Board 8 > TPLink ranks The Last Airbender episodes

(+) Yeah! (+)

So I just finished watching all of Legend of Korra for the first time directly after my 3rd runthrough of the original series.

Quick take on Legend of Korra: I really enjoyed season 1, which was a standalone mini-series originally. A year later they added season 2-4. The season 1 finale was maybe one of my favorite avatar episodes ever, definitely my favorite finale (this is including the originals).

Season 2-3 were still good. Especially when season 2 explained the origins of the Avatar, which I found very interesting. But they made Korra too weak. And I know they were just trying to make her human, but dang it, she's the avatar and you can only stomach seeing them get trounced upon so many times.

Season 4 was horrible. Worst finale ever. And that's sad because it was the last one.

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season 4 was the clear best!
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3 > 4 > 1 > 2 imo

huh, interesting

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Interesting take on Korra not only liking season 2, but ranking it above somethings else and including it in the same sentence as 3!

This topic has made me wanna start watching Avatar again so slowly going through TLA now.

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Man I really hate the finale of Korra Season 1 so much that it retroactively harms the rest of the season for me

3 > 4 > 1 > 2 sounds right

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I guess I should just indicate spoilers ahead in case anyone hasnt seen Legends of Korra and wants to.

Ok, I guess I had a bad take on that. Looking back, I really did actually enjoy the first half of season 4. I just feel like once Korra confronts the main bad of the season, it just goes downhill from there. It's like she went through that whole recovery process just to continue to be the same weak, ineffective avatar who spends half her battles lying on the ground or unconscious. I mean Korra did absolutely nothing in the final fight until the very end, and even that was an accident.

I think that was my problem with the series as it went along. Each season was just a recycling of the previous one. Main baddie seems altruistic at first only to discover more sinister intentions. Korra getting her ass kicked and being relatively ineffective until the very last moment of the season finale. It just started getting old and frustrating that she didn't seem to grow as an Avatar from her experiences. Also, season 4 suffered a bit from "too many characters syndrome" that some shows tend to get.

Looking back, season 2 had its faults. It had maybe the worst developed main bad of any season (I still don't understand the reasoning of his endgame), and it had a few other flaws. While I did like the Avatar origin story, it did have some possible contradictions with existing ATLA lore, which does put a slight damper on it. Also, I did not like her losing her connection to past avatars permanently.

I guess my ranking for the moment would be 1,3,4,2.

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3 > 4 > 2 > 1

1 is conflicting because I think it's the worst season (mostly due to the terrible romantic triangle that dominates much of the plot and Korra herself not being very likable at that point) but it also has the best main villain and the best ending.

Tarrlock blowing up himself and Amon is one of the all-time best moments in the franchise imo

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Yeah, that scene was great

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3>4>>1>>>>>>2 imo.

Korra was a terrible avatar tbh, but she was at her worst easily in season 2. I like all the villains cept for the laughing stock that was season 2's.

In fact compared to the original, season 3 is the only one that I say can hold up well against it. All cause Zaheer is boss.

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I am def on the side that S4 wasn't as good as it felt the first time. The very ending was awesome, but the last few episodes with all the big battles and climaxes were very weak compared to the beginning of the season. It felt like they were trying to redo Azula's decline to lunacy, but it was way less justified and way less effective. It turned out to be mostly just cool action (which was cool) without much emotional weight. The actual epilogue made up for a lot though. Excellent ending to the series.

S1 was great in the sense that it was this whole new universe, finally coming back after years of ATLA being over. On first watch I didn't really appreciate it as much because the hype was so large and it was just kinda ok, but thinking back the way it evolved on ATLA and set up all of Korra was brilliant. There's a million ways it could've totally bombed. And S2 was definitely one of those bombs, but somehow they were able to take even that nonsensical season and turn it into a crazy awesome season that was on the level of ATLA. Even if you don't like Korra that much in general, and hate it for S2 (like me), you have to admit it was well worth it just to allow S3 to come out.

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Eh I haven't rewatched Korra since it first aired but I enioyed S4.

I thought the theme the show was going with is that technology is so good now the Avatar is starting to get obsolete. That, and even without technology, sometimes the avatar just fails (i. e. Roku). Korra had to deal with the fact she just wasn't as succesful as Aang and that she was in a world where it was much harder for the avatar to just solo everything with the avatar state.

