The Legend of Korra: Korra Alone

OMG, THAT WAS AMAZING!!!

Okay, deep breaths...

It was a big risk calling this episode Korra Alone, as it instantly and inevitably calls to mind its namesake: Zuko Alone. The Legend of Korra has constantly struggled to live up to its predecessor, and so making a direct correlation with what is largely considered one of the best episodes of the original series initially seems to be asking for trouble.

But it turns out that this is one of those rare instances in which a franchise's deliberate reference to a beloved past instalment actually enhances what's going on. There were plenty of call-backs to Avatar: The Last Airbender here, from a revisit to the swamp, to the reappearance of Katara and Toph, to the deliberate imagery of Korra cutting her ponytail off beside a river. And of course, both episodes revolve around their titular character in a state of isolation as they travel the world.

But it was the tone that was most reminiscent of Zuko Alone. Both episodes are dark and introspective and have no easy answers. So, let's go through it...

Right off the bat, Korra Alone is rife with symbolism:
 

... and like Zuko Alone it utilizes flashbacks in order to take a deeper look at our protagonist's psyche. Though they don't explore Korra's childhood, they do fill in some of the gaps left in the three-year time skip, when Korra opted to return to the South Pole with her parents to heal.

It's here I have to stop and confess something. In last season's finale, I never actually realized that Korra was confined to that wheelchair. I thought she was just physically weakened and letting people push her around for a while, and it was not until I saw her struggling to walk during her lessons with Katara that I realized she was actually paralysed.

Suddenly her depression and PTSD was even more understandable (not that her ordeal
wasn't reason enough for both those things without the loss of her legs), for an athletic young woman like Korra would no doubt find it unbearable to be inactive.

There was some great material in these flashbacks: some legitimate mother/daughter interaction, Korra struggling with her recuperation, the voiceovers from Asami/Bolin/Mako as their letters were read (a nice way of keeping them prevalent) but Korra's lack of interest is apparent as she lets the pages fall to the floor.

As with many things in this episode, it's a disturbing image, one that illustrates an emotion familiar to anyone who's suffered from depression: the complete lack of emotion. Perhaps the most pertinent line of dialogue was during Korra's discussion with Katara, in which she asks: "What am I going to find if I get through this?" to which Katara answers: "Won't it be interesting to find out?" This isn't just about rehabilitating Korra physically; it's about making her interested in living again.

When Korra decides to strike out on her own, I think the show deliberately tried to make us wonder whether or not this was the right thing for her to do. She's made a lot of foolish decisions in the past, and perhaps isolation will only damage her further. Yet we all need a little alone-time every now and then – so perhaps this is what's right for her recuperation. We just don’t know yet.

As she travels from place to place, she's frequently haunted by a vision of herself – and boy is it terrifying. Perhaps one of the downright scariest things this show has done since Koh the Face-Steal (though personally I found it even more unsettling), this vision of Korra is silent, glaring and unknowable. It simply stands and watches Korra as she travels the world, hunched over in a Primal Stance and yet horribly quick and agile whenever Korra engages it. Listless but brutal, moving like a zombie at some points, we're left uncertain as to what exactly it wants. Its presence deters Korra from entering Republic City and re-joining her friends, yet eventually it deliberately leads her to the fighting ring.

It's there we get a fresh perspective of last episode's fight from Korra's point-of-view. All this time she's been fighting her shadow-self – and losing. That it's meant to be a manifestation of her subconscious seems clear enough (as far as such things can be "clear"), but what exactly are we to make of it? When it leads her to the fighting ring, is it suggesting that Korra wants to hurt herself? Is it the embodiment of her self-loathing? Is that what we're dealing with here?

It strikes me that a lot of this material would have worked fantastically well at the end of Book One: Air had they not gone the Deus Ex Machina route, but I've long suspected that Bryke end up absorbing a lot of internet criticism (hey, they got rid of the love triangle, right?) and subsequently make storytelling decisions based on what they've read. I know there was a lot of fandom talk about Korra wandering the world and struggling to reclaim herself after the events of season one, and all this easily feels like it could have directly followed the scene in which Korra approaches that cliff at the South Pole after Katara tells her she can't return her bending powers.

Instead, all these years on, she ends up returning to the Tree of Time in the spirit world, where a collection of curious spirits remark that she doesn't have any "Raava energy". I'm not entirely sure whether this is due to the fight with Zaheer or the much earlier one with Unalaq, but perhaps the most intriguing moment of the episode is when she struggles through the desert only to see a great and shining image of Raava in front of her. This spirit's connection with the Avatar line is fascinating to me, but it remains to be seen whether this was a true vision or just a mirage.

Finally, Korra is led by the cutest little puppy in existence (actually a spirit she met earlier in disguise) to the swamp, having been given a morale boost by the fact that the dog can actually see her shadow-self.

There she partakes in another terrifying fight with herself, filled with yet more potent imagery.

I know that mercury poisoning can cause hallucinations, so all this might well be a side-effect of that, but the sight of Shadow!Korra's chain wrapping around the real Korra and forcibly dragging her into a pool of mercury neatly visualizes her internal despair.

But then, she wakes up in a strange place. An underground cave where an elderly woman is preparing some stew. If you feel tears starting at this stage, it's okay, let them come. It's Toph of course, and Korra has landed right in the middle of her Yoda-like existence in the very place that we the audience first saw her. And she calls her "twinkle toes."

As episodes go, Korra Alone was damn near perfect. It's frightening and thought-provoking, beautiful (as ever), beautifully constructed, with past locales and people elegantly folding themselves into the next generation's tribulations. And as ever, there was the sprinkling of irreverent humour that this show does so well:

I watched it twice before writing this review, and now I'm going to go watch it again. And possibly once more after that.

Miscellaneous Observations:

There's cause for celebration among the Korrasami shippers: not only did Asami offer to accompany Korra to the South Pole, but Asami was the only one Korra wrote to once she was there.

What happened to Kya? She was on the ship with the Avatar family as they headed for the South Pole, but was never seen afterwards.

The mention of Kyoshi, who "took down a shark-squid with one hand", makes me long for a prequel series exploring the lives of the pre-Aang Avatars.

The chain wrapped around Shadow!Korra's arm was a great touch; the clinking sound of it reminiscent of Bob Marley dragging his sins around – just as Korra cannot shake her despair.

This really is the cutest puppy ever:

The flashbacks do an elegant job of making the puppy and its agenda mysterious well before the spirit is introduced. Chronologically Korra meets the spirit before the puppy, but by placing half the episode in flashbacks there is some suspense raised over what exactly this little dog is, whilst simultaneously making it less of a Deus Ex Machina.

And there was something very touching about this spirit helping Korra; she naturally has a rapport with them given her role as Avatar, but she also has quite a gift with children – I don't think it was an accident that this particular spirit spoke in a child's voice. And I've just this second realized that the spirit probably appeared as a small white dog to reflect Naga.

Damn this show is beautiful, filled with glorious scenery shots that also manage to depict Korra's isolation: