way of justifying taking it over. I think he not only genuinely believed he had a special connection with the spirits, but that he was "chosen" to lead the world into a new age of spiritual connection. And while I agree that the giant avatars, lazer fight was dumb, I actually really like the idea of Unalok being so confident that he understood spirits better than even the Avatar that he believed he could control Vatoo, even though he knew full well that was literally the embodyment of chaos.
That's a nice idea, and could work somewhat with the other changes. Maybe Unalaq found a way to seperate Raava and Vaatu, and steals one of them from Korra, seperating Order and Chaos once again. The rest of the story could play out more or less the same, just with a heavier focus on those two aspects, with Korra uniting them again after defeating Unalaq.
@@Fabiocean2000 another idea is that begginings plays the same way as the original with a few minor changes and there but korra at the end for the first time after so long uniting them once again anything could work better than what we got here in the original that is for sure
He could even steal rava and leave korra with vatu. It would make sense because the problem with Unalaq was that he was too orderly/controlling, not that he was too chaotic. Plus it would, together with the flashback, show that they really do need to be in balance.
I LOVE rewriting shows I feel are bad in q similar way you do: same character, same length, and roughly the same plotline. The way you’ve been rewriting Korra makes me truly appreciate how skilled you are as a writer, even if the foundation was already laid.
I never liked how Harmonic Convergence just... gave air bending to random non-benders around the world. Specially since the ability to bend came from the lion turtles. But your idea that a new community of air benders was born because they learned how to air bend from the flying bison makes for such a good story.
@@wisequigon How so? I only mentioned the lion turtles because Korra made it canon that bending came from them. And in the following season, the show ignored the lore it stablished. But in a rewrite where the lion turtles did not gift humans with bending, you could tell that story.
@@luluzin5022 sorry, i might understand it wrong. in my head turtles gave the bending ability and that's all. not the convergence no other animals\dragons\moon or secludind your cominity and live like the air nomads.
21:39 you know, kyoshi used her power as avatar to protect her people from the conqueror, and split the island so that her people would never be at peril of invasion again. They could have korra be in contact with her and develop an affinity to kyoshi like aang had with Roku. And then act as a waterbender instead of the avatar, protect her people and advance the story from there, whether or not it was a good choice, consequences etc etc i always found it funny theres so little talking to previous avatars here. There are so many to choose, she could have a relationship to past lives completely differently from aang. And Wan doesnt count. There is no relationship between korra and him, we just watch a wan movie inside the series and 34:15 its funny that people associate order with peace. A lynching is chaos violence but a war is orderly violence. Stuff like hearding cattle to kill is orderly violence, aninal and human experimentation are orderly violences. Not necessarily rava’s dominion is free of violence despite all that tho korra good
Furthermore, given how capitalism works today, 21st century capitalism is pretty orderly violence. For the sake of profit, everything else is ignored; workers are essentially ground to nothing, retirement soon won’t exist, resources are rapaciously used until a land is barren and even sustainability is word for continued rapacious picking, and the stuff produces reinforces all the unhealthy biases that kill people.
A really good point and I am glad Tim didn't cut off her connection to the past avatars. It would be good if even for short conversations they pop up, although that might be a similar conversation to what he had Korra's mother give. your comment on order and peace is interesting, I hadn't thought of that
Yeah that's part of my problem with her past lives being cut off as since Korra didn't have much of a relationship with any of them it felt more for shock value to fans than something that'd really affect her.
I think that wan should have learned that order and chaos need to be balanced at the same time Korra figured out water bending. He learned balance from tui and la. That they’re opposite forces but not good or evil, they’re both required. Then Kota would also then use what he did to regain her water bending.
I always believed one couldn’t fix season 2 without completely rewriting it, but I guess I was wrong! Beautiful and elegant solution to integrate all the disparate themes and events into a single cohesive story. You are truly the avatar of story writing
I really appreciate that your rewrite doesn't immediately give Korra her bending powers back, and makes her work for them. That was probably the biggest thing that bugged me about the original show, because when I first watched Legend of Korra, it was on a DVD set, so I knew going in that the second season was called "Spirits," and when Korra lost her bending, I immediately thought, "ooh, and this is going to lead to her spending the second season on a spiritual journey to get her powers back!" So it was a real letdown when she just got her powers handed back to her... not to mention that it felt like it undercut Lin Beifong's sacrifice too, losing her powers to save Tenzin's family, (which felt like a real gut-punch at the time) and then getting them back again anyway.
I also love how you redid the Beginnings 2-parter. Originally, I saw parallels between Wan and Prometheus, the one who brings fire to humanity. But now you brought in another aspect of Greek Mythology: The Apple of Discord. I also like the grayness, that order and chaos aren't diametrically opposed.
I just watched your season 1 rewrite and after watching this as well, I'm just really impressed with how you finesse the stories so that they stay true to what we know but get to actually explore the more complex themes the show presents but then mishandles. These are a BLAST to listen to!
I love that you made everyone a very in depth complicated character. No one is pure good or pure evil. It’s much more well rounded than that of good versus evil.
It’s funny, I kind of get the impression that Bryke choosing to essentially reset the Avatar cycle was actually a response to all the fans that were disappointed with the end of season one, and the fact that Korra regained her bending without much consequence. I feel like Bryke were saying to themselves “Oh you want consequences!?!? We’ll GIVE you f*cling consequences!!!” 😂😂😂 Really though, if you think about it, her connection with Raava means that she’ll always have an insight into her past lives. The link may be gone, but Raava’s memories will always be there. 😌 I get a kick out of the idea of Raava recounting her time with Kyoshi. 😂
1) “sprits” on the chapter cards 2) love the way you rewrote the season. I feel like you could be a resource at the writer’s table if they truly are reviving the Avatar universe with a new show soon
What if Aang sent Korra to find the last Lion Turtle to get all her bending back. We could see the progression of her airbending and dealing with losing her other forms of bending. P.S. Aman survives season one.
There seems to be this misconception that this season was only bad because they didn’t have time to write it because it was only greenlit after book one aired, however It was actually greenlit about a year before book one even aired Also iv listened to to lots of interviews with the creators and they seemed happy with the story and didn’t say that Nick made them change the scripts to book two or anything like that So id like to put that rumor to rest
Well personally, I kinda like the idea of the “Dark Avatar”…but not actually EVIL just the idea of another Avatar at the same time. Problem is Unulaq and Vaatu thing was just Waterbending and lasers so it didn’t even give us the one important thing about the Avatar: the Four Elements! My whole idea regarding Korra’s rewriting would definitely abandon the notion of sticking to the story but making small changes, or the idea that each season needs to have a villain live and die/defeated. I was thinking Raava could’ve manipulated or misled Wan into defeating Vaatu, when previously in all past Harmonic Convergences, they always tied and the world is in balance. Raava’s “Order” has a Tyrannical Oppressive side, the one that seals Vaatu to ensure that Order prevails for the next 10K years. And it could also explain why the Avatars always had to fix each others messes, because the world was always off balance now. I probably would remove Unulaq entirely and maximise each antagonist roles more to flesh out over 3 season each of 16 episodes. When Aang was frozen in the iceberg, Vaatu’s seal grew weaker, especially with all the violence and chaos happening during the 100 year war and when he’s freed, he doesn’t seek to destroy or rule the world but actually balance it. He has no Evil or Good desires, but fulfilling his role. So he incarnates into a Fire Nation baby, since that was a child, he didn’t need to synchronise with the vessel like Raava and Wan because the Child’s ego was underdeveloped unlike a grown man. When the child dies, one of the last surviving air benders in hiding had a child Vaatu incarnated into, the child would soon die at an early age before Aang was freed and Vaatu goes on to the Water Tribe, eventually when Aang dies, Vaatu kills the host and reincarnates into the last element: Earth. Since S4 was trying to make parallels between Korra and Kuvira so much, especially with them looking alike and even being covered in blue and purple, the idea of her being the “Dark Avatar” would work well and remove one more character from the roster so we can consolidate the writing on a more focused group of characters. Kuvira wouldn’t be a tyrant or dictator or anything like that, I was thinking she might be indoctrinated by the Red Lotus, trained under them even in that case and Vaatu’s “Chaos” can match well with the Red Lotus’s philosophy of Anarchy and Freedom, since both of those would be closer to Vaatu’s nature than Raava’s but not outright ONLY Chaos attributed, doubling down on the Yin-Yang symbolism. Kuvira in general would have either managed to escape and somehow be adopted by Suyin later, or just fully on the Red Lotus’s side. As for Amon, I’d really prefer if he genuinely was a non-bender, given a power by some powerful ancient spirit that negated bending. Like if someone shot fire around him, it would just miss him even at point blank, he can also erase bending using Energy Bending from that spirit, though it wouldn’t be ABSOLUTE like with Aang and Korra’s, so that Korra can actually learn the elements again on her own. The Red Lotus would stay the same, but I’d just like to add Bloodbending to Ming Hua cause it can have some really cool visual flare if her slain enemies blood becomes her arms or something. These were just a few quick ideas I had, but as to how I’d fully write the conflicts around them, I don’t have a fully developed fleshed out idea right now, especially since I wouldn’t want them to be a villain of the season but go through all three seasons as driving forces. All I have in mind is that by the end, Korra would energy bend Vaatu to absorb him and his past lives to become whole. Raava and Vaatu both vie for dominance but have a slight motivation to keep in balance. They both would lie and manipulate their hosts like with Raava convincing Wan to seal Vaatu. And Korra after a tough journey faced with losses, enlightenment and resolving her identity would unite them again within herself, as a mark of a new hopeful beginning. She does open the ruptures in the “barrier” between Spiritual and Physical Worlds, they aren’t portals that just teleport people into these world, humans still need to meditate but it’s now easier to go through and spirits need to have an earthly attachment to go to the physical world like declaring ownership or caring for a forest or river for example. She has a time where she loses connection to her past lives, not permanently of course but just losing sense of herself, her duty and such. Amon has an actual hatred for bending and actually seeks equality because his spiritual abilities only works on bending, he is equal to all non benders. He does it out of a genuine desire for equality not daddy issues. A lot of other things need working though, I have some ideas but also some are just vague AF. The Krew in general, even in your restricted rewrite, feel very disconnected and actually useless aside from Korra, Tenzin and maybe Asami.
love your versions of raava and vaatu - it gives me Sanderson vibes with Preservation and Ruin, where readers can sometimes mistake the former for “good” and the latter for “evil”, but we come to see a greater complexity
Omg I absolutely love when you did the first one it was soooooo good, so happy you followed through with a second and here's hoping for the third and fourth 🤞🤞
I really like the changes you made here! Season 2 was... *really* weird and kinda disappointing, so I really appreciate that people share the sentiment that it really could've been improved. If you're going to continue down this "fixing Legend of Korra" series (which, by the way, I am *totally* okay with), I guess I'll express an important concern. In AtLA, Aang's initial story arc was him going from kingdom to kingdom learning all the forms of bending. That worked swell, but when I first watched LoK, I was worried that it was just going to be the exact same thing. I was pleasantly surprised when she was pretty much immediately a master of all the elements (except airbending, of course); it really signaled to me that this was going to be its own show with its own story. However, by taking away Korra's bending and restoring each element over the course of the seasons, it kind of puts it back into that same arc that I was hoping they were going to avoid. Obviously, these are just my personal concerns. I just figured I should express them.
