The Problem with Korra's Team Avatar script

Intro:

The Legend of Korra is a hot mess, but it’s my hot mess. While I love the show, it’s because of that I must admit that its writing is… questionable at times. I’ve mentioned this in my video on why Asami deserved better, but today, we’re going to expand that into why the new Team Avatar is deeply underwhelming, and feels incredibly obligatory.

Why the OG Team Avatar Worked:

The original Team Avatar, a.k.a. The Gaang, was perhaps one of the best set of protagonists in all media. They set the gold standard for strong, developed characters who not only are well written on their own, but actively elevate each other when they’re brought together. Aang, Katara, and Sokka started off as a strong trio, made even better with the later inclusion of Toph, and finally completed by the inclusion of Zuko… and also Suki. Suki actually is a great member of the Gaang, but she’s often underappreciated given how late into the series she joins. Still better than how Asami was treated, but we’ll get there later.

Through the original series, there was never a question of who our main characters were. We followed Aang, Katara, and Sokka on their journeys across the world to help Aang become the Avatar. They were the constants, the anchors keeping us coming back every week, with a revolving cast of supporting characters accompanying different backdrops with each new adventure. These allowed us to see different aspects of these three’s characters, and develop their relationships with each other individually and as a unit.

And that amount of time let us appreciate their distinct personalities: Aang is a pacifist who yo-yoes between wanting to help people and enjoy more childish distractions because he’s a traumatized 12-year-old demigod; Katara is a nurturing caretaker from having to compensate for her and Sokka’s mother’s death, who tries to keep people’s morale high while she breaks hearts across the Earth Kingdom; and Sokka’s a nerd who keeps wanting to prove how much of a bad bitch he is with his tactical prowess and ingenuity, but also needs to understand and redefine his view of masculinity.

On top of these, each of them had their own motivations. They didn’t just join Aang’s globetrotting misadventures because the script said so. Aang is doing this to learn the other elements in order to become a fully realized Avatar and defeat the Fire Nation. Katara not only shares that desire to stop the Fire Nation, but also wants to learn waterbending with Aang. Sokka’s priority is to keep Katara safe, while also wanting to emulate his father going off to fight the Fire Nation.

When Toph joins, she’s incredibly abrasive and blunt. She calls things as they see them, often stepping on her friends’ toes, unafraid of being labeled as the problem or the bad guy. She’s especially great at drawing out Aang and Katara’s angrier, meaner sides. And not only does she serve a practical role as Aang’s earthbending teacher, but she has her own motivation of seeing the world outside her family home, having been kept under lock and key and infantilized by her parents because of her blindness, even when she proves she can handle herself.

Zuko joins not only as Aang’s firebending teacher, but also to atone for his previous antagonism towards the Gaang, hunting the Avatar and aiding Azula in the Fall of Ba Sing Se all to win his father’s love. Now, he’s trying to become a better person and pave a new way forward for the Fire Nation. One that seeks to make reparations for their crimes against the other nations. Suki… well, she’s mostly here for Fuck the Fire Nation hours, and also being adorable with Sokka, but she gets a pass because she’s Suki. Good enough for me.

In addition to their motivations, they each possessed unique skill sets and weaknesses that added to their dynamic. Aang initially is only able to airbend, but even when he learns the other elements, he’s more a jack of all trades than a master of all four. He can usually back up the others with their bending styles, but airbending remains exclusively his ability. He’s also the most spiritually inclined, so if you ever need to talk to a spirit or enter the Spirit World, Aang’s your best bet.

The other members either have their own element, or at least their own unique set of skills the others don’t possess. Katara is a master waterbender, but struggles in arid environments where her element isn’t readily accessible. Toph is a master earthbender, able to perceive things the others miss through sensing their vibrations, and also being a human lie detector. Unfortunately, she can’t see airborne enemies, and struggles in the desert given the loose sand beneath her feet. Also she can’t read because letters don’t vibrate, goddammit. Oh, she also invents metalbending, and that’s hella fucking useful later on.

Zuko is the resident firebender, and though Sokka and Suki are nonbenders, they’re still incredibly useful. Again, Sokka is a strategist, his nonbending often giving him a more grounded, mechanical perspective on how to work his environment to his advantage, and instruct the others how to do so as well. He also has his trusty boomerang, and later his sword. Suki, meanwhile, is incredibly agile as a Kyoshi Warrior, able to turn her enemy’s physical strength against them. They are not weaker because of their nonbending. Rather, they simply have to find their own sources of strength.

