<p>This hardly sounds like a proper ***SERIES*** finale to me. ShadowRaptor is absolutely right. </p>

<p>I wasn't too big a fan of Book 4, but I thought it recovered nicely for the finale. I do think it worked as a series finale. If there's any one overarching theme of <i>The Legend of Korra</i>, going even as far back as Book 1, it's about the break between the human and spiritual worlds. The Book 4 finale addresses that by having a new spirit portal open in the middle of the world's industrial powerhouse and having two of the least spiritually-attuned people in the show go on an adventure in the Spirit World. More people might be taking note of that if we weren't all distracted by "OMG KORRASAMI CANON?!??" and such. </p><p>Still, the big offenders with Book 4: </p>

1. Too many characters we've come to know and love were sidelined. This was pretty much the Korra, Bolin, and Varrick show. I mean, technically this was <i>always</i> "The Korra Show," but <i>LoK</i> had its ensemble; an ensemble that was well used throughout Book 3. Mako and Asami ultimately didn't have all that much to do. Tenzin and Lin didn't become relevant until the last third of the season. Bumi may have had only 2-3 lines total and Kya was nowhere to be seen. Jinora, after spending the rest of the series becoming an increasingly bigger presence and Book 3 ending on her becoming an airbending master, was only important for two episodes, one of which most everyone wrote off as filler. Granted, not using characters when they aren't needed is better than Book 2's route of giving them pointless stuff to do, but it's such a step down from the previous Book.
   
   
2. Kuvira's characterization was a bit of a mess. Her brand of evil was mostly something characters talked about rather than something the audience can witness for itself. Yeah, she's got re-education camps and uses coerced labor, but unless we can see any of that it doesn't feel so bad, even if we can say the stuff she's doing is a lot worse than anything Zaheer did. Also, she was locking up any waterbenders and firebenders in her territory? Wha? When did we see foreigners being scapegoated in the former Earth Kingdom? Why were they being scapegoated? How was she able to do this without the rest of the world noticing? Or are there so few foreigners in this country that takes up over 3/4 of the world's landmass that it can go unnoticed. Even when we did see an Earth Empire prison in "Operation Beifong," it didn't look too bad. A bit spartan, but not what you'd expect given how much they were built up.
   
   

<p>Ultimately, I'd say Book 4 has the opposite problem of Book 1. The latter was a strong season held back by a weak finale; the former a weak season bolstered by a strong finale. </p><p>But hey, here's to hoping we get to spend more time with this universe again. <i>The Colbert Report</i> isn't the only show that ended this week that could've used a certain Vera Lynn song. </p>

<div class="quote"><i>More people might be taking note of that if we weren't all distracted by "OMG KORRASAMI CANON?!??" and such</i></div>
<p>In my case, if there was no Korrasami, I'd just be really bitter, because I didn't like the finale overall. </p><p>I agree with the 2 problems you listed. I understand how Kuvira got to where she was, but she was just irrationally vicious & had the personality of dry paint. I also never liked the idea of promoting a background character who had barely any lines & could only be differentiated by the fact that she had a mole to the status of main villain. </p><p>I also hated the mecha. I hate giant mechs, I think they're completely ridiculous. They DID redeem it slightly by giving it a Spirit Energy power source, but that doesn't explain the other problems I had with it. And I got sick of watching this thing tank every attack when it should really be falling right over because it's so imbalanced. </p><p>And it had no air support, apparently because the creators just forgot about it. </p><p>The final battles were pretty good, but I didn't much care for Korra chasing Kuvira or giving her a stern talking to. I was good with everything after that, though. </p><p>I'm not sure where to rank it exactly. Book 3 is the only one that had a finale I had no problems with. </p>

