Avatar: The Last Airbender

[Aanchir]

It should be noted that Korra being able to energybend using the Avatar State doesn't necessarily mean she's mastered it. All it means is that Aang's mastered it. Same way Aang could use firebending in "Winter Solstice, Part II: Avatar Roku", or how he could use earthbending in "The Avatar State", both instances before he had any training whatsoever in those bending disciplines.In fact, "Winter Solstice, Part II" also shows that accessing the Avatar State isn't fully dependent on rage or intense emotion. Once you've made a spiritual connection with a past Avatar, they can lend you their power and experience just as Roku did. So Aang helping Korra into the Avatar State to restore her bending wasn't necessarily out of nowhere.Now, it is a bit odd that Korra can now use the Avatar State at will, and if it weren't for some of the spoilers we heard at Comic-Con I might think Aang was still helping her directly at those times. But at the same time, I can't think of any better way that she could have "earned" the power of the Avatar State. Sure, it would have been good for her to unblock her chakras one by one through meditation, but it would not have been good for the story, since we'd be watching a spiritual journey that we had already seen Aang go through in that exact same order. It's the same reason the creators decided to have Korra already a master of Water-, Earth-, and Firebending: they didn't want to retread the same old stories they did in A:TLA.

[Alex Humva]

And it makes sense, from a personality and character point of view. Korra was head strong and relied on using brute force to get her will done. She simply couldn't see the need for spirituality, and it was likely one of her problems trying to earn it. Whenever we see Korra be spiritual, it's when all else fails, when she can't simply punch through the wall in her way, and thus she has to take another route. Her losing her mastered three elements, left with only an element she barely knew, tore her down and made her take another route.The season finale seems like a Deus Ex Machina at first glance, but honestly, looking back through the series, it hits all the same beats, just a lot harder.

[Aanchir]

So today I finally finished watching Avatar: The Last Airbender with my mom. It's something I've been working on for the past couple months. But that finale gets me every time. There were some moments when I almost felt tears start welling up in my eyes, such as when Zuko and Iroh reunite, or when Azula is finally defeated and begins to cry and shriek helplessly. The brilliant music of those episodes helps a lot in making it resonate with me emotionally, even having seen it many times before.We're probably not going to get to watch The Legend of Korra before I go back up to college since I don't have that on DVD, I doubt she'd want to see them at the online quality available from the Nick website, and we probably won't have time anyway-- we're getting to a very busy part of the year as I transition to a brand-new school. In the meantime, I'm still going to be looking forward to the final volume of The Promise. I've been really enjoying the continued adventures of our friends from A:TLA and the gradual transformation of the Avatar world's cultures. I wonder how far these graphic novels will continue. I know there's another graphic novel series, The Search, which will be following the events of The Promise and will involve the long-awaited search for Zuko's mother. But it would be great if we continue to see stories in some form or another that show how our little band of teenagers changes into the group of adult heroes who we have seen in flashbacks of The Legend of Korra.