Even Appa and Momo feel integral to the team. Both have a strong connection to Aang, the three of them being the last remnants of Air Nomad culture, and thus innately bound together. And functionally, they’re pivotal for the Gaang’s adventures. Appa is their main method of travel being a flying bison. Just look at that arc in Book 2 where Appa was missing, forcing them to travel through the desert all the way to Ba Sing Se on foot. And being a lemur, Momo is able to get into tight, cramped places the others can’t reach, making him pretty dang useful too.

By having different motivations and skill sets, every character in the team feels relevant and important. Remove one of them, and you lose a vital aspect of the team’s strengths, completely changing their dynamic. There’s no issue of any one character feeling particularly useless or pointless, or disconnected from the overarching plot. Because of this, and the chaotic, quirky chemistry they have with each other, they feel like a little found family.

And Korra’s Team Avatar… yeah, they don’t got any of that.

Lack of Motivation:

When characters in a team lack their own goals or motivations, it causes them to feel superfluous. They’re not their own person with a compelling story, which would then allow them to interact with their teammates and the overarching plot in interesting ways. Instead, they feel aimless, and despite their idiosyncrasies, removing them from the story would result in virtually no drastic changes.

Korra’s fine in this regard. She wants to be out in the real world, helping people and saving the world as a fully-realized Avatar. Part of that is dealing with the chaos in Republic City (which is its own issue for another time), and another is learning airbending, and by extension getting in touch with another, more spiritual, present side of herself. Through the series, Korra has plenty of clear, well-established motivations and goals, and her journey is incredibly compelling. I’m honestly more endeared to her as a protagonist than I am to Aang, and I love Aang.

So if Korra’s fine, then what’s wrong? And the answer is… the rest of her team. The main issue with this Team Avatar, a.k.a. The Krew (with a “K”), is that they don’t spend enough time together to feel like true friends, they honestly don’t feel like main characters compared to other members of the supporting cast, they lack their own compelling motivations throughout the series, and their individual skill sets aren’t nearly as in depth and fleshed out compared to the Gaang.

Supporting your friends is great, but supporting Korra in her journeys as the Avatar is not enough of a motivation on its own. You know that saying, “If you’re not the main character of your own story, you’re just a supporting character in another person’s?” That’s the whole vibe with the Krew. They’re not their own people with their own drives and goals, at least, not ones compelling enough to make them as iconic, memorable, or endearing to the audience.

Mako’s motivation in Book 1 is to take care of his younger brother Bolin. Okay, that checks out, and actually kinda echoes back to Sokka looking after Katara. But again, a character needs more than tending to another’s needs. Sokka was dealing with his desire to become a man. He had to deconstruct his own sexism, ultimately becoming the pinnacle of positive masculinity that makes us Sokka stans hail him as king. Mako… Mako’s a strange case.

He’s a lot more guarded and reserved than Sokka was. Mako has a lot of emotions boiling under the surface, but doesn’t let them show… at least, not intentionally. Most often his anger will easily slip out because he’s the broody boi Korra swoons over in the beginning. But he’s also very caring and loving towards her, more struggling in how to express those feelings because… Mako no like talking about his feelings.

It’s never an arc he actually has to deal with though. He never confronts why he acts this way, why he can be quite avoidant or distant, or why he’s so focused on others instead of focusing on himself. So what you get instead is character with flaws that never really get explored or worked with. They just exist in perpetuity, continuing on until the end of the series.

He’s a bit better in Book 2, despite being a goddamn cop, but we’ll get there later, death to copaganda. Anyhow, Bolin… exists? He doesn’t really have any motivation to begin with. He’s just kinda quirky and goofy, and he has a crush on Korra. That’s it. No real goals to be seen here.

And Asami? Well, I’ve already covered her in my video about how she deserved better, go watch it if you haven’t. But her goal in Book 1 is… well, it doesn’t really exist until after her father is revealed as an Equalist. Before then, she’s basically just there to cause drama as part of the cursed Bermuda Love Triangle. Her story’s more interesting afterwards as she tries to stop her father, but… that’s all she’s got. She keeps talking about her evil father, which… really feels like token good nonbender energy to me, which hoo gurl.