A season of Korra just being an Airbender and having to cope and adapt would is a compelling idea. Imagine if part of the plot was trying to keep her secret from the media, so Mako and Bolin use their bending to keep up the illusion kind of like when Katara pretended to be an earth bender. Korra can still explore the Southern Ocean bending style (it's something she tries early and it doesn't work, but it's impressive nonetheless). The energy released from opening the portal shatters the imbalance of chaos and order and knocks her bending into place. She can even have a sweet moment where she comes back and learns a bit of southern style bending.
youre a fantastic writer with a deep love and understanding of this series and you should be hired to help write the next avatar series about the earth avatar after korra
One thing I'd also be interested to see, is if Aang and other avatars take on a Guru Pathik like roles in visions, teaching about the Chakras sealed by Amon, when coming to the last Chakra, Wan appears, or perhaps just before with the Light Chakra & a vision of Korra herself at the last one.
I believe the reason that the creators choose to have fire as the first element in the avatar cycle is because fire represent energy, passion, and will power. All things necessary for him to go out and be courageous for his adventure
Season 2 is such a mess I wouldn't know where to begin, but I do love this! I also love Korra slowly getting her bending back one at a time as she learns important lessons, harkening back to the core message of Avatar, which is balance and understanding.
I love this retelling and I love even more how seamlessly it flows into the series actually: The portal naturally closes over the year and needs to be reopened at the festival; but it hasn't been done in the last 100 or so years due to the war from the original show, spirits being immortal, from their perspective the 100 years were barely over a decade, which is why they took so long And the South being a humid watery land, lots of the nuances from their culture must've passed orally, but during the war most of the Southern shamans died, which is why no one knew they were supposed to open the portal or that it was there to begin with
I can't help but think a bender using the items/tools that Asami makes for non-benders in this, swapping out which one they're using depending on the situation along side their normal bending, acting as a sort of middle ground understanding the Equalists but also understanding the benders like Mako and Bolin.
Honestly, the second season has some of my all time favorite Korra moments in it, but the ending and some plot points leave something to be desired. The spiritual aspect of the whole season is fantastic.
Korra good. (ALSO: *this DOES NOT MEAN any random non-bender can just search out a sky bison/the moon and learn the bend*. I think the ability to learn like this has been mostly lost as civilisation developed and they grew further from the spirit world. These guys lived isolated along sky bison for generations, airbending being the most spiritually connected element, and it wasn't even many of them. It would be so rare, so difficult and mystical at this point that doing so would be dismissed as rumour.
~ Tim
Korra gud!
Jesus Christ the good sovereign who miraculously healed me of my chronic breathing issue instantly in prayer, cares about you :" )
koora gud :)
Korra good
Korea good
Korra’s dad destroying the spirit forest and not having much respect for spiritual traditions also fits really nicely into an explanation of why Korra struggled so much spiritually as an Avatar in season 1. Aang was raised by monks. So much of our flaws or strengths, ways of thinking about the world are a product of how we are raised
Has Anyone here watched the bst Abortion-Coverage ive seen?
The 2 GOP-Videos of "Some More News"?
Korra was also raised by monks, though of the White Lotus rather than the Air Nomads.
Though I don't remember if she was in the reworked Book I
@@caffetiel in the show, we watch Korra get trained and attended by monks and Tenzin, but she still has a home with her family. I think that distinction's useful enough to say that her parents *raised* her, and the monks *taught* her. Whatever avatar lessons she drew from the White Lotus crowd, she'd still draw lessons from her time with her parents, too.
Isn't that what happened in the canon though?
@@noblesseoblige319 in the Canon, he was blamed for it, but it wasn't really his fault
I loved the idea of Korra learning a distinct *southern* style of water bending based on the ocean, and not necessarily the moon
Season 2 isn't the best season. It's hard to tell. The kaju Korra I can do without. It goes all over. It'd hard.
I like the reference to Aang as a "parent". A lot of people forget that the Air Nomads don't foster traditional parent/child relationships, but instead the entire temple would contribute to their care. Aang never growing up in this dynamic and not having an entire temple to rely on may have felt pressured with the extra responsibility in addition to his responsibilities as an Avatar and maintaining and rebuilding the Air Nomad Civilization. Dude had a lot on his plate, no wonder he died young. He was stressed. Heck he ended a 100 year war when he was developmentally 13 years old. Probably had a stroke.
He died young because he spent 100 years in the Avatar State and stuck in an iceberg essentially draining his life. Physically he was 152 when he died. Mentally he was 64.
Rise of Kyoshi novel spoilers ahead. I reccomend it highly, especially to anyone who is interested enough in the series to watch this video.
I think that aspect of airbender parentage fits in really nicely with what we see in RoK as well. We learn that Kyoshi's mom was a renegade airbender, whom she was also abandoned by. Her parents kept her safe from their lives of crime but they still abandoned her. Aang isn't the first airbender to do (by other nations standards) traditional parenting but we can see that he's not alone in his shortcomings as a parent. Other airbenders who have come down from the mountains struggle with this as well.
@@SonGoku-bn5diThis is such goofy headcanon monsense. He was FROZEN. He did not age. He was not "physically 152" when he died at all. If this was even remotely true, he wouldn't have popped out of the iceberg as a 12 yo boy. He'd be a shriveled old man if he was "physically" over 100 years old. Stop spreading such nonsensical garbage throughout the community.
Such an awesome comment
"You wouldn't know much of fathers, would you, having been raised by monks?" ~Zuko to Aang
The concept of Wan taking in both Vaatu and Raava got me audibly cheering.
same. The Avatar is about balance so it didn't make sense to only fuse with the spirit of *order*
it was very odd , loike it breaks all ofthe stablished history@@SerafRhayn
And you would be very cool if instead of the silly kites that we got in the series. We got something that resembled Hindu deities and I'm talking about the multi headed multi armed gods like Shiva and Vishnu.
@@itskevinjustkevinIronicly more interesting yeah
If the first Avatar was born from the fusion of both eternal good and eternal evil, the Avatar by nature would be a neutral alligned entity kinda like Vishnu, while they do have a job to protect the world, they arent necessarly pure good or pure evil(I mean, look at how flawed each Avatars are, even Aang and ESPECIALLY Kiyoshi, Roku, and Korra)
Deffinitly better than Kite Demons fighting each other because "Grr am angy"
how come you didn’t add more korrasami 😭 even a little bit
Something I HATED about season 2 was that Unalaq didn't even feel like Korra's uncle. At no point in the show do they act like family and he seemingly has no love for his niece, so one dimensional.
It's even more odd when you consider how big of a role the theme of family played in ATLA.
Right?? Especially in the water tribe
Well they were estranged right and Unalaq lived on the other side of the world. Alsp doesnt seem like a dude that's into familial bonding
The guy exiled his brother & (as of season 3) was involved in trying to kidnap her because she's the new Avatar. Unfortunately he's just not a family guy
Awatar @@Gigawolf1
This is the EXACT problem I have with TLOK. The theme of family is mostly forgotten
I adore how this delves into the sprituality of bending. There's so much debate over whether it's genetic or cultural or whatever, but this is a fantastic way to show that bending in this show has always been spiritual and thematic. The addition of southern waterbending focusing on the ocean rather than the moon is a great example of this. The subtle changes and reassurances of neither side of the civil war being "right" and Korra realising that it's not her job to pick the right side was also fantastic
Exactly!
This must be more talked about in the Avatar community. Symbolism is too easily lost or thrown away in discussions, missing the point of the series about bending and the setting at large.
The Civil War was the least interesting part of the season so I’d cut it out entirely
@@pn2294 this reworking of it made it very interesting to me.
Thats kind of a major theme of a post world-war planet.
It'd be boring if the two tribes merged without a bump anywhere along the way. The Civil War feels more like an Avatar theme than not.
@@pn2294yeah I would of went the other direction on focused more on the spiritual aspect and kora regaining her bending rather than the civil war, but then there would be no varrik and we can’t have that
@@RD-um9dy I would ok with that tbh. He felt too much like Mayuri to me. He got away with too much stuff.
I really like Rava and Vaatu combining within the Avatar. And Wan deciding that against Rava’s wishes makes it feel like the Avatar was a new force within the world that it truly needed.
Yeah I kinda felt Avatar Wun's story in the original made it clear that the Avatar wasn't a force of balance but creation taken to the level of cancer. (An interesting idea that healing can be used to harm by overstimulation to produce way to much tissue creating cancerous growth).
I still wish they stuck to the Avatar being the spirit of the earth incarnated into a human.
@@justchilling704 When was that ever said?
@@jackgreenearth452 Let me find it. It was something about mmm like that either the earth’s deity or spirit.
@@justchilling704 find it yet?
I'd just like to say, its always a bugbear for me that 'chaos' and 'evil' are so often conflated. As you point out, unchecked chaos can be dangerous and destructive but unchecked order is restrictive and stagnant. You need a balance of both for humanity to keep growing.
I mean Korra did somewhat tackle that with kuvira
It's probably because order keeps the status quo while chaos could change hierarchies. Both have positive and negative effects, but people with power encourage positive views of order and negative views of chaos.
My biology teacher always said that stability equals stagnation and progress only comes with chaos.
That's extra important considering it's Avatar. The themes have always been very emphatic about the need for nuanced, non-black-and-white morality and the importance of balancing tradition and progress.
I also hate how “order” is always conflated with “light” and “chaos” always with “darkness”.
Fire is light, but also chaotic/uncontrollable by nature. Aang’s carefree nature was a perfect example of “chaotic good”.
Snowflakes are orderly, frozen things are preserved (“safe” from the rot/entropy of time).
I had the biggest smile on my face when you described the little boy learning to Airbend at the end. I would've cried if I saw that on a TV screen back in 2014 and not BWAAAAAAAAAAAA
bro what do you mean you didnt cry at the descriotion alone : """"" D
"the boy floats"... YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY, so happy. i smiled so much there
I love that each member of the team feels like they’re doing something, with Korra and the war, Asami and her business getting a bigger role, and the brothers doing their parts in Republic City. It makes each member feel like they contribute instead of just filling out the team ensemble. Everything was reorganized in a way that made the themes clear, satisfying, and in parallel with the first season you established. Nice job!
Yeah but the feel too disconnected, they need more moments where they are all together
He basically plugged the leaks of the first half of the season, and scuttled the second half of the season entirely.
The only value that came from the Bolin/Eska relationship was Eska's moment with Zuko bonding over trying to kill the Avatar. Dry comedy gold.
Eksa could make advances and Bolin shuts her down because, well, she's abusive, she gets pissy and still hires an assassin so the joke still works!
