The Legend of Korra S04E05 – Review

Kuvira’s biggest problem may be that she revealed her hand too soon. Not a terribly dimensional antagonist to begin with, by showing her true colors at the start of the season, she only left herself room to grow more and more horrible with each episode. She’s pretty easy to hate, so your curiosity as to what she plans to do next is outweighed by your longing to see her justly thrashed. All this sort of makes you impatient for the season to end; such is the effect of a shallow villain.

This episode attempts to introduce a layer or two to Kuvira by giving us her much-needed backstory, but your opinion of her shifts only a smidgeon.* Her split from Suyin is ideological, to be sure, but put in practice, her ideals bear little sympathy. Kuvira characterizes Suyin’s refusal to stabilize the Earth Kingdom as cowardice, failing to give credit to Suyin’s prudent reluctance to “impose my ideals on an entire nation.” If nothing else, Suyin has a wariness of power that’s respectable, while Kuvira clearly never had a problem imposing her will on anyone, nor with seizing what she wants when she wants it.

In that sense, Suyin acts no less entitled than Prince Wu, only more competent. And as more of her government comes to light (“Citizens are forced to work as slave labor, dissenters are sent off to who knows where,” Opal accuses), the narrower the differences between her and the late Earth Queen become. In fact, she’s becoming even worse; her commitment to weaponizing the spirit vines shows her willingness to use extreme force to maintain her power (as if blockading Zaofu with her entire army didn’t do that already), but it also suggests visions of world conquest. Got to put all that military superiority to some use, right?

I’ve made the comparison between Kuvira and Ozai before, but perhaps the most important difference is that Ozai was rarely the central villain. Instead, his single-minded lust for power drove other, more complex antagonists like Zuko and Azula. With them, there were always things to discover; Ozai existed merely to give Team Avatar a big, looming baddie to beat. That’s the position Kuvira is in, though she’s currently lacking serious opponents, now that Korra’s gotten wishy-washy about facing her.

Korra explains her hesitance as coming from her experience that fighting just made things worse, but her problem isn’t really her eagerness to fight so much as it has been identifying the correct threat to unleash her anger on. It’s a lesson she still hasn’t learned, if she can look at that massive army around Zaofu and still be convinced by Kuvira it’s best for Suyin to give way. Korra doesn’t understand that Kuvira’s eagerness to settle this peaceably is a blind for good P.R.; unable to cow Zaofu like other, smaller nation-states, Kuvira can only capture Zaofu by force, tarnishing her credibility.

It’s all the more remarkable that Korra doesn’t see the extent of Kuvira’s domination when even Bolin and Varrick wake up to the fact that “[s]he’s crazy!” This is par for the course for Bolin, but something of a revolution for Varrick. Call me a sucker for redemption stories, but Varrick finally starts winning me over when he realizes that he’s dealing with power too dangerous for humans to control. There’s just something charming about his astonishment that he has a conscience:

“I know, it’s not like me, right? Usually, I look at a project like this and think, ‘Wow! I can make a ton of money off this!’ But recently I’ve been having these strange feelings—inside. It’s like I’m…concerned with others and there’s this nagging voice in my head, constantly, telling me what’s right from wrong!”

Of course, it’s a little problematic that we don’t exactly see where this change comes from, unless it’s Bolin’s good influence, but you take change for good where you can take it.

Just when Varrick starts edging toward the side of the angels, the beleaguered Zhu Li goes the opposite direction—although I think we can all be pretty sure it’s a ruse. It’d actually be a great twist for the show if she’s serious about her grievances with Varrick, but we all know Legend of Korra isn’t about to make you hate its likeable characters. Given that Zhu Li and Varrick have, shall we say, a moment after he saves her from falling off a speeding train, Zhu Li’s loyalties aren’t questionable at this point.

– Minhquan Nguyen