Book 2 is… technically a bit better, with clearer motivations and goals? Well, here we really need to specify the difference between those things. A goal is something that you work towards, while a motivation is what drives you to complete a goal. Mako has a goal in wanting to figure out who’s behind all the chaos in Republic City driving the United Republic to war, but as for motivation? Nothing. Not sure why he’s so focused on that goal, so it feels very flat and uninteresting.

Bolin’s motivation seems to be driven by how lonely he is, which will tie into a problem I have with Book 2 that we’ll address a bit later. It’s still pretty solid though. He’s using this new avenue of fame from starring in Varrick’s movers as Nuktuk to substitute for companionship. He misses his friends, and since they’re all focused on their own drama, he’s focusing on his celebrity to distract himself from how deeply irrelevant he is… I mean, how lonely he is.

Asami, meanwhile, wants to redeem her family name and keep Future Industries from going bankrupt. She’s actually pretty upfront about this: it’s the last thing she has to connect her to her family. With her mother dead, and her father in jail, the company’s all Asami really has left anymore. However, that’s not really interrogated. She never actually sits down and asks herself if being a girlboss C.E.O. is really what she wants, or if it’s just a band-aid for the real isolation that she feels. So again, it kinda falls flat, despite it being part of one of Book 2’s more interesting subplots.

The real overarching issue is that these motivations and goals don’t really interact with each other in interesting ways. They more… coexist within Republic City, which itself is a problem because the real setting for this story is the Southern Water Tribe, through the civil war and the release of Satan Kite. Mako, Bolin, and Asami’s stories have very little to do with the true plot of the season to do with the spirits, the one that Korra is dealing with in the main plot. And because of that, they feel more like wastes of time and dead ends than interesting extrapolations of Book 2’s themes of spirituality and self-discovery.

And beyond that, it really shows that this Team Avatar has no reason to even be a team to begin with. Sure, they kinda care about each other, but not on the level of familial love that the Gaang had. They’re not always on the go together, spending time discovering new aspects to their dynamics with each other. And moreover, Mako, Bolin, and Asami feel tacked onto the plot. They have nothing to do most of the time, especially in the back half of the show. Books 3 and 4 are usually considered the stronger seasons, but they’re actually the ones where these three are the least relevant they’ve ever been.

And even when they do have some semblance of goals or motivations, they’re so disconnected from each other, and especially Korra’s story, that they feel like scripts from completely different shows that have been haphazardly sewn together, never coalescing into a greater, cohesive whole.

Combat Skills:

We’ve already talked about Asami being excluded from action scenes, and how the Legend of Korra as a whole doesn’t have nearly as much faith in nonbending combatants as the original series unless they’re an antagonist. Again, check out Asami Deserved Better for the details there. But to recap, Asami’s at her most useful when it comes to providing transport with her car, and when she’s tinkering with some device with her technical, engineering skills… that’s it. It’s not nearly as relevant or engaging as Sokka or Suki’s unique skill sets.

Now, remember my point about Aang’s skills before. He was the only airbender on the team, and that was her best element. Because of that, his main skill set was unique to him, while the other elements were more supplements to his friends who excelled in those elements more than him. It kept him from upstaging his teammates. Katara’s waterbending was always superior to Aang’s, as was Toph’s earthbending, and Zuko’s firebending.

On top of that, Aang didn’t really bother with any subelements. He never bloodbent like Katara, he struggled with earthbending already so there was no way he’d ever be a metalbender, and he only used lightningbending once to redirect Ozai’s attack in the finale. Again, a jack of all trades, master of none… except air.

This isn’t really the case with Korra. Air is actually her worst element, so with her being the only airbender… well, that basically makes it pretty worthless. That said, her being the only waterbender means her proficiency with it is actually a great unique skill, essentially akin to Katara’s role as the master waterbender of the Gaang. But because she’s equally proficient with earthbending and firebending, it makes Mako and Bolin feel redundant for most of the series. They don’t really have their own unique skills to set them apart, at least not ones prominent enough to make them feel like worthwhile additions to the team.

