Welcome back to this week’s Legend of Korra review! After the explosive mid-season finale last episode, how does the team pick up the pieces? Let’s find out!
1. Picking up the pieces.
When this episode starts, as per the title, it’s about cleaning up from the events of the last episode. Mako and Bolin need a new place to live and move into the Sato mansion; Cabbage Corp is raided for their Equalist support; Korra and Asami have some fun racing satomobiles and make up.
What I find interesting is that the episode takes a sharp turn at the end of the first act, when Korra overhears Sato talking about an Equalist plot. It turns out that the episode’s early scenes weren’t just about picking up the pieces from last episode, but also arranging them into a new form so they could come crashing down once again.
2. Investigating Sato.
The second act covers the metalbending police’s investigation into Korra’s allegations that Sato may be in league with the Equalists. I don’t have much to say about the investigation itself. It gets us from point A to point B. The real interesting parts are about how Korra stands by her convictions. She knows what she heard, and she’s willing to risk her new friends — the only friends she’s ever had — to investigate. To her, performing her Avatar duties are infinitely more important than any friendship, one of the biggest things to set her apart from Aang, and that’s something that will be tested as the series goes on.
Oh, and Lin uses Toph’s “seismic foot” technique here!! (Yes, I just made that term up. Has there ever been a term for this move?)
3. Asami’s choice.
Asami goes through a lot in this episode. She starts out elated that her boyfriend is moving in with her, makes up with Korra, spends the entire second act in denial, starts to question everything she knows when she sees the underground tunnel in her father’s workshop, and finally decides to betray him.
With such strong and varied emotions, Seychelle Gabriel gets each across in a clear yet nuanced way. She’s not just in denial about her father, she’s also angry and hurt at the prospect that it could be true. And the moment when she electrocuted her father was a heartbreaking mix of certainty and tragedy: she knew she was making the right choice, no matter how much it hurt. Gabriel really owns the role in this episode.
4. Subdued fight music.
In an interesting switch from past music used in Avatar, this episode’s fight scene in Sato’s underground bunker uses a more subdued string arrangement. Gone are the pounding percussive beats, and in their place are something much more emotional and impressionistic. The directing is newly suited to this music as well, favoring wide shots and longer takes over close-ups and more visceral choreography. As a result, we feel the overall tragedy of the scenario instead of the exhilaration of the fight.
The creative team behind the show is really branching out here, and I’m glad they aren’t just sticking to what worked in the past!
5. Platinum: A new weakness.
Much of Korra’s world-building so far has been about taking elements from the original show and either remixing them or expanding on them. This episode introduces a truly new piece of the world: platinum. It’s a quick line said during the build-up to the fight, but it has major ramifications.
Sato uses a platinum wall to trap the benders, and he fights in mechs made of platinum, because platinum is too pure for a metalbender to bend. (In the real world, platinum is the purest of the precious metals and ten times rarer than gold.) This brings up a lot of questions about metalbending: Could a metalbender manipulate 24-karat gold, which is 99.9% pure? Is metalbending only possible with unrefined metals, which contain earth molecules? What defines “earth” and why doesn’t metal count?
At the end of the day, I guess the answers don’t really matter. We now have a new weakness in the Avatar world, and that’s an important detail that the writers can use later.
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What did you think about the episode? Were you satisfied with the direction of Sato’s character? Do you stan Asami? Are you excited about the prospect of platinum? Let me know in the comments!