I feel like she could still be in the show though
I hated the bait and switch plot of season 2 because we went from a interconnected Civil War story about the importance of culture vs collanism and the moral ambiguity of war. To just a generic story of good and economic I like how you incorporated some aspects of season 2 while still focusing on the Civil War plot. And I love the idea of the Avatar being a combination of chaos and order to bring peace in the world.
Yes, a perfect example of that are the corrupted spirits.
Instead of being a result of humanity getting disconnected from the spirit world and forgetting their traditions, they ended up being nameless henchmen for the anti Christ
The reason for the big change in plot in the middle of season 2 is that the company who were animating the first half of the second season of LOK went bankrupt and fired all their animators so the creators had to scramble and plead with the animators of the first season to please take LOK on again (they dropped LOK originally because the animation was so detailed and the deadlines so tight that they were sleeping at their desks instead of going home and burning out as a result). With the previous animation company taking LOK back on they made changes to the contract, which unfortunately meant that the story had to be changed to meet the animators conditions so they didn’t burn out again.
@@wolftears13 Man how can Nickelodeon allow all this mess to happen to one of their most beloved franchises.Really how the new avatar studios can make better content than ATLA
@@wolftears13What? None of this is remotely true. Studio Pierrot didn't go bankrupt and the season was already divided from the getgo between Pierrot and Mir.
Goosebumps when you described the child touching the bison and floating. THAT is how we needed airbending back. How airbenders first got it - by working for it. Not just a lottery.
There's a reason every single air nomad was an airbender.
Agreed, it was such a beautiful representation of the culture that was almost lost finding a way to be reborn.
The only flaw is that zahir is not anymore an airbender
@@Silvi-d2b not at all, this would work perfectly with Zaheer gaining air bending because of his intense dive into air nomad culture.
Literally every airbender ever after the ones who left the lion turtles got airbending by a lottery, namely being born into the air nomads. no airbender ever "worked" for their bending abilities. they just worked for their skills, just as the new ones in LoK did
@@ntexq2985 but thats how every bender gets their bending
The simple fact that you retconned that supreme bullshit of Korra losing the connections to the past avatars automatically makes this a top-tier fix. You could've literally done nothing else and it's still a win in my book.
Lol right? I'm still not over the fact they managed to run into one of the biggest 'unnecessary sequel' cliches of killing off previous beloved characters for shock value in a setting that necessitates said character being already dead so our new protag can exist.
Let that sink in tho they wanted that shock value sooooo bad they found a way to kill ghosts...
It still amazes me that people miss the point of that scene so utterly, blinded by the nostalgia of characters that you've only seen for about 10 whole minutes in the original show.
The losing of the past lives is a metaphorical necessity of the themes of a New Era starting with Korra. HFM didn't rewrite the losing of the past lives-he changed the second half of the season thematically, and so that consequence was no longer thematically relevant.
@@BillErak I see where they were going with it, but it's way worse for the world and future story potential than it is beneficial to the story being told in season 2. People can hate it without being "blinded by nostalgia".
Hell, Aang did the theme of "new beginnings" better in the first show by listening to the advice of the old avatars, and then ignoring it, meditating, and focusing until he was able to find his own solution.
Also, it doesn't mean anything to Korra since she never consults with the old avatars anyway, so there's not even any meaningful thematic resonance in the first place. If she consulted with them and then lost the ability, it might be meaningful to the story, but since she doesn't, it isn't. It becomes pointless shock value for the viewers and a club on the head about a new beginnings theme, but it doesn't feel real or earned in the story itself, because those past lives of the avatar never really meant a lot to Korra, at least not in a way that was ever demonstrated, except for one scene with Aang when she can air bend.
Also, it's silly how extreme of a solution that is to the problem of demonstrating some metaphor or theme, when the overarching lesson of the show seems to be against extreme solutions. It's like they lost the lesson about balance in their own writing, leaning too hard on the themes of New Eras to think about balancing it with the values of tradition, culture, and history.
@@BillErak you can focus on the theme of new beginnings without dismantling a big part of what makes the avatar the avatar. I’m still confused as to how korra was able to enter the avatar state without being connected to her past lives. And how does she know the cycle will even continue? How does the work function without the “spirit of good” at all present? That’s lazy writing. Another comment mentions how Aang represented new beginnings by ignoring the advice of past avatars, and this rewrite shows how korra can still do that by learning bending the original way rather than it being handed to her. I think sure, they could’ve severed her connections to her past lives and it could still make sense and be impactful, but the way they handled was simply for shock value, lazy, and honestly disrespectful to the fans especially considering it was supposed to be the last season of the show.
@@BillErak also… new eras are still influenced by the past. That can never be erased and this season literally focuses on that?
You actually made Asami have a personality. You made her USEFUL. Had she had more of an arc like this, I’d have supported the ending.
we need a korrasami girls day
Even through her character she needed to move on and find something better instead of just saying static which is what they did to her
@@faith4657 exactly. Because, going by the show, I couldn’t tell you what Asami’s personality is. She’s nice and has a “not like the other girls” vibe. But that’s about it. I didn’t get any quirks from her. Any thing that made her feel relatable or like a real person.
Hell, Wu, had more personality.
@@rileybear836 true her character should have being built more on and the relationship that asami shared with mako shouldn't have been tainted cause his a bender and a fire bender which corresponds to her mom being killed by one, this would have been really interesting but no dice. They had the formula but they sold.
Can you PLEASE tell me what Asami said in minute 47:16 after "You send the assasin?". English isn't my first lenguage, and Tim sometimes talk way too fast and I dont understand ToT and that part is an important plot twist 😢
Thank you. I ALWAYS hated what they did with the "pure good" and "pure evil" spirits. It made way more sense to have a balance of spirits, just like you see in the first season of The Last Airbender, with the black and white fish. There was balance. And that balance is personified in the Avatar.
This version makes so much more sense.
So, thank you.
Yes, the spirit world in ATLA was also pretty much a neutral place, as spirits were neither good nor bad.
An example of that is Koh, the faceless spirit, as it was a VERY dangerous presence for Aang, but it also helped him by giving the information that he needed
@@narufan987 that’s honestly a weak example
It’s like saying the Fire Nation is responsible for technology progressing so fast
Korra good.
I love all of these changes, except for one: Wan learning a second element before meeting Rava. It implies that "anyone" with enough dedication and an open mind could learn to bend multiple elements, which contradicts the whole thing with the avatar being the sole person who can. I think you can have Rava (maybe and Vaatu) be the key to this ability without having to bring back the whole lion turtles giving bending thing. Maybe living creatures and "younger" spirits only have the capacity to form a connection with one element, but Rava and Vaatu being some of if not the oldest spirits, older even than bending at all, have no such limitation. Wan, having combined with Rava and later Vaatu, still has to form his own connection with each element but thanks to them is no longer "locked" into the one he was born with/learned first.
@ShuffleKoh13 true but even in ATLA it’s was kind of hinted that having some sort of spiritual connection at all is what allowed people to bend to begin with(the 100% bending rate for the air nomads). But to be honest I agree with what you said because it just diminishes the mystery those with bending.
My head canon when I watched ATLA is the reason the avatar can bend multiple elements is because they're remembering how they did it in a past life. I think it would have been more interesting if the first four avatars each learn one more element than the previous. And the only reason the avatar can do it is due to Raava and Vaatu they are more connected to their past life
This is exactly what I was thinking, but I wouldn't give spirits any role in bending. A key theme of the series is that bending is an earthly thing. Water, earth, air and fire are elements of the material world, which is why spirits can't bend. In ATLA you couldn't bend at all in the spirit world, which I think they should have preserved. I like that they made lion turtles ancient creatures that are NOT spirits. It make sense that they would give humans the power (but not ability) to bend. If you'd ask me I'd retain that element but change that it would still take a lot of time and learning to do your first bending after you've been given the power by a lion turtle.
@ShuffleKoh13 people complain about this but then they miss the point entirely, Bending is spiritual and it is genetic, the original benders were highly spiritual people (not just random nobodies) who took up the cultures and ideals of the originals, they were with them for a long time. That's how they learnt how to bend.
Spirituality is the first reason benders could bend before they could learn from those original benders, that's why every air nomad is an airbender.
@@lennart7002 I like that idea, it would have been much better to keep the need for practice and discipline to learn bending rather than the turtles giving you the full power. The turtles could have used their energy bending to unlock an element the target was "spiritually" close to but they'd still have to practice and apply, which would still require learning and living with the original animal benders. Perhaps the avatar being a reincarnated mix of spirit and human allows them to be the only energy bending human, giving them the ability to bend every element and why Aang could be re-taught the forgotten art to energy bend by a lion turtle, because they're alike in that regard.
Petition for your next Korra video to be done entirely in your incredible Varrick impression
I love how Tenzin’s story was handled in this rewrite, always in the background, but almost entirely disconnected from the main story until Beginnings came around. Probably setting up for it to take main stage in Book 3, and I really like how it was built up!
Also, I like how Asami, a former twist villain, had to face a twist villain of her own in this season with Varrick’s plans.
The only thing about this change i would argue against is removing the idea that humans get bending from lion turtles, because aang got his energy bending, the thing that allowed him to defeat ozai without killing him, from a lion turtle.
The writers should have people getting bending from the original benders
💧 Water-Moon Spirit Koi 🐟
🪨 Earth- Badgermoles 🐽
🔥 Fire- Dragons 🐉
☁️ Air- Sky Bison 🦬
Leave the energy bending to the lion turtles 🦁 🐢
in ATLA though they explain how the people of the past learned to bend. i prefer it this way tbh it stays truer to ATLA
How about bending itself being given by lion turtles? The different types of bending can be taught by the koi fishes, badger moles, air bisons and dragons.
@@_zenith_139It doesnt make that much sense. Its a perfect explanation that people who are connected spiritualy can learn bending. It only depends which spirit are you connected to. While the Avatar is connected to the most core spirits therefor she can learn all of it
Personally, i feel like the lion turtles should have been the ones to make it so that the avatar was a reoccurring thing
This honestly sounds better than the one we got, not that I don't like Korra.
Same.
Well, it's a rewrite by Tim, I haven't even watched it yet and I think it's loads better than what we actually got.
Agreed. Great work!
Same for the first one
Disagree
What a splendid job you did here! Preserving and expanding on the key pieces that season first establishes to better follow through each episode. I do like that you kept the dragon turtle still involved in someway as more guidance and not as a "miracle" for Korra recovering her bending that happens with Ang's avatar spirit originally. It's also much appreciated approaching Vaatu and Raava as true Order and Chaos that require a genuine balance, even if humanity may always war against themselves, rather than Good Kite defeating Evil Kite because Evil Kite is bad lol.
Bravo and thank-you for this!
Second this! Might've actually finished the show if the storyline was more like this rewrite. I am one of the few who liked the addition of Beginnings, at least until they made it good kite vs bad kite and weird godzilla? I just got so confused about that whole storyline.
@@Asharra12 yeah. Where had it all come from? I like how in this version, the avatar is both Raava and Vaatu. It’s much better this way.
