I completed the final episode of The Legend of Korra last week and since I basically spend my time on this website telling and reviewing stories, I thought I’d give my two cents on the ending. I think it goes without saying that this post is going to be filled with spoilers so if you haven’t seen the ending and don’t want anything spoiled then you shouldn’t read this. If you are interested in reading my opinion on the controversial decision made by the Korra writing staff, read on.

*Spoilers Begin*

 I think that I should probably first give a little explanation to try to diffuse as much hate as possible that I might receive from this. First and foremost I should say that I really have no problem with homosexuality. I might find it a little odd but I am heterosexual. It is none of my business what sexual orientation a person is nor is it my right to interfere with their relationships. I do not argue that “Korrasami” was a poor decision because it is a homosexual relationship; in my opinion that would be a logical fallacy. Whether or not you believe that I actually believe in this ideology is your prerogative. If the article upsets you and you prefer to pretend that the article was written from a hostile point of view I can’t do anything to stop that. I was aware of the ending of Book Four before I even started watching it; this probably affected my overall interpretation of the ending but I’ll return to that later. Another point that might be important to state is that I liked the “Makorra” relationship but I definitely wouldn’t say that I was ‘shipping for either side. That being said time to get to the main contents of this post.

 By this point my opinion should be clear, but just in case it isn’t: I did not like the decision to make Korra and Asami a couple. It boils down to two major reasons which play off of each other: it felt like bad writing and it felt like a cop out. I read the co-creator’s statements about the finale and I don’t mean that they were selling out to the fans like Bryan Konietzko defended. I mean that they were selling out to a system that congratulates diversity for diversities sake. This isn’t necessarily a problem but throughout this short article I’ll show you why I believe that it is.

         On to the idea of bad writing. I will be the first to admit that I have written some very, very bad things. Some of those things I believed were very good at the time, only to later learn that they were actually not very good at all. Many of those things I knew were bad to begin with. I would like to think that I am fairly decent judge of good writing. The truth is The Legend of Korra was a phenomenal television show any way you cut it. The writing was immaculate for the majority of the show. I personally believe that the writers surpassed their previous work (Avatar: The Last Airbender which was also a great show) in almost every way. The decision to make Korra and Asami a couple was not inherently bad writing, but how the creators went around developing the relationship was.
        

I personally believe that Asami was initially a foil for Korra. The most obvious example being that Asami is a non-bender and Korra is the avatar, thus accenting the abilities of Korra. The love triangle between Mako and Asami and Korra (which is actually finally a real love triangle, instead of a triangle missing one side) seemed only to exist so that Asami could exist. She in turned seemed only to exist in order to develop and deepen the idea of a relationship between Mako and Korra. This can be seen repeatedly in Book One whenever Asami is within a scene. Her main goal is almost exclusively to further the relationship between Korra and Mako. Korra is getting jealous or Mako is realizing that his true feelings aren’t really for Asami. She is a fairly flat character initially with no real depth. Eventually we learn more about her and she becomes a more complete character, but I wasn’t sure she would even be a recurring character after book one.
       

If we assume that Asami’s initial purpose was to deepen the relationship between Mako and Korra, then we can easily assume that the idea to make “Korrasami” was only present, at the earliest, in Book Three. I believe that even without thinking that Asami was a foil it is more than believable that Asami only became the love interest in Book Three. Honestly, I’m not sure even this is true. Knowing that Korra and Asami were going to become a couple before I even watched the first episode of Book Three, I prepared myself for some relational development. To my baffled disappointment I received none. Instead I found Asami awkwardly placed into situations that really just seemed forced. She suddenly began doing things that Mako or Bolin had done in Books One or Two, and with no explanation as to why the two were abruptly close. At the closing of Book Two I remember there being a somewhat hostile tension between the two because of Mako’s indecision. Book Three does take place later, but that argument kind of returns to the bad writing issue: fixing plot holes by blaming a time gap. It’s a common tactic and I can hardly blame them for it, but they did a much better job of acknowledging the time differential at the opening of Book Four.
       

So, the relationship must start to come to fruition in Book Four then, right? Wrong. A significant portion of the first half of Book Four does not touch on Korra’s relationship with anyone, romantic or otherwise. She is struggling with her identity after everything that she has dealt with in the previous three Books. I found this incredibly interesting and I really enjoyed the character development, but the only even slight hint that there might be something between Korra and Asami was that Korra sent a letter to Asami and no one else. The second half of the Book focuses on the conflict with Kuvira. Asami may be the most present member of team Avatar when Korra is around but otherwise, still nothing. If anything there are vague hints that maybe Mako and Korra might get back together. The largest of these being the much maligned “recap episode.” Mako recounts the story of The Legend of Korra through his relationship with Asami, which he admits only led to his relationship with Korra. This story actually may have tried to show that he had accepted that they were no longer in a relationship, but I think it may have done exactly the opposite. It almost seems like the idea to make Asami and Korra a couple came as an afterthought and the writers decided to throw it in at the end. I doubt that this was actually their intentions, but the fact they tried to make it a “big reveal” made it seem unrealistic. In my opinion they had three options that would have worked: go with Mako, go with no one, or develop Asami into a viable relational choice. They did none of those things. Personally, because of the strong themes of finding oneself and independence in the final Book, I believe that the best choice would have been to give Korra no love interest.
       

If anything I was searching for a way to make “Korrasami” make sense to me. In the end I found nothing. I did not take a side; in fact I didn’t even know there were sides. I did not know there was a debate about who should be Korra’s love interest. Until I read the article about the creators’ thoughts on the public outcry from their final episode, I was completely oblivious to the Makorra/Korrasami debate. I wanted Korra and Asami to be a good lesbian relationship because I knew it was coming. I wanted to see The Legend of Korra come to an outstanding conclusion, like the series deserved. My only disappointment was a small scene at the very end of the episode.
       

In the end I did not like the choice to make Korra and Asami a couple because it did not make sense to me in context with the rest of the story. I thought in the end it was poor decision by the writers. Did it make me dislike the show? Not even close. The Legend of Korra has to be one of my favorite television shows of all time and the ending did not change that. In the end we have to accept that this was how the writers wanted to go out and move on. I can’t wait to see what they do next and I hope that it’s as great as their previous shows have been. That’s really all there is to say. If you liked the Korrasami decision I would like to know why, beyond the fact that it is a nod to the LGBT community, so leave a comment. Thanks for reading.