3x09 The Stakeout

[8.2/10] It’s funny, when I was in the middle of this episode, I started to get a little worn out and thought to myself, “it’s about time we stop just building up these villains and start explaining who they are and what they want.” Much of the first half of this episode feels like wheel-spinning, with the pursuit of Aemwei being a fine enough plot-motivation, but leaving me starting to wonder when Korra and Co. were going to get to the proverbial fireworks factory.

Heck, I even started to get tired of Bolin’s antics, and he’s one of my favorite characters in the show! There’s some not so subtle symbolism in Bolin and Asami playing pai jhao, with the former trying a fast-paced instinctive style and the latter wanting to be more strategic and methodical, at the same time Korra wants to rush in and confront her enemies while Mako is advising caution and observation. Still, it felt like TLoK just drawing things out.

But then, you know, Korra aparated to the Spirit World, and Aimwei got dumped in the fog of lost souls, and the rest of Team Avatar is fighting a losing battle against half of Evil Team Avatar, and Zaheer is explaining his motivations and holy hell, business just picked up!

It’s all very exciting, but the most interesting part to me is learning what’s driving the newly revealed Red Lotus society. One of the big problems with Season 2 of TLoK is how opaque Unalaq’s motivations were, and how they mostly amounted to the usual “evil ‘cause I’m evil” megalomania. But Season 3 seems to be correcting for that. Sure, there’s something a little to plainly black hat about Zaheer booting Aimwei like that, or announcing that chaos is the natural order of things, but like most compelling villains, he has a point, even if it’s twisted to suit his ends.

Zaheer points out that Korra agrees with the Red Lotus Society’s initial goal of opening up the spirit world to try to create balance between humans and spirits. And he has an interesting position about the incompetence of leaders in the Four Kingdoms/New Republic. Sure, the AtLA-era water tribe chief was a good guy, presumably Zuko made for a good Fire Lord, and though in over his head, Tenzin seems like a noble leader for the Air Nation. But through the Avatar-verse we’ve seen problematic rulers. Wan’s time had fatcat nobles. Kyoshi had to take out a rebellious warlord type. Roku’s issues with Sozin are well documented. Aang’s time featured the malevolent Fire Lord Ozai and an incompetent Earth King hoodwinked by his manipulative advisor. And in the present we’ve had a New Republic President who refused to help and kicked Korra out, a selfish jerk of an Earth Queen, and a Water Tribe Chief who tried to become the Anti-Avatar. There’s a lot to dislike there (though it’s undercut a bit by how Zaheer was allied with Unalaq, even if he disclaims it now).

And there’s some nice real world connections, with Zaheer’s hopes corresponding to a “world without borders” ideas that has been bubbling in political science for decades. The fact that he doesn’t seem to want to antagonize Korra, that he has a distinct worldview, and his demeanor and philosophical bent set him apart from prior Avatar-verse baddies. It may have taken a while to get there, but once the episode hits the spirit realm, “The Stakeout” gets very intriguing and exciting.

Ah, yes the Anarchism the most pointless political movement was behind all of this. That tracks.

I wish Zaheer's arguments were strong, at this point in the season even Unalaq seemed right about some part of his worldview. But this is just so weak. World is unfair because it has Earth Queen in it. The solution? Have many smaller "Earth Queens" set destruction to innocent people in the world with that amount of power vacuum. But also don't forget to routinely destroy any assemblance to fight chaos with any type of power structure. The second nature of humans or at least non-benders is to build a power structures of any type. How the hell is that supposed to bring final change - it's going to be endless battle once again.

Oh, and about one spoiler about ending of Legend of Korra that I knew about before starting the series, but not quite apparently. Goddammit, I heard that Korra would end up with some girl at the end. I didn't know which one. For some reason I assumed it would be unimportant background character thrown at the last possible moment. But it's going to be Asami isn't it? Am I crazy? Is there other reason why they constantly put together this season? Why Mako barely interacts with Asami?! I thought it going to be background character. I'm a blind moron)