Also one big issue with this show, which is the fault if S1, is that the extremely sloppy shipping ruined any chemistry Korra and her three "friends" ever had. S2 didn't do anything to fix it. And S3 and S4 did, by focusing on the series' expanded cast instead. There were a lot of great characters including Aang's kids, Toph's daughters, Jinora, Varrick, etc, and those carried the show in the end. And the climax of S4 worked for me because it was the culmination of this expanded cast working together to overcome a threat the Avatar alone couldn't do anymore.

I agree S1 is mostly good and has a lot of great worldbuilding though, it's just that the whole ending is so forced and bad.

Also another cool theme the show had was different types of extremist politics. S1's villain was a communist. S2 was a fundamentalist. S3 was an anarchist. And S4 was a fascist. It was interesting to see hoe their ideologies differed from each other, and how Korra each time had a different challenge in order to expose their ideologies as bad and defeat them.

#39: The Firebending Masters (3.13)

This one would probably be ranked higher if I wrote this after the first time I watched the show. It has dragons! Teenage me loved dragons! Nowadays dragons don't impress me that much, especially when their appearance is basically a plot twists and I already know what it is.

The scene where the dragons appear is great, though, I give you that. One of the more iconics one in the show, and a great representation of some of its themes: how bending is connected to nature, and how none of the nations are actually evil, just misguided.

It's also a fun little adventure for Aang and Zuko, which is necessary because this show has very little time to develop Zuko's friendship with... anyone, really. Those two actually have a pretty good chemistry, with Zuko being a decent straight man for Aang's antics while still being able to get silly when it's needed.

With that said, the episode in general is kind of basic. It's mostly a treak through the temple, dodging some traps, activating a mechanism through dancing, that kind of stuff. And then they meet the sun tribe and they are kind of assholes, too. Not that they don't have reason to be assholes, since the FN wiped out their dragon friends, but it's not very enjoyable to watch.

In the end, the episode is all about the last scene, and while that one is great, it's not enough to push it to the upper half.

#38: The Southern Air Temple (1.03)

This episode is weird to put a finger on because it feels more important than it is good. Its whole point is making Aang understand that he is the last airbender, and what kind of enemy he is facing. That part is very well done, actually. We see flashbacks of the temple and snippets of Aan's friendship with Gyatsu, contrasting with the ruins the temple has turned into. Then Aang finally finds the bones of his mentor, goes into the avatar state, and has to be calmed down by Katara. It's a powerful sequence.

Other than that though, the episode is kind of... barebones? There isn't much happening to it besides what I described above. The show was still finding its ground, I think.

I don't really dislike anything about the episode and the good parts were good, so it's hard to rank it lower but... yeah. It's another very basic episode.

man, firebending masters was a top 5 episode for me in my rankings. and upon rewatch it was still amazing.

i'm halfway through korra S2 on rewatch. i'm reminded again how disappointing it was that that they basically took really cool ideas/tough concepts for the villains, then tackled them based on how corrupt/evil they were rather than based on their ideologies. (amon being an evil bloodbender, unalaq being a conniving liar/.) it's also disappointing how the show was so clearly arc-based - a massive korra story that developed over 50 episodes would have been insanely great, but instead each threat rises and falls over the course of 12 episodes.

and yeah, none of the teens in korra (other than korra herself) is particularly good. korra winds up getting a massive cast of mid-high-tier characters by leaning on its adults, but it spreads its attentions too thin.
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That's one reason seasons 3 and 4 are the best. Their villains never drop the ball and become cartoon evil. I mean, Kuvira does lose it, but it's still clear she believes in her ideology. And both seasons do some discussing of those.

S4 also still has strong influence from Zaheer too. It's just 1 and 2 that are weirdly isolated (1 obviously had a reason, but 2 not so much).

Although it's also super realistic that the baddies are bad because they're bad, not just because of their ideologies. No real conflict comes from perfectly good innocent people who just happen to disagree on ideology. You need a warmonger to have a war.

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S3 was the only one the showrunners made while knowing there would be another one after it.