Mako’s firebending is about on par with Korra’s. His only unique ability is lightningbending, which he barely ever uses. Bolin’s earthbending is arguably much weaker than Korra’s. He does learn lavabending, which is a great way to make him stand out, while also letting Korra learn metalbending. Unfortunately, it’s a unique skill Bolin doesn’t even get until the very end of Book 3, after which he hardly ever uses it.

Because of all this, Mako and Bolin don’t feel essential to Team Avatar’s functioning. They don’t have enough unique skills to make them feel like invaluable parts of the group. And moreover, because they’re not masters like Korra, they’re always falling behind her, and aren’t nearly as impressive benders as Katara, Toph, or Zuko were when they were even younger.

And yes, I know a war was going on, forcing them to adapt. However, that doesn’t change the fact Korra’s team doesn’t work on its own, much less compared to Aang’s. It’s a thermian argument: using in-universe logic and rationalizations to justify questionable or bad writing choices, and I ain’t here for it.

Honestly, it would’ve been nice if Mako and Bolin learned about the spiritual side of their elements. In the original series, the elements were an extension of oneself, and mastering them always connected to a personal flaw or problem the character was working on. Aang had to learn to face his problems and foes head-on to even begin learning earthbending. Toph’s seismic sense was an extension of her ability to call things as they are. When Zuko tried to atone, he had to find a new drive in order to re-learn how to firebend, and discover the true nature of his element beyond the rage and hatred passed down from his grandfather.

In Korra, the elements aren’t really used the same way. They’re just excuses for cool action set pieces, and nothing more. Any sense of culture or self-development is completely stripped away. Even Korra herself never sees the elements as extensions of herself as a person, the way that Aang had to when he was learning them. That’s not asking her to repeat the same process as Aang, but instead to decide how each element relates to her specifically, and her own journey.

Stealing the Limelight (Tenzin, Lin, etc.):

Now, we get to the reason I think the show is so disinterested in Mako, Bolin, and Asami. Through the Legend of Korra, the Krew feels like they’re only nominally protagonists. They’re technically the main characters. But in execution, they feel more like minor characters, set dressing to everyone else’s stories. Again, the Gaang were most definitely protagonists, always at the forefront of the story with a revolving supporting cast.

In Legend of Korra, meanwhile, it often feels like members of the supporting cast are more important, and more loved by the writers, than the actual protagonists, namely Tenzin and Lin. Don’t get me wrong, I love these two, especially Tenzin. Tenzin’s lowkey the best thing to come out of this damn show. But my God, this show regularly tries to give them more to do than sometimes even Korra herself.

Tenzin is usually dealing with being Korra’s mentor, or bonding with his family, or rebuilding the Air Nation. Lin, meanwhile, is dispersing our state-mandated copaganda while getting the most compelling Beifong family drama that is quite literally TLC-worthy. Either way, they’ve got way more compelling storylines going on than fire boi, earth boi, and invisible girl, especially during Book 3.

It sucks seeing how little the Krew gets to do together. Even more so that while they’re split up the most in Book 2, it isn’t even them at their worst. Again, no one besides Korra has anything really going on in Book 3, and their conflicts with the Red Lotus are painfully shallow. No fun, interesting rivalries to be seen her. Just… Bolin quipping at Ghazan, and Ming-Hua breaking Mako’s pretty face. And Asami gets… nameless one-off guards, yay.

Conclusion & Outro:

Again, I love Legend of Korra. It’s a hot mess, but it’s my mess, and that goes for her little Krew. I adore these goofballs, which is why I want better for them. I must be honest with my disappointment in how they were written, and how their stories were handled… or rather, their lack of stories.

The Krew feels more like coworkers than friends, obligated to be together by the plot with no real sense of camaraderie. They lack individual motivations and goals that bring them into conflict with each other or coalesce into a greater whole, and they lack developed skill sets that make each of them integral, indispensable pieces of the team. And really, they were never even given that chance to begin with. Not when the story was more interested in the stories of Tenzin and Lin. They were more part of the Krew than Mako, Bolin, and Asami ever were.

Oh, and Naga and Pabu? I love them, but they didn’t even get to feel as useful as Appa and Momo. They’re just cute. I love them, I really do… but they don’t need to be here. Which is probably why they get written out nearly as often as Asami, oop.

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I’m the Unicorn of War, and the Krew is a shit show.