Why The Last Airbender is better than The Legend of Korra

Can you believe that it has been 13 years since the end of The Last Airbender, then another 6.5 since the end of The Legend of Korra? So many years since the animated shows that defined childhoods and educated about mature themes of genocide, freedom, feminism and mental health, while also providing a gripping story centred in Asian culture and the interactions of the elements. Those two shows were great, but people are divided on which one is generally better.

Personally (as you guessed from the title), I think The Last Airbender was better. There’s a bunch of reasons for this, but I want to clarify that I really enjoy The Legend of Korra, particularly the third and fourth seasons, and that both shows have exceptional animation, music and voice acting. I just think that compared to The Last Airbender, which I genuinely see as one of the best TV shows in general, The Legend of Korra doesn’t quite live up to it.

Let’s start with…

Characters

Both shows are led by three main heroes, the cheeky lead Avatar (Aang in The Last Airbender and obviously Korra), the more serious partner (Katara and Mako) and the ludicrous comic relief (Sokka and Bolin).

Along the way, there’s plenty of other mentors, mentees and frequent side characters to fill out the different episodes, like Zuko, Tenzin, Ozai, Iroh, Suki and others, and of course a bunch of evil men and women who want to rule the world. Fairly straightforward, yes?

Avatar: The Last Airbender came away from this with an advantage as the showrunners at the time had a clear three-season goal – at the start, the trio meet and bond and learn their goal to defeat the Fire Nation, and by the end, Aang has defeated the Fire Lord and these characters are at specific points to each other. Legend of Korra, on the other hand, has 4 separate seasons without a major end goal in mind, meaning that characters have to be developed in a more impromptu style as the series goes on and unplanned plots get thrown in.

This applies to the villains of the show, too – The Last Airbender introduces the main trio in its first season and whittles them by the end, while Legend of Korra seasons 3 and 4 throws in a brand new villain who we’ve never met and so don’t feel that much of a bond/hate towards.

One such Korra villain (Amon) is a villain to the art of comedy.

Another significant bonus for The Last Airbender is that all of the lead characters are younger and prone to silliness – Aang is 12, Sokka is 15 and absolutely crazy, and eventual mainstay Toph is a 13-year-old who enjoys pummelling people. This gives them an inherent likability, as all of them are funny and open instead of trying to project themselves as others. Korra meanwhile is 16, as are Bolin and Mako, and so much of her development is around more mature teenage issues and anger, which (as a teenager myself) is a bit more tiring, as less satisfying to rewatch.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of The Last Airbender is that its 60-episode path had space for episodes devoted to nothing but character development, where the pacing slowed down and each character could marinate and show each aspect of the show at its brightest. I still think the best episode of both shows is “The Tales of Ba Singh Se”, because while that episode had no plot advancement, it developed each character individually and showed why I love them with a mixture of emotional pathos and hilarity.

The tighter 12-episode seasons of Legend of Korra can’t integrate the same level of development. With battles raging over multiple episodes and a lot of setup required, there isn’t much time for the characters to breathe, and so no-one from the cast stood out to me as much as a side character from The Last Airbender like Iroh, who had significant time in individual episodes to flourish.

The Last Airbender family - from top and clockwise, Zuko, Aang, Suki, Sokka, Katara and Toph.

To sum up, the development of Legend of Korra isn’t bad, but compared to how well The Last Airbender structured it, it does fall way behind in regard to that. When you rewatch Airbender, it feels much more coherent – it makes sense from episode to episode that these characters become closer and more mature. The Legend of Korra’s first few seasons are more anthology-esque, not connecting as well and not having that smooth line of development until the 3rd and 4th seasons.

That’s the characters, now onto the annoying one…

Tone

One of the reasons people absolutely hate the movie adaptation of The Last Airbender is that it ditches the fun tone of the show for a more sombre and serious aim, failing to know its target audience and making the proceedings not fun to watch. When it tried to be funny, it was jarring, and the lack of humour meant that characters felt like overdramatic wooden blocks than anything else.

I’m not implying that The Legend of Korra’s shifts in tone are anything like that, but I’m using it as an example to explain how the humour and silliness of Avatar is integral to the DNA of the show, and how it needs to be balanced well. The series of Airbender pulled this off brilliantly, giving enough fun to care for the characters but enough seriousness to engage us in conflict. The Legend of Korra, not so much.

