The Legend of Korra

Lore & Background

The Legend of Korra was initially conceived as a twelve-episode miniseries. Nickelodeon declined the creators' pitch for an Avatar: The Last Airbender follow-up animated film, choosing instead to expand Korra to 26 episodes, and further to 52 episodes in July 2012. The episodes are grouped into four separate seasons, each telling a stand-alone story. Beginning with episode 9 of season 3, new episodes were first distributed through the Internet rather than broadcast. The series concluded with the fourth season.

The series is set 70 years after the events of Avatar: The Last Airbender, in a fictional world where certain people can telekinetically manipulate one of four elements. Only the Avatar can bend all four elements. The first season is mostly set in Republic City, a 1920s-inspired metropolis. The second season adds the southern polar region, while the third and fourth seasons take place largely in the Earth Kingdom. The series follows Avatar Korra, a seventeen-year-old girl from the Southern Water Tribe, as she learns airbending, faces the Equalists, confronts her uncle Unalaq, battles the Red Lotus, and eventually defeats the authoritarian Kuvira.

Reader's Guide

The Legend of Korra has received critical acclaim, with praise for its writing and production values, and has been nominated for and won awards such as the Annie Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, and a Gracie Award. The series was praised for addressing sociopolitical issues such as social unrest and terrorism, as well as for going beyond the established boundaries of youth entertainment with respect to issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation. The series' final scene, intended to depict the beginning of a same-sex romance between Korra and Asami Sato, was unprecedented at the time and has been credited with paving the way for LGBT representation in children's television. The series has since continued as a comic book series. Some of the people who worked on Avatar: The Last Airbender returned to work on The Legend of Korra, including designer Joaquim Dos Santos, writers Joshua Hamilton and Tim Hedrick, composer Jeremy Zuckerman, and sound designer Benjamin Wynn.

Did You Know?

• The Legend of Korra was initially conceived as a twelve-episode miniseries before being expanded to 52 episodes.
• Beginning with episode 9 of season 3, new episodes were first distributed through the Internet rather than broadcast.
• The series' final scene, intended to depict the beginning of a same-sex romance between Korra and Asami Sato, was unprecedented at the time.
• The series has since continued as a comic book series.

From Miniseries to Franchise

The Legend of Korra began life as a far smaller project than audiences ultimately received. Creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko originally pitched Nickelodeon an animated film to follow up Avatar: The Last Airbender, a concept that would later be adapted into the three-part comic series The Promise, The Search, and The Rift. The network turned down the movie but saw potential in expanding the story into a twelve-episode miniseries. That plan grew quickly: by July 2012 the commitment had ballooned to 52 episodes, organized into four distinct seasons—each called a Book—of twelve to fourteen Chapters apiece. Every season functions as a self-contained narrative, yet together they trace Korra's evolution across a rapidly modernizing world. A notable distribution shift occurred partway through the run; starting with the ninth episode of the third season, new installments premiered online before hitting traditional broadcast, a move that reflected changing media consumption habits. The series ran from April 14, 2012, through December 19, 2014, and its story has since continued in comic book form.

A World in Transition

The series transplants the elemental-bending universe of its predecessor seventy years forward, into a society that has industrialized and digitized at a dizzying pace. The primary stage is Republic City, the capital of the United Republic of Nations, a multicultural state that Avatar Aang founded after the war. The creators have likened the metropolis to Manhattan if it had happened in Asia, a 1920s-flavored hub where bending, once a revered spiritual discipline practiced through movements echoing Chinese martial arts, has become as mundane as flipping a light switch. Benders now commit crimes, fill ordinary jobs, and perform in the wildly popular spectator sport known as pro-bending, in which mixed-element teams hurl opponents out of a ring. This technological and cultural shift is the engine of the show's central tension: the old spiritual foundations of bending are being eroded by progress, and the Avatar must navigate a world that no longer treats balance as a sacred obligation. Later seasons broaden the geography to the Southern Water Tribe's polar homeland and the vast territories of the Earth Kingdom.

Four Stand-Alone Sagas

Each of the four Books delivers a complete dramatic arc while deepening the overarching mythology. In Book One: Air, seventeen-year-old Korra arrives in Republic City to train in airbending under Tenzin, Aang's son, and is drawn into a political crisis when the Equalists, led by the masked Amon, launch an anti-bender uprising. Amon's true identity as Tarrlok's brother and a waterbender himself is the season's central revelation. Book Two: Spirits pivots to the metaphysical, as Korra's uncle Unalaq attempts to free Vaatu, the spirit of darkness, during the Harmonic Convergence, a planetary alignment that occurs once every ten thousand years. Korra's victory reopens the portals between the human and spirit realms. Book Three: Change explores the aftermath, as nonbenders begin spontaneously developing airbending abilities and the anarchist Red Lotus, led by Zaheer, pursues a radical agenda of destruction and rebirth. The fourth season continues this thread of escalating spiritual and political upheaval, bringing the full fifty-two-episode run to its conclusion.

Pushing Boundaries in Youth Media

Critics and award bodies consistently singled out the series for its ambition. It collected wins and nominations at the Annie Awards, a Daytime Emmy, and a Gracie Award, with reviewers specifically praising the depth of its writing and the polish of its production values. Perhaps more significantly, the show was lauded for tackling weighty sociopolitical terrain—social unrest, terrorism, systemic inequality—that rarely appears in programming aimed at younger audiences, and for handling questions of race, gender, and sexual orientation with a directness that stretched the conventions of children's television. The most frequently cited example is the series' closing scene, which depicts the beginning of a romantic relationship between Korra and Asami Sato. At the time of its 2014 broadcast, such a portrayal was virtually unheard of in a network animated show for families, and commentators have credited it with opening the door for broader LGBT representation in youth-oriented media. The deep voice cast, featuring Janet Varney, J. K. Simmons, Mindy Sterling, Aubrey Plaza, and Henry Rollins among others, helped give those characters the gravitas to carry such material.