So both the endings of S1 and S2 had to work as endings of the entire series.

That's why they are not connected. While in S3 they allowed themselves to actually write a dark finale for a change and continue its story in S4.

Perfectly innocent people don't really exist, though. And perfectly evil ones are rare (they are the psychopats, I suppose).

Ozai, Azula, Zhao, the villain from Korra S2, they are evil.

Amon is someone who suffered in the hands of an asshole father and decided he could prevent that if he just removed bending from the world.

Zaheer decided the problem was the existance of the state.

Kuvira decided the Earth Kingdom had been robbed at the end of the 100 year war and that it was her job to fix that.

All 3 were fighting for the greater good, the issue is they all decided they have the right to commit crimes and hurt people and destroy the status quo to achieve them.

Yeah there are tons of innocent people who also shared those backstories, but they just went on living their lives. The villains are unique in that they were willing to use large scale destruction and terror in order to get what they wanted. That's what makes them bad, not their ideas and backstory. That's what makes the villains feel real and not like some propaganda.

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nice countdown! I remember watching the last episode back in the mid 2000s. The original series was the best

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List is pretty good so far, aside from me thinking Tales of Ba Sing Se is at least a top 20 episode. But I understand your reasoning since it is filler and doesn't advance the plot in any meaningful way.

Mostly I'm just commenting to tell everyone to watch The Dragon Prince on Netflix, which is made by a lot of the same people as Avatar and Korra and is IMO of similarly high quality. Only drawback is that the animation style is a bit weird to get used to. It kind of feels like cutscenes from an anime video game is the best way I can describe it.

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The animation for Dragon Prince was more or less solved from season 2 onwards. But yeab, top tier show.

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foolm0r0n posted...

Yeah there are tons of innocent people who also shared those backstories, but they just went on living their lives. The villains are unique in that they were willing to use large scale destruction and terror in order to get what they wanted. That's what makes them bad, not their ideas and backstory. That's what makes the villains feel real and not like some propaganda.

i mean, yes, the villains take bad actions, and that's what makes them villains. however, there's a clear difference between S1/2 and S3/4's villains.

season 1: the equalist is really a bender using illegal techniques. it's easy to attack a hypocrite, and there's no need to address his ideas.

season 2: the guy who wants to impose religion was actually just power-hungry the whole time... and also wants to destroy the world.

season 3 and 4's villains were true to their ideologies. turns out murder is bad, so they remain villains, but at least you have to call them out for being bad because of their actions, not their ideas.
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Amon was right, regardless of his exploitation and hypocrisy. They weren't his ideas, they were society's.

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ZeldaTPLink posted...

#41: Winter Solstice - Part 2 (1.08)

Before rewatching, I remembred this episode being a big moment in the season while Part 1 was more of a boring set up. Now, I've grown to appreciate Part 1 much more, while realizing this one is more like a simple exposition episode.

Don't get me wrong, it's cool stuff. We have the kids trying to break into a FN temple, meeting a priest who is loyal to his traditions rather than to his nation, being captured, having Zuko and Zhao fight for the prize, and finally having Sokka set a very intelligente plan to bait the fire nation into opening the special door for them. Ultimately, though, it's just so that Aang can receive a simple piece of info about what his time limit is, a fact that won't become relevant again until the episode I just ranked in the previous post. Then he gets to incarnate Roku, kick some ass, and leave to resume his quest.

It's a nice episode, but it also kind of feels like an obligatory step in the plot that doesn't do a lot of special stuff.

An episode where the big reveal of information is one of the big kickers, as well as the expectation of getting some information is an episode that just doesnt rewatch as well; the first time theres this feeling they might learn something that will CHANGE EVERYTHING and it keeps the tension high; then what they do learn isnt as useful as that, but is still a cool enough new idea that on a first watch, you can basically forgive it not being as amazing a reveal because it was still a good one and you want to see where its going. The full context of the future makes it harder to accept the lesser reveal as worth the buildup, whereas on a first watch it was still cool.

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man, the second half of korra S2 is baaaad.
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#37: The Puppetmaster (3.08)

This was a pretty cool episode the first time I saw it, but it's one of those that doesn't fare quite as well on a rewatch.

