The women in the Legend of Korra are incredible.
Like, obviously, Korra is great, but this series does a phenomenal job of showcasing
other amazing female characters too.
It’s by no means a one-woman show, and that’s a part of what makes it so special.
There’s no token female character, which means the women in the show have the chance
to be varied, diverse, and unique.
Each one of them doesn’t have to represent all women -- they can just exist for themselves.
Because sometimes, even shows or movies that have one outstanding female character fall
flat when it comes to the rest of the cast.
But diversity doesn’t mean chucking in one physically-strong, emotionally-stunted woman
into a story full of men and calling it a day.
Finding something that really represents the diverse experiences and personalities of women
is unfortunately relatively rare, but I think that the Legend of Korra does a fantastic job.
So today, I want to talk about some of the incredible women from this series and go through
why I love them all so much.
I’ll mostly be focusing on Book Four for a few reasons: it’s my favorite Book in
the series, it’s the only book where the main villain is a woman, and a lot of other
female characters have plotlines that build up into the fourth Book and come to a resolution there.
Book Three definitely had some great female villains like P’li, Ming-Hua, and the Earth
Queen -- but Book Four is just on another level.
So let’s start off with some of the main characters and then work our way down to the
characters that get a bit less screen time.
First up is Korra.
She’s the main character of the series and has trouble controlling her temper.
I liked her contrast with the last Avatar, Aang.
Where Aang would try to find a diplomatic, peaceful solution, Korra just likes to punch
her way through her problems.
She’s fierce and strong, and goes through a lot over the course of the series.
She’s a flawed but brilliant character who is doing her best to live up to the title
of Avatar, even when she doesn’t really know what she’s doing.
And, as I’ve covered in a previous video, she ends up dating Asami by the end of the
show, which was just a beautiful, beautiful moment.
Asami is in some ways a foil to Korra’s brute force approach, but not in the same
way as Aang.
She’s more technology-minded, and can often engineer a solution that might still involve
fighting her way out, but is a bit more clever and thought-out.
She’s the brain to Korra’s brawn, essentially, though she can definitely hold her own in a fight.
She has her own hardships throughout the series; in particular, she struggles to reconnect
with her dad after he betrayed her, and ultimately she sees him sacrifice himself.
She’s the rich kid who learns to run an entire business by herself, and as a result
has a vast wealth of knowledge around various industries.
Kuvira is the main antagonist of the fourth Book, but she wasn’t always a villain.
Throughout Book Three, she was on Korra’s side, and it’s not until Book Four when
her desire to re-unite the Earth Kingdom by any means necessary puts her at odds with
Korra and her friends.
She’s a fascinating villain not only because she was on the protagonist’s side, but because
it’s her ambition and drive, the very things that she was applauded for,
that lead to her becoming a villain in Book Four.
It’s not like she had a change of heart and decided that she suddenly hates the protagonists.
She believes that she’s doing what they wanted all along, and it’s wrong that they’re
now standing in her way.
Re-uniting the Earth Kingdom was what Korra and company wanted, but eventually they start
to realize that Kuvira’s method for doing so is unethical.
She crushes all dissent, forces cities to join her under threat of violence, employs
slave labor, and sends dissenters to re-education camps.
Plus, on top of it all, she considers Republic City to be land stolen from the Earth Kingdom,
and wants to reclaim it by force.
But behind it all, she’s a villain who evokes sympathy from the viewer because of how similar
she is to Korra.
Korra is also known to take a “fight first and ask questions later” kind of approach.
Korra is also very driven and ambitious, often to a point where she has to be reeled back
in by people like Tenzin.
Her similarities to Kuvira are unavoidable, and so it leads to a classic “We’re not
so different, you and I” kind of situation.
Next is Jinora, who is one of my favorite characters in the series.
She’s the oldest of Tenzin’s kids, but still quite young compared to most of the
other characters.
In the first two Books, she’s kind of just “one of the kids”, but in Book Three really
starts to develop her own skills and identity away from her siblings.
She realizes that she has an affinity for communicating with spirits and entering the
spirit world, and she becomes a kind of spiritual guide for Korra.
And all of her growth and knowledge comes in spite of the fact that her dad, and those
around her, still think that she’s just a helpless kid.
She has to prove herself time and time again before she’s recognized as an airbending
master and is allowed to get the tattoos to prove it.
Because she’s a young girl, she was discounted and overlooked, but she’s incredibly talented
and as far as we see in the show, the only person who can perform spiritual projection,
essentially being able to leave her body and travel to far away places in spirit form.
She’s the excited youth, the next generation, ready to take over and be involved but constantly
doubted and left behind.
Ikki is Jinora’s younger sister, and as such, her airbending skills haven’t had
quite as much time to develop as Jinora’s.
She’s hyper and talkative, unlike the quiet and comparatively-chill Jinora, but just as
determined and hard-working as her older sister.
She’s annoyed by her siblings, but by talking things out with her dad, who was in a similar
situation, she learns to accept them.
She’s smart and able to talk her way out of most situations.
By the end of the series, she’s a talented airbender who’s a valuable part of the team,
and she even saves Jinora’s life when she’s knocked out of the sky.
Next, I want to talk about a few characters together: Toph, Lin, and Suyin Beifong.
Toph is the mother of Lin and Suyin, and she only has a brief role in the Legend of Korra.
After being poisoned at the end of Book Three, Korra goes to train with her, and we find
that she’s the same cranky, tough person we all remember from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Lots of stories have an old wise man who guides the main character, like a Dumbledore or a
Gandalf, and to some extent, Korra does have that in Tenzin, but it was nice to see that
Korra’s old wise mentor figure later on was a woman.
Toph is able to help Korra work through her PTSD and remove the final bits of poison out
of her system, and it’s an emotional and turbulent time for Korra.