Aang and Toph as student and teacher.

Balance of comedy in any movie or show or whatever is entirely based on which characters you divide the comedy between. Most works only have one or two characters who are trying to be funny the majority of the time (in this case, Sokka and Iroh from The Last Airbender), but they should also be given significant time to develop their own drama, while the rest of the characters are comedic foils with some comedic beats. This keeps the stakes reasonably high, while preventing the movie from turning either overdramatic or coming off as trying too hard to get a laugh. Fast and Furious, where everyone is a one-liner character or don’t have grounding, is trying too hard.

In The Last Airbender, there’s an underlying tone of comedy provided by Sokka and Iroh, but they get their own moments of seriousness, and the rest of the grounded cast help to keep an adventurous tone which gives the story its own personal stakes. The feel is never too serious, nor is it overwhelmingly energetic and silly. The Legend of Korra gets the serious right, but not the silly.

The Legend of Korra deals with thematically darker ideas than its predecessor, including PTSD, terrorism and sedition. While that may seem like a lot for a children-oriented show, Korra actually nails the dramatic weight of each of these dark themes, and when it plays the serious note, it lands because of how well the show is written. We see Korra getting her power ripped apart, we care. Unfortunately, the mix of that with the comedy is awkward to the point where I’m not sure that it should have ever tried to aim for the same tone as The Last Airbender.

So in Legend of Korra, the key comedic characters are Bolin and Varrick, the latter a recurring character from season 2 onwards. Unlike Sokka and Iroh, Bolin doesn’t get the same breaks in between all the comedy to develop him dramatically – every time he’s on screen, he and the voice actor are aiming for that over-the-top Sonic frenzy, even when the episode around him is really dark. In Season 2 especially, where our lead character is struggling to find her spiritual anchor, the cutting to Bolin and his incredibly over-the-top romantic pursuits is really strange. Season 1 shifts these tones as well from terrorism to pee joke, with only Seasons 3 and 4 really getting in the groove of nailing these two tones by keeping them fairly separate.

Bolin, Korra and Mako.

Varrick is at least better as a side character, because there are whole episodes where he doesn’t appear and decent enough gaps. But that doesn’t change the rest of the show, where two awkward tones collide with one another frequently enough that there are points where I want to turn it off.

Right, that’s tone. Now onto the big one…

The Overarching Narrative

I’ve already mentioned how The Last Airbender was one big 60-episode plan while The Legend of Korra was 4 different seasons without much connection. One was a clear road with set stop points for contemplation, while the other changed route a few times to end up at somewhat incongruous and sudden conclusions, not just plot-wise, but character-wise, too.

Season 4 is the worst offender of this striated approach, despite an overall improvement in quality, as the new villain has to be set up, and then Korra’s precarious situation has to come around, and most of the season is concentrated on the fighting and battling of this new villain rather than concentrated on the final reveal of the show (which I won’t spoil). There’s only about 13 episodes in this final season compared to the 21 in Airbender’s final season, so much of the characterisation is dropped in favour of the action, meaning that there’s not that much build-up to the show’s arguably most famous and meaningful moment.

It’s clear that the showrunners didn’t have the same detailed world-map that they had for Airbender. In Korra, there aren’t any slower paced mid-season episodes where characters are left to bloom, or where the legend of the Avatar in the context of the modern day setting of the show is really taking off. As a result, the show just doesn’t grab you in the same way.

I feel a great comparison for Airbender is actually the MCU, which had a 12-year roadmap with clear pathways about where and when it wanted to go. While there are many movies devoted to narrative progression, there are as many devoted to solo superhero films to flesh them out before the big punch-up. If you took Ant-Man and Thor movies out of the mix, you would have to introduce these characters and concepts quickly in another movie and cut time off the development in that. That is essentially what happen in The Legend of Korra, and with more time and slower pacing to develop the intended roadmaps, I could have really dug this show.

Well, that’s my review. I do still like The Legend of Korra, but The Last Airbender is better as a narrative experience in my opinion. Whether or not you agree is up to you, and there’s no wrong answer.

My final comment will be this – The Last Airbender is better than Korra for the sheer fact that it produced 5 times the amount of solid meme material. There is no better evidence than that.