Bloodbending is cool, alright. It's a great concept. It's not used well enough by this show, though (meanwhile Korra does use it, and perhaps too much, but I'm not analysing Korra). The episode ends with Katara using bloodbending in a pinch, and then next time we see it is in Southern Raiders, and it's used in a way that feels like they just put it there so the concept wouldn't be wasted, because it creates no drama since Katara's big character scene in that episode is the following one.

Otherwise, we have a fun little mystery episode, with the kids suspecting the old lady, only to find out she is a cool waterbender, then again finding out there are people disappearing, investigating that, and finally finding out again that she is evil. They fight, they beat her, and the episode ends. It's a well done, but somewhat basic, plot.

#36: The Waterbending Scroll (1.09):

The most memorable thing about this episode is the skirmish in the end. It involved the kids, Zuko, the pirates, and I think Zhao was in it to, maybe? Not sure, it's a whole bunch of fighting going on, for multiple objects, involving a bunch of different people, and it's really fun to watch, albeit it gets too long after a while.

Aside from that, the theme of the episode is that the kids steal a scroll from a bunch of pirates and procceed to learn Waterbending from it. Then turns out Aang has a natural skill at bending that makes him instantly better than Katara despite her having trained her entire life (Katara will eventually outpace him in the North Pole when they actually need discipline to reach a higher level, since Aang lacks that). Katara is envious, so she tries to practice more at night and causes the kids to be found, so the episode is an aesop about not being envious of your friends' natural skills.

It's not a bad episode, but it's nothing fantastic, either. It's quite important because it allows the Water book to have more waterbending before the ending (Book 3 needed that badly), but otherwise it leans onto being one of those simpler Season 1 episodes.

#35: The Earth King (2.18):

This episode serves two purposes. FIrst, it's the classic build-up episode, setting all the necessary chess pieces for the finale in its last third. Next, in the second third, it features the kids trying to convince the Earth King that his advisor is evil, and that there is a war going on. I actually think this was based in the story of Buddah, who was also a sheltered prince who didn't know the evils of the world, until one day he left his castle and discovered the existance of poverty. It's good storytelling.

It's not fantastic storytelling though, so this episode would be hanging maybe 10 positions lower if it had just that stuff. So why is it that high?

The damn action sequence in the first third.

Team Avatar decides to break into the Earth King's palace, but the Dai Li is there to defend it. Not that it stops them. We watch as three master benders go absolutely HAM on them. Aang gets to show off how good he has gotten at earthbending. Katara kicks a lot of ass and Toph just... is. The battle starts in the air as Aang punches a rock like he doesn't give a shit, they take down a bunch of Dai Lis while landing, then fodderize doizens of them. Then they raise a platform up to the palace while taking soldiers down like this is a fucking elevator JRPG scene. They they kick more ass and break in, and continue to kick ass inside the palace while Sokka looks for the right door.

It's great, and it's what this show does best. Brilliant coreography and creative fights with the elements. I love how the creators could just add amazing fight scenes in random buildup episodes just because they can.

puppetmaster too low! the traumas of the bloodbender are great. love that one-off villain.

team avatar trashing the dai li is one of my least favorite parts of s2 though.
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I thought Korra really struggled from being arc-based and not having a continuous villain/story to build on. With a more serious narrative hook to build on, there was a really interesting waiting to be told about how e.g. an anti-bending force rises up to demand equality (and they have a point - think of e.g. the massive employment advantages lightning benders have) that could have gone all sorts of places in Republic City (perhaps benders get driven out and go back to the nations?). It also struggled from the main cast other than Korra just being badly written (especially the shipping stuff - sheesh, are you playing Mako and Bolin entirely for the LOLs, or not?), which was salvaged a fair bit in later seasons but stopped it having a tight core cast which made TLA so special.

Still, other than S2, I enjoyed Korra and am glad it exists.

Katara's super-underrated (my controversial hobby horse is that her unpopularity is an example of why writing female characters that are pretty similar in attitudes/personalities to average real life women is fairly rare in young adult fiction, but I get why a lot of people find her annoying in a way more carefree characters like Sokka/Toph/Aang just aren't).