A spin-off series/graphic novel I would love to see is Jinora learning about and practicing her spiritual abilities. Traveling around, finding people who can see spirits, spiritual sites, and even spirits and learning from them. All so she can better use her abilities and to teach the air nomads, as they were the most spiritual of all the peoples before the war.
I think Korra avoiding taking a side also works great with her only being able to airbend, constantly evading having to make a choice
Even though the finale of season 2 was terribly written and definitely felt underwhelming, I admit I actually still really loved the animation of Korra connecting with her deeper self in the tree and then her spirit pushing out of her body. I thought the music and the animation worked really beautifully together then. Even if it was ultimately not really good from a plot perspective
Edit: oh and KORRA GOOD!!!
"Evil kite plot where Unalaq is pure evil and just wants to conquer the world and become Satan"
What a beautiful abstract of Unalaq character arc in season 2. 😂😂😂
17:03 If there was any problem with Tonraq destroying the spirit forest, it was Korra’s original reaction to it and not the act itself. She demonizes him for making a mistake he owns up to and admits was his fault, blames her mother for not lore dumping her when she was a kid, and feels entitled to know every mistake Tonraq has every made when she’s made mistakes by that point too. It messes with his character because the writers want you to be on Korra’s side on this, but she’s wrong.
And this rewrite kinda suffers from a major issue of the original. Team Avatar doesn’t feel like a team. Mako and Bolin acting like brothers again is an improvement, but Korra is even more isolated than originally. I’m not saying Asami should be inserted into the middle of the war but she only feels loosely connected to the plot, especially when all the actual investigating is done by the brothers.
Agreed. But I think your second issue can be fixed with a few tweaks.
I understand that this rewrite keeps the characters apart more than the original, but I question whether Avatar Korra needs a team in the same capacity Aang did. In ATLA, the character were just kids, nowhere was safe due to the fire nation hunting them, the world was divided and possible bending masters scattered, our protagonists couldn't separe even if they wanted to, or risk not finding each other again. In LoK, while I don't know their ages, Korra herself seems to be the youngest in her late teens, young adult years, while Mako and Asami feel like very established in the young adult group with jobs and responsabilities of their own. They can't, and don't have to, go on a physical, cross-country journey to either teach/protect the Avatar or learn more themselves. Also, especially in season 2, with the problem being the spirits and Korra's lack of knowledge of the past and spirituallity, the journey is more introspective (even if she does travel).Also also, in the mortal side of the conflict, it is primarly a cultural issue between the two water tribes (tradition vs progress). Even considering the 'civil war' aspect, Mako, Bolin and Asami are children of the republic with no ties to the tribes (being fire-, earth-, and non-benders themselves), if anything, I loved the way this video managed to give them good reason to stay involved that was not simply "Korra is our friend".
@@anushaamorim4104 I agree with the point you're making, but that's the problem with calling them 'Team Avatar' in the show and in this rewrite (as far as I remember it's been a while). It's not an unreasonable assumption that, when they go by that title, they'll be a team. It's not necessarily whether they should separate, but that if they're just a group of friends loosely connected with each other, it should've been that from the start.
In S1 (of the show) the trio are massively interconnected with the plot and with Korra. Where she goes, the brothers go. What she does, the brothers find their way into helping her do or help her defeat her enemy/escape. Setting them up like this as main characters just to have them take a massive backseat in S2 is jarring, and even more so when S3 goes right back to treating them like 'Team Avatar', until S4 changes it's mind again and puts them all in different locations. It's the consistency that I have a problem with, and that's not the rewrites' fault since it's working off a base, but it's a little worse here.
You can only do so much with the ingredients given.
Better to have each character have a meaningful développement even if apart, rather than nothing happening with them together.
Atla did it with sozin comet, the gaang separated and it still felt fine.
I guess you could argue for bolin to go to the south with Korra so tjat she isn t alone.
The biggest problem with Korra was that the plot didn't really serve the story. The broader thematic arcs were all great, but the plot that strung the points together got so muddled, especially in the 2nd season. Idk what happened in the writers' room but it always felt like there wasn't a single, agreed-upon thematic center for the seasons that all the plot elements would spin out from, like there were three different head writers who had different ideas or something.
You might not be far off if the rumors of studio interference is to be believed, and honestly I could believe that considering ATLA was a cash cow so Korra was up to bring in big bucks if marketed to the broadest audience
Probably most telling is that Aaron Ehasz, the head writer for TLA, wasn't on Korra at all.@@gloomygloomstalker3878
@@gloomygloomstalker3878 Except the problem is Nick at the time wanted to funnel more money into other projects which is why season 1 had to be so stand alone and it hurt it because they couldn't give Korra breathing room to relearn bending [instantly giving it back because it would have been poor to leave it off on such a strong cliffhanger]. Similar to season 2 not enough was given to them and I think that level of condensed time, chaos, and not knowing the future of the show made it so everyone was on different pages and ideas trying to fit in everything they could which got sloppy. The show wanted to be more plot driven, but when the plot falters and the characters aren't their to save it [again heavy in season 2] it sadly is the biggest damage the show can have.
Nick I think wanted the money and success of ATLA without caring for the people making it.
@@Unhappytimeaper and all that combined with a missing third writer, and many ideas after the success of the first series collided to make a show that was pretty good but really misses the mark in some places. Again I enjoy the show I think season 2’s second half is by far the weakest segment but everything else was such a nice continuation, it just shows that it was very fragmented
I think that the lion turtles giving the people the ability to bend makes total sense. Because otherwise that would mean that people could STILL learn bending from the original animals and anyone could become a bender (or even the avatar if they wanted to)
Exactly
I would end the season with a little boy playing with an air bison alone in a field.
The air bison notices a puffball of a dandelion and blows on it to watch it float in the air.
The little boy stares at the group of dandelions beside him and reaches his hand out as if to grab one.
A gust of wind extends from his hand and the dandelion puffballs separate into the air, floating up to the sky.
The last shot is the floating flower fragments in a clear blue sky across the field.
The shot goes immediately to black.
End of the season.
Aw.. what a lovely visual 💕
I think this is better. The ending that Tim provided is of course well written, but it is very packed towards the end. This could be resolved with more episodes, but that isn’t the assumption of this video.
So, wrap up the civil war with Unalock, Tonrock, and the conversation Korra has with her mother.
after some time for things to settle has passsed the conversation between Korra and Asami happens, perhaps Bolin and Mako show up shortly after keeping the same ending Tim proposed with them all meeting up. Everyone is back together and the civil war has been resolved.
Short fade to black to make you think that’s the end of the season then queue the transition to the scene with the little boy playing with an air bison in a field.
Wooo. Very poetic and flowery. Love it 😄🎉
O
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I'd actually like to see an inversion of the old "magic is fading trope" here.
Sure, progress and technology are diminishing bending, but the avatar could do her f**ing job and bridge the divide inherent to progress vs tradition, and the next avatar could go full on urban fantasy with bending being very widespread with technology mixed with it in everyday life
I think that this rewrite very neatly sets things up to go in that direction if you want... like, now that Korra understands that spirituality is the key to bending (i.e. magic), and with the spirits now roaming the material world and sharing their knowledge and wisdom, I could easily imagine Korra and the spirits working together to help humans relearn that side of themselves, and bring back the "magic" of the avatar world. This story sets Korra up quite nicely to be more of a spiritual or mystical leader rather than a fighter, so having her spread the word of how to hold on to the magic makes a lot of sense! Yaaaas urban fantasy! I also think equating machines with anti-spiritualism is silly, you can be spiritual and still use technology
@@TheVivaciousNerd I think that's what he's getting at, have a season or show paint the idea it's not a basic binary, after all a theif with just their hands can be not very spiritual
@@TheVivaciousNerd It would also be interesting to see her walk a path completely opposite of Aang. Times demanded he be a warrior, while he was a more spiritual, "talk" kinda person. Korra is a brawler, but times demand a more spiritual, peaceful approach like you said.
I think that it would be better if instead of running into Katara who is upset about people forgetting traditional celebrations, it’s Korra who seeks her out to ask why people don’t know and aren’t observing the traditions. Korra grew up with Katara and was taught waterbending by her and is a southern water tribe member. I feel like your rewrite acts like she’s an outsider when she’s not. Sure she hasn’t been to the tribe often cause of her training, but Katara likely would have taught her or at east explained to her the traditions she observes.
I like that you have Korra be excited to see the celebrations, and I think that still works, but I think it would be better for her to realize that this commercial celebration replaced the traditional one that Katara showed her growing up, and that people just don’t know that there had been anything different which upsets her and see seeks out Katara to talk cause of it.
That's a good point. Though at the same time, I feel as though Korra, raised around the traditional, more somber and spiritual version of the festival, would have been excited by the more fun-centered version. She wouldn't have immediately seen it as a bad thing, but she WOULD have immediately seen it as different from what she expected.
The show seems to make it clear that Korra was sheltered from most kind of traditionalism despite learning bending extremely quickly
@@zoro115-s6b I keep saying this, but her lack of interest in traditions and spiritual manners matches closer towards an earth bender, not water. Earth is the least spiritual element of all of them. Her entire personality is more relatable to earth benders, not water so in a way, she is an outsider or a black sheep of the water tribe.
@@zoro115-s6b Yeah! I definitely agree! I think she would be excited especially cause she isn't very spiritual herself, I just think she would be surprised and shocked when she realized that there are people who don't know about the spiritual parts of the festival at all cause it was so important to Katara when she was growing up.
@@thatoneinternetgirl7965 That's a good point and relates to Korra and Katara's bond!
Dude, this was so good. I wish you could put it into a graphic novel and sell it without getting sued
I still don't get how after ATLA, Nickelodeon didn't just go: "Yeah do whatever you want 100 episodes we don't care."
Nickolodeon was in financial turmoil.
One of the head writers (of some of the best episodes) and producer, Aaron ehasz, had left, leaving only the two other authors.
Plus the animation team was also disbanded.
So it was hard to convince executives to invest money in an unsure bet.
If it was nowadays, avatar studios could have gone for a fundraising and get the means to do a better job i guess.
Buy when i see what they ve done with the live action despite a sizeable budget, sometimes, just not having the right people in the lead is enough for the whole to crumble...
I actually REALLY love how you did beginnings, and I think giving yourself the limit of keeping it even if you can alter it some made an extremely compelling version of a story we already have instead of the whole new story, like you said.
The more I think about it, the more I love the idea of the avatar being made of both chaos and order.
Example - I think of Roku regretting his decisions. Him sparing Sozin could be interpreted as preserving order because killing him (or disempowering him in someway) would cause chaos in a way. But because of him refusing to lean into that chaos, it led to the 100 year war.
Every avatar has made mistakes that led to consequences in the next avatar’s time, and the avatar being purely light/order takes away from the moral ambiguity that avatars can take part in.
While I love this, and I really do, there is one thing I would kind of like to do as like a add on/because they kind of missed this in beginnings too.
