Legend of Korra: Season 2 Premiere

This show deviates from theme a little, but not that much. And if you are a fan of the comic/superhero genre and you are NOT familiar with and watching Legend of Korra, then you are seriously missing out and should rectify that tout suite.

If you have been under a rock enough to not know about this show, here is some background. Legend of Korra is a sequel animated series to the 2005-2008 animated series Avatar: the Last Airbender. The original series takes place in a war-torn fantastic world where magic exists in the form of elemental “bending” where someone with such a talent can wield one of the four elements through martial arts maneuvers. Not everyone has bending abilities, but generally society is divided into nations that are homogenous to a bending type (Earth Kingdom, Water Tribes, Fire Nation, Air Nomads) with the Fire Nation currently holding the world under its thumb and the Air Nomad having been defeated to extinction. Prior to this current state, there was always a single person known as the Avatar – one being who could master and wield all four elements and in doing so bring balance to the world. The Avatar reincarnates and with each incarnation is born into a different nation, but having wiped out the Air Nomads, the Fire Nation believes it had killed off the Avatar before he/she could rise to power. But Aang, the ten-year-old Avatar in progress having retreated attack and instinctively froze himself and his air bison, managed to delay his reign nearly a century. After being discovered and release from his icy tomb, he spends the next three years accelerating his training while avoiding conflict with the Fire Nation.

The new series, Legend of Korra, follows the adventures of the next Avatar some 80 years after the original series. Korra is an impulsive girl from the southern Water Tribe that who had mastered 3 of the 4 elements as a toddler, but never quite grasped air bending. The first season follows her adventures as a teenager leaving home to go train with the only airbenders in the world – Aang’s son and his family. In the time since the original series, the world has drastically changed. People of different bending abilities now live side by side no longer segregated. And as such, many of their abilities combined have allowed for an industrial revolution. But in the first season we saw another type of strife arise – a movement of non-benders protesting bending as archaic and as a classist line in society. And in this season we saw the rise of a villain who had the ability to take a benders bending abilities away.

In the second season, we fast-forward a little bit to see some recovery from the events of the first season in retrospect and some natural progressions, but there is a new theme introduced in the form of the season title: Spirit. The three seasons of Avatar were named after the element that Aang was mastering (water, earth, then fire), and the first season of this show was titled Air as she spent that season mastering airbending. So this is an interesting twist in the progression. And it is immediately apparent in that there arises adversity in the form of agitated spirits wreaking havoc around the world. As such, Korra’s mission becomes that of subduing these spirits and in the process learning a skill that she has been weak in – spirit “bending”. While this is not recognized as an official bending skill, it is an ability the Avatar typically wields. But in this new season we see someone else who shows an aptitude in this area. And it could be argued that the main villain from the first season was also a practitioner of this art.

Thus far the show is only four episodes into a 14-episode season. But it has already done well in introducing some new characters and elements to the mix while also separating the characters into some divergent adventures – something the original series often did to great result. My kids and I have long been big fans of the original series and have easily latched onto this new spin-off. It certainly seems very promising and if all goes to plan and is well received and supported, I have no doubt that this season will be just as riveting as always and I will be looking forward to seasons 3 and 4 for follow. I’ll give the season premiere 8 out of 10 capes and reserve judgement for the season as a whole until the end of the season when I will likely do a wrap-up review of the whole season (and perhaps we’ll put together a special podcast episode and even get the younger perspectives to weigh in).