You know those pieces of music that, when you hear them, you’re instantly back there
in that moment you first heard it?
Everything you felt, where you were, what you were doing, what the room smelled like.
I think those last few notes from the ending of avatar do the trick for many of us.
[play avatars love alexa] You got chills too, right?
Now, this is also just--a beautiful piece of music.
But I think it’s a little bit more than that.
First, of course, it’s the outro concluding the three season epic.
And in it, and the scene it carries, there’s also a statement being made -- arguably, about
love.
I hear the notes of the season 4 Korra finale, and I crumble to pieces.
I’ll try to explain why.
On December 19, 2014, I was in a small, one room apartment in Italy with my mother.
Normally we’d spend time in our home country in the summer, but this year was a winter
trip.
I remember how cold the apartment was.
Season 4 of Korra was airing, and i’d been moooostly keeping up with it.
I’d watched Korra when it first came out.
I loved the first season.
I fell off during the second, then got back on the third, because everyone on my tumblr
seemed to be talking about it.
But at no point, if you’d asked me, would i have predicted things would have ended the
way they did.
See--I wasn’t a korrasami shipper from the beginning.
As the season had gone on i’d seen speculation about it as a pairing, but never took it as
anything... serious.
That just wasn’t a thing that could happen--it wasn’t even a possibility in my mind.
I figured it’d be just another, if popular, headcanon, and that’d be all.
And then…..
December 19th.
the finale aired.
I watched it on my bed in the living room.
The final scene was so clearly intimate
I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and all they were doing was holding hands.
I watched the whole thing from a distance, until, a couple days later:
The post.
Here it was, confirmation from the creator of the show himself.
I was floored.
This was big.
And something about it felt so personal.
See, Avatar was my world.
In fourth grade, I was that kid running around with blue arrows i’d drawn in smudged marker
on my hands up to my shoulders.
I had every season 3 episode downloaded to my ipod nano;I bought the dvds, the posters,
the supplementary books.
I remember watching it then talking about it with friends the next day at school.
And then, it ended.
Aang and Katara kiss, the music swells, and it’s over.
That kiss capped off the three-season slowburn of our childhoods.
Not just that, but Aang's desire to love and be loved was a central part of his emotional
arc, contrasted, apparently, against his duties as avatar.
It’s the classic question: does love make you weak?
Do personal loyalties cloud your judgement, and do you need to be free of them, untethered,
to be a good leader?
The original series staunchly answered, “no,” by the end.
Aang chose both, and the musical piece called “The Avatar’s Love” plays triumphantly
as the series ends.
And at the end of another road with Korra, we find ourselves back here, again, with love.
Six years later, we’re older, now.
And Korra and Asami are sitting on the steps together.
It’s a quiet moment, a respite from the mostly relentless pace of the last two seasons.
Jeremy Zuckerman’s tender score comes in, and they ponder the years and hardships they’ve
been through.
Korra’s power, her physical strength, has been what defined her for so long--what she
defined herself by.
And each season she was challenged, losing pieces of that.
While Aang never wanted to be the Avatar, Korra was terrified to be anything but.
She shows up in Republic City, and she and asami go from enemies in a very stupid love
triangle, to allies.
After losing her connection to her past lives, a new threat emerges, and during all that,
she and Asami become partners, in sync the whole season.
Then, at the end of it all, Korra’s at rock bottom again, having lost everything that
makes her her, and Asami’s there, again.
Just her, Korra, and a quiet offer.
The touch of a hand.
And then Korra leaves for the SOUTH Pole,
to heal what she thinks is permanent damage.
Alone, broken and down to her last inch, she reaches out for some kind of connection--and
again--it’s Asami.
She finds comfort in their letters where she couldn’t with others.
Which brings us here, on the stairs, “danced out,” looking out at a glowing sky, on the
cusp of a new world.
They’re given a chance to exhale, and so are we.
And finally, here, as they comfort each other, and wonder what’s next… that unspoken
something has a chance to take shape.
It’s not the will they wont they of preteens we grew up with, but something softer, quieter.
And with the acknowledgement of Zuckerman’s final notes, another touch of hands.
For korra, a beginning.
And a world, more than ever, that belongs to us.
As significant as this moment was, it was censored down to a network-approved minimum,
and since then, other children’s-geared media have followed suit and gone further.
[im in pain]
Catradora makes me die) But Korrasami felt uniquely special, and I
think there’s a reason for that.
And it's that happened in the sequel to a generationally defining show.
Avatar was our world.
We played in it, grew up in it.
And now, the world that raised us as children, was welcoming us with warmth, and kindness,
as adults.
For as much as we love to analyze, storytelling is fundamentally an emotional medium, most
successful just in its ability to make us feel something.
And with the best stories, something kind of magical happens--a little exchange between
us, and it.
See, when we watched Avatar, we brought that world into ourselves.
And in every elemental quiz, in every gush about zuko, in every white lotus tattoo, we
gave it a piece of us back.
After the finale aired, I remember watching so many reaction compilations to the last
scene.
And even just, the existence and appeal of these compilations is indicative of this phenomenon.
Yes, it’s also just funny to watch strangers scream in unison at inhuman decibel levels.
But watching these compilations of people seeing Korrasami happen for the first time
put just, the biggest, dumbest grin on my face.
You had to see it like.
People broke.
Down.
screaming, sobbing.
Others just too stunned to say a word.
And honestly, in the days that followed, it was these reaction compilations that i watched
as much just as I rewatched the scene itself.
There was something so magnetic about that that joy on full display.
Something shared and unquantifiable.
These were reactions to what was, at the end of the day, a statement, an expression--of
love.
(But love is a form of energy and it swirls all around us.
The Air Nomads’ love for you has not left this world, it is still inside of your heart,
and is reborn as new love.)
We loved this universe.
And it loved us back.
This was the Avatar’s Love.
And it looked like mine, too.