Wan get’s banished, he leaves into the wilds, yadayada. He finds two more cities divided by a mountain but both are too aggressive for him to approach. Frustrated he takes shelter in the caves in the mountains where he meets the badger moles and respects them. After a few days he runs into a man. The man introduces himself as Shu and briefly later they meet Shu’s lover Oma. Oma and Shu teach Wan how to follow the way the Earthbenders move and thus how to Earth bend. But then one day Shu is killed and Oma flies into a rage, but Wan stops her, he explains to her to be peaceful and to the cities around them that they do not need to fight nor hide on the turtles. Some leave and all together they build the city of Omashu (at that point and mountain too settlement
That could be a very interesting concept, expanding on the lore of the original show in such a way!
Good one! 👍 Very good.
I have personally never really considered the Omashu story to be true, it was just a Mythos within the universe. So i dont really feel the need to prove that. But I guess you could.
Eh, that story doesn't really need to be retold? And I feel like Oma and Shu lived a lot later than Won did.
I’m inclined to agree but I feel like I’d the point is to work the Wan story better into the existing Mythos of Last Airbender maybe recognising some of the existing myths as well to help it along. For instance when he goes to meet with the people who are living alongside dragons, it’s an early encampment under those iconic peaks of the Sun Warriors, for water perhaps a small tribe with tents built around the spirit oasis of the north.
30:30 I see your side on this and partially agree, but this was supported by TLA.
"In the era before the Avatar, we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves." The Lion turtle (Sozin's Comet, Part 4 - Avatar Aang)
This hints at the lion turtles giving and taking away bending, as one shows Aang how to do this himself and is able to take away the Fire Lord's fire bending.
What they needed was to show how Wong learned the advanced techniques from the original benders: Bison, Moon, and Badger Moles; like they showed him learning fire from the dragon.
As much as this rewrite improves on the original, I'm still missing the extended, exciting finale. Don't get me wrong, the story around it was _atrocious,_ but there were elements I enjoyed that, in a different context, could've worked really well.
So here's how I would've rewritten season 2 (keeping a lot of your changes):
Early on, Unalaq starts to mentor her as he did in the show, but it's not working very well. Korra is very resistant to change. Even when she accepts, and even supports, Unalaq's side, she struggles to connect with the spirits. Even when she supports restoring tradition, she just can't get out of the framework of "I must pick the right side, and police the world". And eventually, as Unalaq gets more extreme and once her family gets involved, Korra ultimately sides against him.
At which point, Unalaq does enact his plan to replace Korra as the Avatar. Not sure how he'd do it, I agree that the "good spirit vs evil spirit" duality is awful. Either way, let's say they set up a way for him to do that throughout the season. But the reason he does that isn't because he wants power. It's because he doesn't believe Korra is fit to be the Avatar. He tried to mentor her, to make her understand her place in the world, but she just wouldn't understand. He is still the villain at the end of the show, but his motivations are consistent with his philosophy. And perhaps his plan doesn't even involve Korra's death, so it's not all that villainous. From his perspective, it's as if a bratty teenager was put in charge of a large, powerful nation. And a well-meaning, seasoned politician goes "that kid will run this country into the ground unless I do something about it". First he tries to mentor the teenager, but when they don't listen, he decides that power needs to be taken away.
It would still play into the ideological conflict of what the Avatar is supposed to be. Both Korra and Unalaq have a restrictive view of what that entails. And while Korra's view grows over time, Unalaq's doesn't. So the main stakes of the final conflict are about who should carry the mantle of Avatar.
Korra can still open the spirit portal. And there could, and should, still be a key moment where Korra walks away from a conflict and lets others handle it. But they way you described it, the climax of season 2 felt a little lacking. What I described would still require some re-structuring of the season as a whole, but I think it'd make for a more intense and satisfying climax.
Honestly this sounds like a perfect way to continue off Unulak as a villain/character going into season 3 or even be brought back in season four as a parallel to Kuviea and the prince.
THANK YOU for addressing the whole outcry over the revelation that Aang wasn't a perfect parent 😩 People be out here acting like he never spoke to Kya and Bumi at all when all he did was leave them at home whilst he taught Tenzin airbender stuff
I know people don't like accepting that a character they love grew up to be a lousy parent, but flaws are what makes a character at the end of the day
Also Korra good
And even then, the end of the episode went out of its way to make it clear that Aang _wasn't_ a lousy parent; he was still a good parent despite his flaws and they were all still a happy family.
See, I don't have a problem with Kya and Bumi saying he played favorites and mainly paid attention to Tenzin to teach him airbending. My problem with it is that with it is that Aang not teaching them about their _heritage and culture_ really stretched my credulity.
Like, I'm Indian, my culture is in no danger of going extinct anytime in the next century, but I would _never_ leave any of my hypothetical kids out of the equation when it came time to teach them their heritage. And I'm fully aware that not everyone feels so strongly, but it's difficult for me to believe that someone who is literally the last of his kind--and whose culture was so important to him--to leave two of his kids out of that.
(Really, though, that whole aspect of the series has always been a bit wonky. The story has an unfortunate tendency to interlink bending with the nations' culture in a weirdly bioessentialist way, and it's one of my major issues with the worldbuilding.)
I actually get behind Aang not being the best parent in the world. For one he lost all of his family and even his time period which is HUGE for culture understanding. Aang had learned one way of life and then was thrown into an entirely diffrent lifestyle and second Aang was also consumed by his Avatar Duty to make sure that he was not going to be the last Airbender and also he had to accecpt the fact that he was not going to live to an old age because of his 100 year sleep so of course he wouldn't be the best parent. I think he did great given the trash hand he was delt. Was it a good job? No. But did he do what he needed to? Yes. And he did try to fix his flaws even though he never won against them. And lastly, it make logical sense that this would happen because of the state of the world he inherited. Aang had to do things that only he could and that costed him and those around him dearly but he never gave up.
It was literally established in the show that Aang was as good as never home after Tenzin was old enough to train, Katara had to give up all of her ambitions (skilled fighter, healer, diplomat, reduced to a trophy wife, instead of using her skills to either serve the world or teach the new generation) to keep the family together, as well as pretty much always having to swallow her own wants and needs for Aang to feel good, and the few occassions Aang WAS home, he never really bothered with his other two kids, nor did he teach them much in terms of history or combat prior to Tenzin's birth. That the family was a total mess is further cemented by the whole love triangle history between Tenzin, Lin, and Pema. Aside from Lin staying forever salty, it's a 1:1 scenario to Aang, Katara, and any random Air Acolyte girl avaiable during their time. Yeah, Bumi and Kya smiling for a second over a family photo totally throws all of that out the window, lol. They still had a loving mother, she managed to raise them to be good natured people, but they were never rooted to their herritage, hence why they were lost for decades, trying to find a place they belong (which tends to happen to people who grow up in a fatherless household). And the worst part is, as much as I don't hold Bryke's writing skills in high regard, this actually fits Aang's character perfectly well. Never understood why people choose to turn a blind eye to that.
@@newsystembad Yeah that’s really weird. Why did they make it so that Aang ignored his two other kids just because they couldn’t airbend? I mean we see in korra that it’s the air acolytes, non benders that are keeping the air nomads culture alive. And Aang was literally the one who started the air acolytes. Then he doesn’t teach his culture to two of his literal children because they’re a water and non bender?
It would make sense that Aang would train Tenzin’s bending, but other than that he should be teaching them all as all his kids are half water tribe, half air nomad. People keep saying it makes sense for Aang to be a bad parent. But this makes him horrible. With writing you can write anything. Aang isn’t a real person. He doesn’t HAVE to be anything. They couldn’t easily made him be a good parent but didn’t for some extra unnecessary character drama.
I love how you had Korra learning a fundamental basic to regain water bending. Working towards my black belt in judo after spending most of my life doing it, and I've been finding that I've forgotten a lot of things over lockdown, and consequently having to relearn things I haven't thought about since I was a child.
I think the way you worded it here, where she needed to relearn something so basic you stop consciously doing it is a really good way of portraying how some skills become muscle memory, and after injury, or a long break, you need to relearn something you had forgotten you were even doing.
I like your fixes given the rules you stipulated. I do feel like Bolin was left out of the plot, but then again, better left out than the whole actor and Eska thing.
I think the idea of the avatar being fused with both vaatu and raava is so good. It just makes sense, the whole point of the avatar is to bring balance to the world, how can they do that without being balanced themselves
It does make a great amount of sense for Tenzin to be involved in Water Tribe traditions and to even attempt to veto who Korra should relearn waterbending from. He is, after all, a son of the Southern Water Tribe as well!
The way you made the child with the bison bond and him Airbending for the first time gave me chills
I love how Unalaq never outright seems like a villain here. Sure he's an antagonist but his goal is always protecting his people from spirits and preserving their culture. Plus he's still alive and probably doesn't have ties to the red lotus here, it'll be interesting to see him in book 3.
I agree. My one criticism would be that I don't like the idea of Unalaq being willing to use Varrick's tech and even seeing it as an ace up his sleeve. In this rewrite, Unalaq really is a hardcore traditionalist, so him being willing to use the tech, especially with Hello Future Me saying that its use would cause his supporters to falter and even turn on him, has much the same problem that Amon had in season 1: reducing the antagonist to a hypocrite so his supporters turn on him for easy resolution.
I think it would make more sense for a plan built around tradition and the spirits to be the ace up his sleeve that raises the stakes (and no, not by him becoming a dark avatar; I'm talking about him using it in a way that isn't damaging to the lore). It would fit his character better and his refusal to use the tech would reflect how order without chaos can cause stifling and stagnation.
@@matthewmuir8884 So like him rallying the normal spirits to fight for the north or utilizing an ancient waterbending technique forgotten by the south? That could work. Personally I didn't mind him using the tech as much because it could be seen as way to show how much he cares for his people/culture, he'll sacrifice his own principles if it means his tribe is safe.
@@brandonhelcher3691 Yeah; stuff like that. I know what you mean about it possibly showing how far he'll go; personally, it was the moment where Hello Future Me said that his supporters falter and even switch sides because of the technology that made me think, "This sounds too much like the Equalists disbanding at the sight of Amon waterbending; it sounds too much like an easy way out", especially since this is not supposed to have an easy way out.
I was even thinking; I know I said "not by him becoming becoming a dark avatar" but, with Hello Future Me keeping Beginnings and having Wan fuse with Raava and Vaatu, if I had to keep that idea of Unalaq using the spirits to make himself more powerful in the climax, as dumb as it is, I might consider trying it in a way that _might_ work, like maybe Unalaq, in desperation, tries to fuse with a spirit like how Wan fused with Raava and Vaatu, but because he's not in balance and he doesn't actually fully know how Wan did it, it goes horribly wrong. But this would only be if I was told I absolutely had to keep the 'dark avatar' idea in some form. Otherwise, I would just have him be using the spirits, not trying to fuse with him.
@@matthewmuir8884 Yeah see what you mean about the amon parallels, also similar to how Zaheer and Kuvira have real points but eventually go to extremes that invalidate them.