<p>Speaking of Book 3, think the majority of us absolutely adored it because it had something that the other three books didn't (or had less of). Book 3 had probably the best villains out of the series in the Red Lotus, who were illustrated to be mysterious and dangerous benders from the beginning. Unalaq and Kuvira had their personalities laid out right from the start which made their character fall flat. Amon came close but we knew that he merely wanted to rid the world of benders, however with the Red Lotus we only knew a little bit as time went on. The whole feeling of their appearance was dark too. If you remember, during the first few episodes, we get a shot of Korra and Co. being all cheerful, then cut to a dark scene where some Red Lotus member breaks free and joins Zaheer in going after the Avatar. </p><p>With that being said, I also felt that Book 3's villains were truly dangerous in that their goals did not lie in benders, Vaatu, or world domination, but they were going after Korra herself. That raised the stakes quite high. To see one of our beloved protagonists being pursuited is an intense experience. And we did not know what they were going to do with Korra until the finale. So Book 3 gave me the vibe that someone was ACTUALLY going to die. The other three villains did not seem as threatening, but in Book 3 you would've thought that Zaheer was legitimately going to breathbend out of someone (remember Tenzin? We all thought he was dead before the finale, and that's what made us nervous and excited for the finale to build hype on) </p><p>I also liked that Book 3 actually tied into the events of ATLA more than any other book. Book 1 and 4 naturally had no tie-ins with the original storyline. Book 2 had a little bit with the story of the origins of the Avatar. But for Book 3 we had the Red Lotus, the counterpart to the White Lotus, and which was resulted directly from the events from ATLA. I would have really liked it if the Red Lotus were the overarching villains for the series. They had the dynamics of a Team Avatar (where their combination of their four elements meant they had the power of the Avatar literally except spiritual powers), attractive bending styles (probably way better than Kuvira), and sinister intents.  </p><p>The whole plotline progressed more tightly and more intense as well. It started off with a bang and just kept going all the way till the end. Also, some may object but I find Book 3's last shot to be haunting and possibly the best last scene out of any book: a crippled Avatar with a tear down her face. I would have had no problem if LOK just ended at Book 3, it was such a perfect season to wrap up the series. Sadly Book 4 let the momentum down. </p>

Book 3 was very good.

I'm in agreement with Neo Bahamut and Poet Laghima here.

<p>I knew I forgot something, what was up with the Spirits just coming back & the whole thing about "if we want to live together, we need to work together" just being forgotten? </p>

<div class="quote"><i>Poet Laghima wrote:
When Bryke said that this season would tie up everything in the story (see IGN interview) I had high hopes, but in the end there are STILL unanswered questions. The first being: <p>WHO'S SU'S DAD </p> </i></div>
<p>I would add a hell of a lot of other questions above that one, including the identity of Lin's father. We know his name, and absolutely nothing else about him, aside from the fact he and Toph split up at some point. But I would argue that there are far more compelling questions to which we did not get answers, among them being:
</p><p>Did Korra ever get her connection to her past lives back? </p><p>How did Sokka die? </p><p>Who is the mother of Zuko's daughter? </p><p>Whatever happened to the remaining Equalists? Or the Red Lotus, for that matter? They couldn't have just disappeared. Even Ozai still had followers at the end of the 100-yr War. </p><p>Is Aiwei still in the Fog of Lost Souls? If so, did his body just rot away in that hotel room? </p><p>Did Kuvira clear out the swamp entirely? It seems that she had the resources and manpower to do it. And what happened to the swampbenders who lived there? </p><p>I'm sure I've missed some...feel free to add to the list. </p>

<div class="quote"><i>Avatar Steve wrote:
<div class="quote">Poet Laghima wrote:
When Bryke said that this season would tie up everything in the story (see IGN interview) I had high hopes, but in the end there are STILL unanswered questions. The first being: <p>WHO'S SU'S DAD </p> </i></div>
I would add a hell of a lot of other questions above that one, including the identity of Lin's father. We know his name, and absolutely nothing else about him, aside from the fact he and Toph split up at some point. But I would argue that there are far more compelling questions to which we did not get answers, among them being:
<p>Did Korra ever get her connection to her past lives back? </p><p>How did Sokka die? </p><p>Who is the mother of Zuko's daughter? </p><p>Whatever happened to the remaining Equalists? Or the Red Lotus, for that matter? They couldn't have just disappeared. Even Ozai still had followers at the end of the 100-yr War. </p><p>Is Aiwei still in the Fog of Lost Souls? If so, did his body just rot away in that hotel room? </p><p>Did Kuvira clear out the swamp entirely? It seems that she had the resources and manpower to do it. And what happened to the swampbenders who lived there? </p><p>I'm sure I've missed some...feel free to add to the list. </p> </div> <p>Add that we still don't know the warlord P'Li worked for, as well as who Xai Bau was. I'm sure they didn't introduce these names to us for nothing... </p>

<p>I don't really care about the warlord, but seeing some origin story of Xai Bau and the Red Lotus would be pretty cool. At the very least, Iroh would figure prominently. </p>