The choreography of the fight between Aang and Ozai in The Waterbending Scroll is a series highlight - Aang gives him his full attention, and lets him humiliate himself by torching his ships. Beautifully directed (we don't see where the fire is going, and neither does Ozai till it's too late).

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Kotetsu534 posted...

The choreography of the fight between Aang and Ozai in The Waterbending Scroll is a series highlight - Aang gives him his full attention, and lets him humiliate himself by torching his ships. Beautifully directed (we don't see where the fire is going, and neither does Ozai till it's too late).

Eh it feels like you are talking about 3 different episodes in this sentence.

Oh I mixed it up with the ending of The Deserter and called Zhao Ozai again. Been several years since I watched it so I forget what happened in which episode sometimes. The pirate episode has a much more playful tone, I remember it now - I did like Zuko stealing the necklace.

Also has some of Katara's dumb jealous stuff which is not very appealing (but understandable if you are sensitive about your ability and have to watch Aang just easing past effortlessly).

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It's basically Bato of the Water Tribe with inverted roles. And better writing, I guess.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

It's a well done, but somewhat basic, plot.

I dunno how you can end up with this take. It's a water bender in the fire nation, who was Katara's grandma's friend, who can do an insane form of bending learned from years in prison, who ends up being the baddie that Katara has to sell her soul to defeat, AND it has clear parallels to Aang's season-long struggle with violence.

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foolm0r0n posted...

I dunno how you can end up with this take. It's a water bender in the fire nation, who was Katara's grandma's friend, who can do an insane form of bending learned from years in prison, who ends up being the baddie that Katara has to sell her soul to defeat, AND it has clear parallels to Aang's season-long struggle with violence.

Thats the backstory.

The plot is "investigate why there are citizens disappearing from this village", and is what takes most of the episode.

The backstory is more interesting than the plot is

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netflix release day!

https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/5/15/21259676/avatar-last-airbender-netflix

grinding through S3 of korra atm. its villain is fantastic, but in terms of grand concepts, it's probably one of the least complex arcs of any season, due to there being no overarching societal movement. it's probably the only season where the villains are the underdogs.
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I'm sorry for the slow updates, guys. After finishing the show I was super hyped for this but now I keep forgetting it exists since I'm playing/watching other things!

I'll finish it eventually, though.

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#34: Avatar Returns (1.02)

Long ago, the four nations lived in harmony, and I was posting 3 episode write-ups a day. A hundred years past, I'm doing this more slowly, so now I finally got to the pilot.

This is the real pilot, because 1.01, which I ranked much lower, was the setup of the pilot.

Now, this episode is as basic as it gets (for obvious reasons). But it deserves to be right, because as a pilot, it did its job perfectly: convince me to watch the show. And it got me absolutely HYPED for the show the first time I saw it, let me tell you.

The episode has a bit of everything: Aang fighting Zuko in an air vs fire battle, Sokka developing his character and joining Team Avatar, Aang going Avatar State and creating a water tornado, Appa flying for the first time in the show. The goal was to get the viewer hyped for the concept of bending elements, show who the main players are, and begin the main quest of the season (go to the North Pole to learn waterbending). It nails all of that.

It's great episode, and I really have nothing bad to say about it. It's right in the middle because everything above are deeper episodes that took the show to its highs, but this episode is the foundation that made all of that possible. Good job, 1.02.

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Oh yeah I haven't shown yet, but I've been using a tier system:

mid-low tier

1.02: The Avatar Returns
2.18: The Earth King
1.09: The Waterbending Scroll
3.08: The Puppetmaster
1.03: The Southern Air Temple
3.13: The Firebending Masters
3.06: The Avatar and the Fire Lord
1.08: Winter Solstice - Part 2
3.18: Sozins Comet - Part 1 - The Phoenix King
2.20: The Crossroads of Destiny
2.15: The Tales of Ba Sing Se
2.01: The Avatar State

low tier

1.06: Imprisoned
3.11: The Day of Black Sun - Part 2
3.05: The Beach
1.16: The Deserter
3.17: The Ember Island Players
1.04: The Warriors of Kyoshi
3.12: The Western Air Temple
3.01: The Awakening

bottom tier

2.04: The Swamp
1.01: The Boy in the Iceberg
1.15: Bato of the Water Tribe
3.04: Sokka's Master
1.11: The Great Divide
3.09: Nightmares and Daydreams
1.14: The Fortuneteller
2.05: Avatar Day

Next is the mid-high tier, then high tier, then top tier.