I really like the show but that's an issue I'm just realizing: it brings two sides of an argument then throws one side out the window for an easier conclusion.
Also as far as incorporating a dark avatar goes, not bad. He is pretty in tune with spirits, that could make him arrogant assuming that if Wan could do it then of course he could.
@@brandonhelcher3691 Thanks. Honestly, I don't think them going into extremes is the problem; they're supposed to be antagonists after all. I think the real problem is them going into the realms of _hypocrisy_ as an easy way to undermine them.
"Amon has a point about systemic inequality. Oh, wait; he's actually a bloodbender. Never mind."
"Unalaq has a point about the Southern Water Tribe and the industrialized world forgetting to respect the spirits. Oh, wait; he's actually pure evil and he wants to become a dark avatar and plunge the world into pure chaos. Never mind."
Zaheer didn't have that problem, and was the best of the Korra antagonists in execution. He actually sticks to his ideology of anarchy and doesn't go into hypocrisy when it comes to it; the only hypocrisy he dabbles in is that he supposedly has great respect for the air nomads while simultaneously using them as bait and being willing to melt an air temple in lava. The way his plan fails with the Earth Kingdom even makes sense as a consequence of his actions: anarchic societies can only arise organically; immediately removing a long-existing power structure just creates a power vacuum waiting to be filled.
Ironically, Kuvira had the exact opposite problem: she embraces an inherently toxic and hypocritical ideology (fascism) and yet the show treats her as being just as sympathetic as previous antagonists. She's a fascist; she's mistreating-her-children away from Ozai levels of villainy.
Thanks. I still think the idea of a dark avatar is something to be avoided at all costs, but if I absolutely had to include it, that's how I'd do so.
Minor Spoilers: I absolutely like Korra, it has a lot of interesting concepts and really interesting and complex characters. I like a lot of the talking points it has, and it's reuse of Zaheer instead of his last appearance being his baby tantrum in season three. I love the final scene of Amon in season one. I really like Korra not being perfect and having to fight her inner demons. I found myself bored at quite a few points and skipping ahead, but the series is by no means trash like so many people seem convinced it is.
Korra good :]
I think there wouldn't be such an aversion to Korra if it wasn't a part of the ATLA world. Like that's the setting and it's a good setting, and it does some interesting things with the setting, but it's basically being treated like a sequel where people expect it to be as good as ATLA and have the same sense of humour and pacing and feel and it just isn't. It's not Avatar the Last Air Bender. LoK is fine in isolation. It's not for me, but it's fine. It just looks worse when compared to ATLA.
To me it's the same as the Fable series. Where they made 3 but each one is radically different in game play, story telling style and quality, and over all tone. They are totally different games that just share a genre, but depending on what your favorite of the three is and what you were introduced first, the other two are worse experiences for having that weight of expectation.
This just sounds like someone with an uncritical eye, who cherry-picks in order to justify liking something while ignoring/unable to notice its glaring issues. This is a pattern I've noticed with Korra defenders. You're not very deep thinkers so of course you'd think Korra is good. Shallowness is attracted to shallowness. Lol
@@squeezyjibbz7407 "Justify liking something" who tf are you? Anyone can like any piece of media for any reason, and you have absolutely no place to fualt them for it, _none_ whatsoever. Couldn't give les of a shit if you were a paid critic or rando from bumfuck nowhere, you're opinion on a show does not and and cannot dictate whether someone should like it or not ya fukin snob.
@@squeezyjibbz7407 I mean the show is a kids show, it doesn’t need to be obviously deep, no show or any piece of work needs to be obviously deep to be good. It still has good themes hidden throughout and deeper ideas hidden in it. It had flaws like every single piece of fiction, but it’s still enjoyable to watch and adds to the world of avatar
@@squeezyjibbz7407 Part of maturity is letting people enjoy things. When I hated Korra (which I hated for years), I wasn’t thinking for myself. I ignored the complex things I liked about the show just to fit in with y’all. In other words, I was shallow when I blindly hated the show, clinging onto videos made by E;R or Lily Orchard, instead of using my critical thinking to freely enjoy the show and acknowledge both the good and the bad.
And I know I’m not the only one who was like this because when I try to form a healthy dialogue with someone who dislikes the show, they don’t read anything I say and just tell me to watch a Korra hate video (and I’ve already seen them all).
As you were talking about the Raava/Vaatu fight, I was REALLY hoping you would retcon the "Satan trapped for a thousand years" thing with Vaatu AND Raava being inside the Avatar, AND YOU DID! Love your writing Tim. Lots of fun.
The change for Avatar Wan to take both order and chaos into himself is BRILLIANT
Wow. Wow wow wow. This is ridiculously good. If they ever do an ill-conceived remake of Korra, I want you on the writing team.
This is truly amazing! My only very small question is why would Tenzin initially be so upset about the air acolytes appropriating his culture when his wife Pemma was an air acolyte? She says so in the show, that’s how they met. It seems like he wouldn’t be so dismissive of them when he literally married one. Obviously not a big deal in the grand scheme of this amazing narrative Tim has crafted. Well done overall!
That’s true
Same reason anyone is upset with someone appropriating their culture, they assume they'll do it wrong or that it's not made with honest intentions or that because they're not them they shouldn't do it. You see it a lot in different forms from scoffing at the non Asian family taking their shoes off and putting slippers on to the people who get mad about non Africans wearing dreads. What people often forget is cultures evolve and that their race doesn't dictate culture it's a part of it yes but it isnt a pass card into the culture.
Nah, I mis-described what I meant there. Tenzin grew up around the acolytes. He'd be fine with them. But I reckon he could still feel a strange sense of ownership over the sky bison, an entitlement almost, insisting it needs to be *his* Air Nomad culture and not this one they've developed on their own. Given they developed independently, they'd have some stuff in common with Air Nomads, but it wouldn't be identical. It's like, who owns the kebab: Greeks or Turks?
~ Tim
@@HelloFutureMe Excellent point! You’re such a talented writer Tim, I can’t wait to read your book!
@@HelloFutureMe Hello again( if you've read me before)
Question:
What are you planning to do with the Red Lotus?
If you've already read my comment, then you know my worries regarding not introducing their existence sooner.
My favourite change is not keeping Unalaq as 1-dimentionally evil. In the original, you knew he wasn't what he seemed and was clearly suspicious - but for his actual motivations to just be comically supervillian were very silly.
30:10 Omg it would make so much sense for Vaatu to just REALLY be Chaos. Chaos will always sneak into any system, and you have to work against it. This is basically what the Avatar does - the world regularly becomes more chaotic and out of balance, and the Avatar works against that. There is never balance forever, with time there comes new chaos.
I was always bothered by Korra losing her connection to past avatars and I’m glad you fixed it. It seemed like a consequence with no repercussions b/c she still had the avatar state and she barely talked to her past lives. I personally would have had her choose to sever the connection and have that be the reason the airbenders returned. That way it is a choice she gets to make and it shows that the air nomads are more important for balance than the avatar. But your way is fantastic!
I do feel like with how people are able to learn bending through understanding the element's nature and empathizing with the natural bending animals, which does go along with the original show's themes. But does that undercut Asami's Role and the equalist cause in general?
Because now it seems like we got a bunch of non-benders that are going to be told just "learn how to code", to be equal with rest of their society, which is seems a little weird
Having non benders being able to bend just like that is weird and undermines the whole inequality thing between benders and non benders especially since he chose that to be the main issue in the 2 books , also he forgot that after the war a lot of northerners went to the south so them not having a normal amount of benders is not logical (but I guess if for him bending only comes from spirituality it follows some logic since they're supposed to be less spiritual...)
i think non-benders having the ability to learn bending would be an interesting idea. there's still a large divide; imagine having to put in years of dedicated work and training just to master the same level of skill as a child who's naturally a bender.
I think it’s still made clear that some people can bend and some can’t. The spirit portal just helped unlock a new group of people who could potentially learn it.
Asami always felt like she barely had a role since past the first season, like other then providing transportation and money and occasionally fighting a couple of goons she barely has a point in being in the team at this point. Wished they kept her original character of being an equalist spy, at least from there she could have redemption arc of sort and make her more unique to the group.
Well couldn't you say the same thing for the lion turtles
The only change I would have added to yours is the attention of which spirits communicated with Korra. I would have Princess Yue and, the Korra series version of, the embodiment of the Ocean connect with Korra. They could have had a similar relationship to the North and South to help Korra see it more clearly for herself. Have her intervene as a mediator rather than an aggressor then step aside when it's their turn to put it into practice just as HFM had Korra do with the conclusion of the conflict.
I absolutely love this rewrite series you're doing and look forward to season 3 and what you're able to strengthen with the narrative between Korra and Zaheer
Great video! Getting their actual powers from the lion turtles always made sense to me cause that’s how Aang got his energy bending in The Last Airbender.
I love how this rewrite (all of yours really) gives us more interactions with Korra and Asami, even non-romantically, so that at the end when they're together suddenly (the company would never let even hints happen) it still won't be such a sudden slap to the face because they had build up and chemistry and we actually got to see them interact and get to know each other. It wouldn't make me go "huh? for real???" when it happened, I'd just go "oh, they just couldn't show it until then." A lot of what made people dislike them -other than homophobia- was that they didn't really even have a friendship before they made them a couple. They could've gotten "just gal pals" past the censors. Had a little more interactions at least.
Plus Asami being an equalist, still coping with her idea of benders while not an extremist anymore, is incredibly interesting and a wonderful thing to explore when being friends with the avatar, master of _all bendin._ And once again, all on top of her struggling with losing her bending and being happy she got it back. It's like a sandwich of cool ideas and character conflicts, something this show could've pulled off.
Tho, 2 critiques I have on this rewrite is that Mako and Bolin are barely in it. If this version were on TV this would be the main complaint, but, given how good the rest of it is, it's forgivable and with the time restraints it's understandable.
The other one is that with the benders learning their element bending from badgers, dragons, etc, instead of being gifted it from the lionturtles, and people being able to learn bending from those animals to this day, sets up a kind of "non-benders are just stupid/lesser than/inherantly inferior" idea, if bending can just be learned after all. Even if they can't do that until the portals are opened, now they can and now that idea will form amongst people for the future to come.
Or maybe- we scrap that half-baked pander-fest, yah?
Another great rewrite! Loved the video.
I have a few remaining questions tho;
1. So Wan can be considered both the first avatar aswell as the first bender in general?
2. So Wan is an earthbending avatar? Instead of firebending?
3. What is Bolins function this season? I believe he did not really have much to do.
4. So korra can still only Airbend at the end of the season?
5. Do spirits now cross over to the mortal world and cohabitat the world? Like they could and did at the end of s2?
Yeah Bolin doesn’t really do anything. At least in the Original run even though he was a goofy movie star and had a terrible girlfriend at least he had more of a role than in here. I really loved the scene where he saves the president
And Bolin’s adventure have the neat payoff of ruining the plans of Varrick because Varrick made Bolin into a hero, of which the henchman of Varrick believe. This also helps develops him as a people person and PR person, tying into his arc with Kuvira in Season 4 about unwittingly helping along nationalistic conquest because he seems reasonable.