Lin and Suyin, as Toph’s daughters, don’t have the best relationship with each other.
Lin is grouchy and cranky and mean, while Suyin can be more nurturing and gentle.
And it should come as no surprise to anyone that Toph wasn’t the most loving and affectionate
mother, so it seems like they never felt that close of a connection to each other.
Then there was an incident where Lin was working with the police while Suyin was involved in
a gang, and when Lin tried to arrest Suyin, Suyin broke the metal whip that Lin had grabbed
her with, and it recoiled and scarred Lin’s face.
That incident haunted them for the rest of their lives, until in Book Four when the two
women are finally forced to confront their feelings about each other.
An entire episode revolves around their complex relationship -- why they hate each other,
what they could’ve done differently, what they want to happen now.
It’s a messy, messy relationship but that’s what makes it interesting.
The women of the Legend of Korra aren’t great because they’re all perfect -- they’re
great because they’re allowed to be flawed and complex.
And I love that the Legend of Korra gives them the space to work through their troubles
together instead of simplifying things or making every woman too good to ever make a mistake.
Next, I want to talk about Opal, Suyin’s daughter.
When Opal is introduced, it’s quickly hinted at that she’s Bolin’s love interest, but
the series allows her to be much more than that.
She’s a new airbender, and Korra starts to teach her the basics before she leaves
for the Northern Air Temple to continue her training.
In Book Four, Opal is working with the other airbenders to protect various cities and states
within the Earth Kingdom.
She’s dating Bolin, but he’s working for Kuvira, who Opal doesn’t like, and so they
have a big fight.
Then Opal and Jinora are forced to attack Kuvira to stop her from killing Korra, before
holding off an entire army until Meelo and Ikki arrive on a flying bison to help them escape.
In the aftermath, Bolin leaves Kuvira’s side but Opal is slow to forgive him.
She’s an independent, intelligent person who sticks strong to her ideals and always
does what she believes is best.
There’s also Katara, who helps Korra begin her lengthy healing process at the beginning
of Book 4.
She was one of the main characters in The Last Airbender, but in this series, her role
is a lot smaller.
She’s an extremely compassionate person, willing to do anything she can to help Korra,
and an immensely talented healer and waterbender.
Now let’s talk about Kya.
She’s one of Aang’s kids, and a sister to Tenzin and Bumi.
She does a lot throughout the series, and even plays a role in the graphic novels that
came after the show, where we learn that she is romantically attracted to women.
On top of that, she’s a skilled waterbender and fighter, and loves to spend time with
her nieces and nephews.
She has a tough relationship with her brothers, but in the end is fiercely loyal.
Next is Zhu Li.
She starts off just as Varrick’s assistant, but by the end of the series, she’s his equal.
She’s incredibly skilled at using a mecha suit, and is super smart.
When she’s imprisoned and then escapes, she feigns loyalty to Kuvira and gets her
to trust her.
While developing the spirit energy cannon, she begins to sabotage it, slowing Kuvira’s progress.
Eventually she’s discovered, and she has no problem telling Kuvira off.
She then played a role in fighting back against Kuvira’s attack on Republic City, and at
the end of series, she gets married to Varrick.
In the official graphic novels that follow the series, she even becomes the President
of Republic City.
And finally, there’s Pema, Tenzin’s wife.
She’s not really much a fighter.
She’s a nonbender, and most of the time we see her either pregnant or with her newly
born baby.
Her thing is being a good stay-at-home mom, and I love that.
One misinterpretation of women’s empowerment that I see sometimes is people saying that
no woman should be a stay-at-home mom, that every woman needs to have a career and be
fully independent and all of that.
And I think it’s definitely important to question your motivations for why you might
feel compelled to be a stay-at-home mom, even if that’s not really what you want to do,
and a lot of women do find empowerment by overcoming that stereotype and breaking out of it.
But empowerment for women doesn’t mean we stop forcing women to do one thing and start
forcing them to do another.
It means giving women the ability to choose what they want to do, and that includes choosing
to be a stay-at-home mom if that’s what they really want.
So I like the inclusion of Pema in this series because it shows the diversity of experiences
for women.
While lots of women can be badass fighters like Korra, Asami, or Lin, they can also be
chill non-fighters like Pema.
If this show was almost entirely about men, and Pema was the only woman, or one of only
a few women, in the show -- that would probably be pretty sexist.
Because then the show would be perpetuating the stereotype that women only exist as stay-at-home
moms while men do everything else.
But, because there are so many other women doing so many other things in the Legend of
Korra, Pema’s inclusion makes perfect sense.
She no longer has to represent all women -- she can just be herself and represent one aspect
of what women can be.
And that’s why, in general, it’s amazing to have so many women on a show.
It’s not just about the number of women on a show, it’s about allowing women to
have the diversity of experience that men are generally afforded on TV and in movies.
In Korra instead of just having one woman who’s a love interest or a mom, we have
women from all walks of life.
There are goofy kids, spiritual leaders, law enforcement officers, politicians, mothers,
tough women, smart women, and so much more.
And none of them have to just be that one thing -- they can be all kinds of things,
and they can make mistakes, and they can be villains, and they can be heroes, and they
can just be so many different kinds of people that anyone and everyone can relate to them.
That’s what so incredible about all of the women on this show, and a part of the reason
why I love it so much.
So many shots in the Legend of Korra feature only women, or at least mostly women, and
that’s a refreshing change of pace.
This show smashes the Bechdel test to pieces, and is just at an entirely different level,
one which other shows and movies should aim to get to as well.
Anyway, that’s all I had for you today.
I hope you enjoyed this video about the powerful women of the Legend of Korra.
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Thanks so much for watching, and I’ll see you next time.