1.02 is at the top of the mid-low, as the perfect "basic" episode.


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#33: Return to Omashu (2.03)

One of the more solid episodes of the early second season. This one starts with a shocker: Omashu has been conquered. It then reveals the king surrendered, and that no one understand why. That surrendering will be eventually explained when Aang rescues him ahnd he explains he is waiting for something (and boy, how will that wait be worth it!) and also explains what a true earthbending master must have.

The episode also delves into some other interesting things, though. It's one of the early episodes that question the "evil" status of random fire nation people. The kids accidentally kidnap a FN baby and spend some time debating whether he is actually evil, until they find a way to return him. Interesting stuff.

Finally, it also introduces Mai and Ty Lee, and does it pretty well, especially in Ty Lee's section where we see Azula screwing up her circus show. And then lets the two of them show off their cool powers and kick Team Avatar's asses.

It also has pentapox. You don't want to catch pentapox. Please practice social isolation.

Solid all around episode, which doesn't hit many epic beats but just lands in everything it does.

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#32: The Cave of Two Lovers (2.02)

This episode is... kind of hard to explain why I like it. But I really do like it. It is a more season 1-like episode, I guess, but it has some good character interactions and is just all around fun to watch.

It is one of the rate episodes focused on Aand x Katara that does the job well. They spend some time going over whether they should kiss in order to escape the cave, and eventually finally do it in a pretty cute scene, before finding out it wasn't really necessary.

It has some other fun stuff. We have this lovablegroup of hippies who are unfazed by anything, to Sokka's dismay. We have the introduction of the Earth Badgers, one of the coolest creatures in this verse. We have the ending that shows Omashu having been conquered, which is a good cliffhanger, and the funny beginning where the kids try to get to Omashu by air only to almost be killed by FN defenses.

And on the Zuko side, there is a cute and sad episode where a group of very decent EK people try to welcome Zuko, but at this point of the story he is too angry and bitter to accept it, so he steals a ride from them and runs away.

This is just a fun and intimate episode that does the worldbuilding, humor and characterization of the show very well, even if it's not one of the more ambitious episodes.

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Yeah I'd probably rank this episode even better for the character work alone.

BTW thought people might like to know, all the digital Avatar and Korra comics are on sale on Comixology right now. Also apparently there was a novel about Avatar Kyoshi last year, and a sequel coming out in a month or two?

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cave of two lovers is a top 15 episode for me

it's one of the funniest in the show's run, tell, a sweet tale, and really gets the show kicking properly
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When you finish, could you rank the episode directors?

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https://vm.tiktok.com/EeLCHS/

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NFUN posted...

When you finish, could you rank the episode directors?

I don't even know how I evaluate that?

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#31: The Storm (1.12)

This is an almost pure backstory episode, and it reveals us some juicy stuff. First, we learn the air monks who lived with Aang were kind of dicks, except Gyatso (btw, did you know the Dalai Lama is named Tenzin Gyatso? So both Aang's son and master were named after him). They wanted Aang to grow faster because they were afraid of the war, and tried to separate him from his father figure to accomplish that, but only caused him to run away and get frozen in an iceberg. Also the air kids are jerks, too.

The Zuko side is cool, too, albeit a bit rushed (compare to the flashback in Zuko Alone which shows a lot more details and interactions). We learn Zuko was a Good Guy All Along, but because he decided to oppose his evil dad way when he was too young to kick ass, he was stripped of everything that ever mattered to him, getting only a cool scar for the trouble. It's interesting how for his dad, the biggest crime isn't even opposing him, but refusing to fight in the agni kai afterwards. Had Zuko fought back, he might have ended with even more scars, but regained his "honor" in the same day.

The episode has a plot about helping rescuing an old fisherman, which ties nicely into Aang overcoming his weaknesses, and getting a cool scene at the end where he and Zuko stare each other, each one with their own dark pasts and demons, and opposing ways to restore their honor.

The episode is also a very good lead into the Blue Spirit, as it gives more sense to Zuko's actions in there.

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