1. Yes
2. Yes but idk why he wrote the video this way, as it retcons the Omashu story too
3. Basically he's a background character, yeah. Other than the stuff with Varrick, which is more setup than anything else.
4. Korra can waterbend and airbend at the end of the season, the way I understood it.
5. (in Sokka's voice)Y'know...It was really unclear.
1. Definitely first Avatar, and yes I guess technically the first bender, but only of one element! He only searches the world for other elements when other humans have already gone on to live alongside the spirits/original benders. So there would be other waterbenders/firebenders/airbenders before him.
2. Yes, though I can't remember *why* I had to make that decision. I think it was because we needed to see waterbending discovered last.
3. Bolin barely has any function in the original season either. He can be the propaganda actor if you want, but yeah, he's under-utilised this season.
4. Korra can airbend and waterbend! I'm thinking maybe a timejump to allow her to acquire the other elements.
5. Yes!
~ Tim
@@yetz2291 I dont think retconning the Omashu story is any problem. That story just is a mythos WITHIN the universe, it probably never was the real truth.
I definitely understand why you want to move away from the dark spirit aesthetic because I don't like the idea of good and evil spirits either although if I may add my two cents I love the dark Spirits from an aesthetic standpoint I just really love the designs of the dark Spirits they look very nice.
To be fair it’s not like the dark spirits where inherently evil, they were spirits driven mad by negative energy
Keep the designs of the dark spirits, but change their color pallette. That way they have a less "explicitly evil" vibe
@@jonasquinn7977 Oh yeah I forgot about that
@@TheLangenator Yeah I like that
Wasn’t a fan of Korra’s dark spirit designs. I mean the dark spirits we saw in Avatar were really creative and cool (Hai By’s monster form, Koh, Won Shi Ton’s monster form) Korra’s looks kinda cheap by comparison
I really appreciate your attitude about this whole thing. As a massive TLOK fan myself (Someone who thinks Season 2 is actually pretty underrated) I’m grateful that your attitude from the beginning hasn’t been “Korra sucks” like many other people, but rather “I like that, but what if we tried it like this”. As you put it, it’s easy to be that guy lobbing insults from the cheap seats, but it takes real guts to put your own ideas and stories out there. 😌👍
What killed season 2 for me and my like for korra the show in general was them killing off the avatar state it made me hate korr for years despite enjoying it
Korra sucks
@@theoutsiderjess1869 i disliked that plot point but i don’t understand the deep hatred some people have for it, it ruins the avatar formula to an extent but at the same time it makes the future of the avatars journey a very different one. we have a whole new set of past lives to be excited for, whether or not we ever get a follow up to korra or not is irrelevant to me. The way the avatar and korra worlds where set out really makes you feel like it’s a real world with real people in it and in my imagination they are still out there in their world continuing the avatar journey and bringing balance to the four nations.
i genuanly like the legend of korra, but there were certain things that buged me, for one, whenever she was in a fight she had a whole team behind her to do the heavy lifting, i am not saying she did not fight or anything, she did, but the writers made her more dependant on her friends, i would have made her more firce in a battle and i loved seeing her in the avatar state, she is a badass a tomboy example that i love. I also wold have loved if she had more conection to her past lives, in book 1 episode one she allready masterd the elaments at a young age, and personaly i LOVED that idea, how she wanted to be the avatar, and how her masters told her that being the avatar doesnt only mean mastering the 4 elements, (I CANNOT STRECH THIS ENOUGHHHH I LOVED THAT FACT AND IT MADE ME EXCITED TO SEE HER BETTER HER JEORNY WITH THE AVATAR STATE) but then the writers chose to ignore all her past lives. I would have focused more on her learning airbending and learning about the avatar state. It had a good drection honestly, the probending was not my cup of tea but i liked how they included it and how korra was not afraid to be a tomboy. Also i would have LOVED to see her personalaty slowly maturing a bit more and more, seeing her struggle with the spirit world a bit, and seing her awsome self in a battle without the help of team avatar. Book 2 was honestly my favorite season, we got to see her go in the avatar state and we got to see her master airbending and we got the origen how the avatar came to be, i would just fix it or rewrite it in this way, the whole season i enoyed SO MUCH so i would keep everything the same, the battle between Korra and Vatu kept me on the edge of my seat, but instead of her losing her past conncetions i would finally make her connect with her past lives in a deeper level, making her relive the battle with Vatu she had when Rava was in avatar Wan, so her avatar vision of wan to be while she is battling, with that entering the avatar state, i would keep the scene when she says "You cannot win" and i would add something simular like when Aang battled firelord ozai when he said "Fire lord ozai you and yur forfathers have devastatd the balance of this world and now you shall pay the ultamit price" so Koorra would say smth like "I am facing you again Vatu, but this time i am not alone" stating that she has the knowledge of all her past lives icluding avatar Wan. I would also keep the line when she says "I am inprisening you for another 1000 years" and with that she impresons vatu and before her uncle tries to pull Rava out of her she traps him in ice and takes his bending away, and closes the portal.
if the season ended like that and if the writers allowed korras growth as the avatar the show would be perfect for me. We see Aang going from this 12 year old child that doesnt want to be the avatar to a responsable teenager that takes his avatar duty seriosly, it would have been nice to see Korra going from a stubborn teen to a responsable avatar that keeps the legacy of her past lives
Typical Korea fans
Way to soft to accept that their show might just suck ( which it does )
Imagine if, for a while, they had to consider the possibility of using artificial means to airbend as a way to keep the culture alive. They already have artificial means of lightning bending (sorta) and several means of powered flight. Imagine what that could have meant for Tenzin as he was the last airbender for a time, especially with what it did to his love life lol
I just pretend it doesn't exist. There I fixed it.
I always thought it made sense that Aang, probably unconsciously, did favor Tenzin due to him being the only Airbender in the whole world because let's not forget one of Aang's main character traits was that he would do anything to preserve what was left of the Air Nomad culture and probably knew he wouldn't live forever so he wanted to be sure the work he put his life into wouldn't die with him.
i quite liked aang being a bad father. it was totally in character. the hope he would have felt having an airbending son would absolutely make him neglect his other kids
@@ShrexualTension I wouldn’t say he’s an overall bad father by the probably raised them like the monks raised him.
@@annieandelsieofarendelle3294 "bad" may be a bit cruel, but certainly not a great dad. no one is perfect. least of all someone who had to deal with the trauma of a complete genocide of his people at age 12.
When it comes to Raava and Baatu, I felt that if they wanted to make the avatar a mediator or “good” there should have been a 3rd spirit that was the one that checked that neither of them overthrew the other. Kind of like a Zygarde esto Xerneas and Yveltal.
But I quite like the internal conflict of having both chaos and order in the same being that you suggested :D
If anything, that should have been the Avatar, the wild card that can work freely, it would also make the whole conflict not just about spirits, but also about the humans stuck in the middle as a third side.
*Vaatu
I was actually recently wondering if you'd decided not to continue this series, so you can imagine how excited I was to see this pop up!
Overall, I really like this. I especially like the addition of the people learning to airbend. It's always something of a theory of mine that Micheal and Bryon wanted to use LOK, with the new airbender plot and Mako and Bolin in particular, to explore the relationship between someone's personality or "soul" or whatever and their bending but couldn't due to the behind the scenes drama.
The one critique I would give is that if I were to rewrite season two, I would really want to keep the idea of Unalok being a religious extremist of sorts. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, I don't think all his talk about the south having lost it's way was just a way of justifying taking it over. I think he not only genuinely believed he had a special connection with the spirits, but that he was "chosen" to lead the world into a new age of spiritual connection. And while I agree that the giant avatars, lazer fight was dumb, I actually really like the idea of Unalok being so confident that he understood spirits better than even the Avatar that he believed he could control Vatoo, even though he knew full well that was literally the embodyment of chaos.
That's a nice idea, and could work somewhat with the other changes. Maybe Unalaq found a way to seperate Raava and Vaatu, and steals one of them from Korra, seperating Order and Chaos once again. The rest of the story could play out more or less the same, just with a heavier focus on those two aspects, with Korra uniting them again after defeating Unalaq.
@@Fabiocean2000 another idea is that begginings plays the same way as the original with a few minor changes and there but korra at the end for the first time after so long uniting them once again anything could work better than what we got here in the original that is for sure
He could even steal rava and leave korra with vatu. It would make sense because the problem with Unalaq was that he was too orderly/controlling, not that he was too chaotic. Plus it would, together with the flashback, show that they really do need to be in balance.
@@orisandler9144 yeah true that is good idea
I LOVE rewriting shows I feel are bad in q similar way you do: same character, same length, and roughly the same plotline. The way you’ve been rewriting Korra makes me truly appreciate how skilled you are as a writer, even if the foundation was already laid.
I never liked how Harmonic Convergence just... gave air bending to random non-benders around the world. Specially since the ability to bend came from the lion turtles. But your idea that a new community of air benders was born because they learned how to air bend from the flying bison makes for such a good story.
you contradict yourself...
@@wisequigon How so? I only mentioned the lion turtles because Korra made it canon that bending came from them. And in the following season, the show ignored the lore it stablished. But in a rewrite where the lion turtles did not gift humans with bending, you could tell that story.
@@luluzin5022 sorry, i might understand it wrong. in my head turtles gave the bending ability and that's all. not the convergence no other animals\dragons\moon or secludind your cominity and live like the air nomads.
21:39 you know, kyoshi used her power as avatar to protect her people from the conqueror, and split the island so that her people would never be at peril of invasion again. They could have korra be in contact with her and develop an affinity to kyoshi like aang had with Roku. And then act as a waterbender instead of the avatar, protect her people and advance the story from there, whether or not it was a good choice, consequences etc etc
i always found it funny theres so little talking to previous avatars here. There are so many to choose, she could have a relationship to past lives completely differently from aang. And Wan doesnt count. There is no relationship between korra and him, we just watch a wan movie inside the series
and 34:15 its funny that people associate order with peace. A lynching is chaos violence but a war is orderly violence. Stuff like hearding cattle to kill is orderly violence, aninal and human experimentation are orderly violences. Not necessarily rava’s dominion is free of violence
despite all that tho korra good
Furthermore, given how capitalism works today, 21st century capitalism is pretty orderly violence. For the sake of profit, everything else is ignored; workers are essentially ground to nothing, retirement soon won’t exist, resources are rapaciously used until a land is barren and even sustainability is word for continued rapacious picking, and the stuff produces reinforces all the unhealthy biases that kill people.
"War is a chaos given order" - me in the shower 2022
@@bartoszkosmowski7149 You should write a book in the shower
A really good point and I am glad Tim didn't cut off her connection to the past avatars. It would be good if even for short conversations they pop up, although that might be a similar conversation to what he had Korra's mother give. your comment on order and peace is interesting, I hadn't thought of that
Yeah that's part of my problem with her past lives being cut off as since Korra didn't have much of a relationship with any of them it felt more for shock value to fans than something that'd really affect her.
