Few things feel more grown-up than dealing with the consequences of your actions. Whether you stay up too late and still have to get up the next day or make a mistake at work and have to answer for it, adulthood means no one’s coming to fix things. For the most part, it’s all up to you.
The Legend of Korra has been the subject of much criticism over the years, but it’s always been a show about its young hero Korra (Janet Varney) growing from a feisty teen into a relatively less feisty adult. It’s not until season 3 that she experiences her biggest change, dealing with the consequences of one of her biggest decisions: leaving the spirit world portals open.
It’s one of the best decisions Korra makes, but it also creates her most thought-provoking villain.
A new world
Season 3 is appropriately titled “Book 3: Change,” and it picks up after the Harmonic Convergence, the planetary alignment that flooded the world with spiritual energy. After a great battle (literally, Korra becomes a kaiju via astral projection), Korra leaves the portals open, believing that people and the spirits should live in harmony together. It’s a decision with vast ramifications, from spirits adorably popping up throughout Republic City to the awakening of air-bending skills in random people, reviving a culture that had been nearly lost.
One of these new benders is Zaheer (Henry Rollins), a member of the Red Lotus, which is a secret anarchist organization whose mission is to disrupt world order and eliminate the Avatar cycle. Zaheer uses his airbending to escape his high-security prison and rescue his comrades, who are some of the coolest villains in animation. These include the lavabender Ghazan (Peter Giles), waterbender Ming Hua (Grey DeLisle), and combustion bender P’li (Kristy Wu).
Meanwhile, Korra and her team travel the world, slowly collecting new airbenders in the hopes of rebuilding the Air Nation.
The Avatar grows up
“Change” is a blockbuster of a third season, taking full advantage of Studio Mir’s animation capabilities. It’s the one season the studio animated from start to finish, and it shows. While The Legend of Korra always had incredible fights, in this season, the bending takes center stage. Ming Hua offers a new flavor of waterbending; she doesn’t have arms, so she fashions several out of water, looking like a terrifying spider. P’Li’s combustion is accompanied by a high-pitched whine, with the energy launching like a rocket through her third eye. Her hair is braided, and she’s huge. On a design level, these are the types of characters you only need to see once to remember forever.
Increasing the sense of peril is the fact that the Red Lotus feels so adult and experienced when compared to Korra and her friends. Zaheer and P’Li are devoted partners. Together, these four are close comrades, with their experiences and crimes weathered on their skin. It results in some of the franchise’s best showdowns, often involving characters that were previously sidelined, like Tenzin (J.K. Simmons), who has a standout battle in the Air Temple, and Korra’s father Tonraq (James Remar), who comes to her aid and prevents her from being kidnapped by the Red Lotus.
Then there’s Zaheer himself. He is a blank slate, the quietest and least charming member of a gang of incredibly cool villains. He’s so detached from the world and so at home with his ideologies that he feels inaccessible — no one’s convincing this guy of anything. His one tether to the world is P’Li, a relationship that the season cashes in on in spectacular fashion.
In arguably one of the coldest moments in kids’ animation, Zaheer kills the Earth Queen by taking the air out of her lungs. Her death throws Ba Sing Se into chaos. And while the series never backs away from his extremism, like every great villain, Zaheer makes a lot of sense. His beliefs cause Korra to wonder if maybe the world would be better off without corrupt leaders like the Earth Queen, who lives surrounded by obscene wealth and imprisons her subjects for her own gain while the people in her kingdom suffer.
When it comes to Korra, there’s so much breathing room when the show finally drops her love triangle with Mako (David Faustino) and Asami (Seychelle Gabriel). It’s a development that allows Korra to focus on other things, like how bad she is at talking to bureaucrats or her having to hold back when speaking with people that are incredibly annoying.
Korra gets to explore her dynamics with other characters, including Suyin (Anne Heche) and Lin Beifong (Mindy Sterling), two standouts in the franchise. She’s also frequently paired with Asami, with the two finally moving past the fact that they dated the same guy (even if they’ll end up falling in love with each other the following season).
“I think Korra was more likable in Book 3 because — but that was actually part of her arc that we’d set out to do — is that she was becoming more selfless, and it wasn’t just about her own stuff,” co-creator Bryan Konietzko told The Mary Sue in 2014.
By the end of the “Change,” Korra has saved the world once more, but is more depleted than ever. After being poisoned by the Red Lotus, she’s in a wheelchair, watching her past self’s civilization restored as the Air Nomads rise once more. Another adult lesson Korra learns? Sometimes life’s greatest moments are bittersweet.
The Legend of Korra is streaming on Paramount Plus