I think that wan should have learned that order and chaos need to be balanced at the same time Korra figured out water bending. He learned balance from tui and la. That they’re opposite forces but not good or evil, they’re both required. Then Kota would also then use what he did to regain her water bending.
I always believed one couldn’t fix season 2 without completely rewriting it, but I guess I was wrong! Beautiful and elegant solution to integrate all the disparate themes and events into a single cohesive story. You are truly the avatar of story writing
I really appreciate that your rewrite doesn't immediately give Korra her bending powers back, and makes her work for them. That was probably the biggest thing that bugged me about the original show, because when I first watched Legend of Korra, it was on a DVD set, so I knew going in that the second season was called "Spirits," and when Korra lost her bending, I immediately thought, "ooh, and this is going to lead to her spending the second season on a spiritual journey to get her powers back!" So it was a real letdown when she just got her powers handed back to her... not to mention that it felt like it undercut Lin Beifong's sacrifice too, losing her powers to save Tenzin's family, (which felt like a real gut-punch at the time) and then getting them back again anyway.
I love how you showed air Bender's return here! The original show made it feel more like a deus machina, here it progressed more naturally
I also love how you redid the Beginnings 2-parter. Originally, I saw parallels between Wan and Prometheus, the one who brings fire to humanity. But now you brought in another aspect of Greek Mythology: The Apple of Discord.
I also like the grayness, that order and chaos aren't diametrically opposed.
I just watched your season 1 rewrite and after watching this as well, I'm just really impressed with how you finesse the stories so that they stay true to what we know but get to actually explore the more complex themes the show presents but then mishandles. These are a BLAST to listen to!
I love that you made everyone a very in depth complicated character. No one is pure good or pure evil. It’s much more well rounded than that of good versus evil.
It’s funny, I kind of get the impression that Bryke choosing to essentially reset the Avatar cycle was actually a response to all the fans that were disappointed with the end of season one, and the fact that Korra regained her bending without much consequence. I feel like Bryke were saying to themselves “Oh you want consequences!?!? We’ll GIVE you f*cling consequences!!!” 😂😂😂
Really though, if you think about it, her connection with Raava means that she’ll always have an insight into her past lives. The link may be gone, but Raava’s memories will always be there. 😌 I get a kick out of the idea of Raava recounting her time with Kyoshi. 😂
I agree it did seem like a petty "oh well here you go then! "
1) “sprits” on the chapter cards 2) love the way you rewrote the season. I feel like you could be a resource at the writer’s table if they truly are reviving the Avatar universe with a new show soon
What if Aang sent Korra to find the last Lion Turtle to get all her bending back. We could see the progression of her airbending and dealing with losing her other forms of bending.
P.S. Aman survives season one.
i would like to see this as a remake. the story is much more coherent this way. grate work!
Korra good :)
There seems to be this misconception that this season was only bad because they didn’t have time to write it because it was only greenlit after book one aired, however It was actually greenlit about a year before book one even aired
Also iv listened to to lots of interviews with the creators and they seemed happy with the story and didn’t say that Nick made them change the scripts to book two or anything like that
So id like to put that rumor to rest
So they really were just horrible writers.
Well personally, I kinda like the idea of the “Dark Avatar”…but not actually EVIL just the idea of another Avatar at the same time. Problem is Unulaq and Vaatu thing was just Waterbending and lasers so it didn’t even give us the one important thing about the Avatar: the Four Elements!
My whole idea regarding Korra’s rewriting would definitely abandon the notion of sticking to the story but making small changes, or the idea that each season needs to have a villain live and die/defeated.
I was thinking Raava could’ve manipulated or misled Wan into defeating Vaatu, when previously in all past Harmonic Convergences, they always tied and the world is in balance. Raava’s “Order” has a Tyrannical Oppressive side, the one that seals Vaatu to ensure that Order prevails for the next 10K years. And it could also explain why the Avatars always had to fix each others messes, because the world was always off balance now. I probably would remove Unulaq entirely and maximise each antagonist roles more to flesh out over 3 season each of 16 episodes.
When Aang was frozen in the iceberg, Vaatu’s seal grew weaker, especially with all the violence and chaos happening during the 100 year war and when he’s freed, he doesn’t seek to destroy or rule the world but actually balance it. He has no Evil or Good desires, but fulfilling his role.
So he incarnates into a Fire Nation baby, since that was a child, he didn’t need to synchronise with the vessel like Raava and Wan because the Child’s ego was underdeveloped unlike a grown man. When the child dies, one of the last surviving air benders in hiding had a child Vaatu incarnated into, the child would soon die at an early age before Aang was freed and Vaatu goes on to the Water Tribe, eventually when Aang dies, Vaatu kills the host and reincarnates into the last element: Earth.
Since S4 was trying to make parallels between Korra and Kuvira so much, especially with them looking alike and even being covered in blue and purple, the idea of her being the “Dark Avatar” would work well and remove one more character from the roster so we can consolidate the writing on a more focused group of characters.
Kuvira wouldn’t be a tyrant or dictator or anything like that, I was thinking she might be indoctrinated by the Red Lotus, trained under them even in that case and Vaatu’s “Chaos” can match well with the Red Lotus’s philosophy of Anarchy and Freedom, since both of those would be closer to Vaatu’s nature than Raava’s but not outright ONLY Chaos attributed, doubling down on the Yin-Yang symbolism.
Kuvira in general would have either managed to escape and somehow be adopted by Suyin later, or just fully on the Red Lotus’s side.
As for Amon, I’d really prefer if he genuinely was a non-bender, given a power by some powerful ancient spirit that negated bending. Like if someone shot fire around him, it would just miss him even at point blank, he can also erase bending using Energy Bending from that spirit, though it wouldn’t be ABSOLUTE like with Aang and Korra’s, so that Korra can actually learn the elements again on her own.
The Red Lotus would stay the same, but I’d just like to add Bloodbending to Ming Hua cause it can have some really cool visual flare if her slain enemies blood becomes her arms or something.
These were just a few quick ideas I had, but as to how I’d fully write the conflicts around them, I don’t have a fully developed fleshed out idea right now, especially since I wouldn’t want them to be a villain of the season but go through all three seasons as driving forces.
All I have in mind is that by the end, Korra would energy bend Vaatu to absorb him and his past lives to become whole. Raava and Vaatu both vie for dominance but have a slight motivation to keep in balance. They both would lie and manipulate their hosts like with Raava convincing Wan to seal Vaatu. And Korra after a tough journey faced with losses, enlightenment and resolving her identity would unite them again within herself, as a mark of a new hopeful beginning.
She does open the ruptures in the “barrier” between Spiritual and Physical Worlds, they aren’t portals that just teleport people into these world, humans still need to meditate but it’s now easier to go through and spirits need to have an earthly attachment to go to the physical world like declaring ownership or caring for a forest or river for example.
She has a time where she loses connection to her past lives, not permanently of course but just losing sense of herself, her duty and such.
Amon has an actual hatred for bending and actually seeks equality because his spiritual abilities only works on bending, he is equal to all non benders. He does it out of a genuine desire for equality not daddy issues.
A lot of other things need working though, I have some ideas but also some are just vague AF. The Krew in general, even in your restricted rewrite, feel very disconnected and actually useless aside from Korra, Tenzin and maybe Asami.
I hope this new version of Varrick still has his wedding with Zhu Li, because that was perfect and beautiful.
love your versions of raava and vaatu - it gives me Sanderson vibes with Preservation and Ruin, where readers can sometimes mistake the former for “good” and the latter for “evil”, but we come to see a greater complexity
Omg I absolutely love when you did the first one it was soooooo good, so happy you followed through with a second and here's hoping for the third and fourth 🤞🤞
I really like the changes you made here! Season 2 was... *really* weird and kinda disappointing, so I really appreciate that people share the sentiment that it really could've been improved.
If you're going to continue down this "fixing Legend of Korra" series (which, by the way, I am *totally* okay with), I guess I'll express an important concern. In AtLA, Aang's initial story arc was him going from kingdom to kingdom learning all the forms of bending. That worked swell, but when I first watched LoK, I was worried that it was just going to be the exact same thing. I was pleasantly surprised when she was pretty much immediately a master of all the elements (except airbending, of course); it really signaled to me that this was going to be its own show with its own story.
However, by taking away Korra's bending and restoring each element over the course of the seasons, it kind of puts it back into that same arc that I was hoping they were going to avoid.
Obviously, these are just my personal concerns. I just figured I should express them.
A season of Korra just being an Airbender and having to cope and adapt would is a compelling idea. Imagine if part of the plot was trying to keep her secret from the media, so Mako and Bolin use their bending to keep up the illusion kind of like when Katara pretended to be an earth bender.
Korra can still explore the Southern Ocean bending style (it's something she tries early and it doesn't work, but it's impressive nonetheless).
The energy released from opening the portal shatters the imbalance of chaos and order and knocks her bending into place. She can even have a sweet moment where she comes back and learns a bit of southern style bending.
… And Tenzin, not wanting kids to chew on his ears, says no they can’t. …
youre a fantastic writer with a deep love and understanding of this series and you should be hired to help write the next avatar series about the earth avatar after korra
One thing I'd also be interested to see, is if Aang and other avatars take on a Guru Pathik like roles in visions, teaching about the Chakras sealed by Amon, when coming to the last Chakra, Wan appears, or perhaps just before with the Light Chakra & a vision of Korra herself at the last one.
Really loving this series of yours! Can’t wait to see your takes on seasons 3 and 4!
I believe the reason that the creators choose to have fire as the first element in the avatar cycle is because fire represent energy, passion, and will power. All things necessary for him to go out and be courageous for his adventure
Season 2 is such a mess I wouldn't know where to begin, but I do love this! I also love Korra slowly getting her bending back one at a time as she learns important lessons, harkening back to the core message of Avatar, which is balance and understanding.
3:30 "We forgot this place" I was SO hoping you were going to follow it up with "as you know our city was built around this place"
I love this retelling and I love even more how seamlessly it flows into the series actually:
The portal naturally closes over the year and needs to be reopened at the festival; but it hasn't been done in the last 100 or so years due to the war from the original show, spirits being immortal, from their perspective the 100 years were barely over a decade, which is why they took so long
And the South being a humid watery land, lots of the nuances from their culture must've passed orally, but during the war most of the Southern shamans died, which is why no one knew they were supposed to open the portal or that it was there to begin with
I can't help but think a bender using the items/tools that Asami makes for non-benders in this, swapping out which one they're using depending on the situation along side their normal bending, acting as a sort of middle ground understanding the Equalists but also understanding the benders like Mako and Bolin.
Honestly, the second season has some of my all time favorite Korra moments in it, but the ending and some plot points leave something to be desired. The spiritual aspect of the whole season is fantastic.
That was exemplary!
While I love season three, I am so curious about how you will carry on this plot line. Here's to the future.🥂
This was fantastic. I love your change for beginnings, it always felt so ingenuine to the spirit world from atla