The Legend of Korra "Battle of Zaofu" Review: Waiting for the Bombs to Go Off

The Legend of Korra S04E06: "The Battle of Zaofu"

Say what you will of Kuvira, but the lady's a master at using various situations to her advantage.

Instead of just launching an assault against Ba Sing Se once Wu had been installed, she upstaged Wu at his own coronation and declared her intentions to rule the Earth Empire in place of the foppish, would-be king. Meanwhile, regarding Zaofu, she did everything she could to avoid looking like an invading armed force; indeed, from her intended-to-fail appointment of Bolin as a diplomat to agreeing to Korra's truce, Kuvira appeared to be quite the accommodating world leader.

So when Su went and attacked who she thought was Kuvira, well, that was all the provocation Kuvira needed to launch an assault on Zaofu. Sure, the rest of the world leaders may not see it that way, but the Earth Empire and probably the rest of the world got the message that Su's isolated and seemingly autonomous city in the valley just didn't want to play nice with the new order. It doesn't matter that Kuvira's a messianic dictator; it just matters that she doesn't look like one. Heck, she even agreed to fight Korra one-on-one, framing it in the rhetoric that she wouldn't ask her (forcefully conscripted) troops to do something that she herself wouldn't do. It made her seem compassionate to her soldiers, yes, but when she beat Korra, it also made her look strong. And even if Kuvira had lost, she still would've won in the optics game. Perhaps she even earned the trust of a few of those troops who are only in uniform to avoid being slave labor.

It doesn't make us see Kuvira as any more sympathetic or less evil, but on a "world stage" level, Kuvira doesn't come off as all that horrible.

Korra, in contrast, is still not looking great.

I was worried about the writers' quick fix for removing the leftover poison from Korra's body back in "The Calling,"—and for a couple of a reasons—but it turns out that it didn't solve the Avatar's key problem: being haunted by a vision of her earlier self in the Avatar state. It's reassuring that the poison, even though it had a clear physical and emotional impact, wasn't the source of Korra's woes. She's still her own worst enemy.

Last week, I mentioned that Korra's general approach to handling problems is to send rocks, fire, water, and/or air into her opponents' faces, and that held true this week. Sure, the only option Kuvira left her with was to fight or surrender, and Korra isn't one to ever choose the latter, but even in her duel with Kuvira, Korra was always on the offensive. Kuvira's moves were all counters; her only real attempt at direct attack came just before Korra entered the Avatar state. Someone was a leaf on the wind this week, and it wasn't Korra.

Of course, this sort of defeat is par for the course on Legend of Korra. Our hero often gets her butt handed to her during her first real encounter with a given opponent, regardless of her mental state, and "Battle of Zaofu" was no different. What's more, it's a common-enough story structure to make the Big Bad's defeat all the greater when it does eventually happen. On Korra, it'll at least serve the larger arc about Korra's rehabilitation, and her value as the Avatar.

Speaking of rehabilitation, I sort of like Varrick again? Don't get me wrong, I still loathe the way that the show has decided Varrick shouldn't be punished for war profiteering, organizing an assassination of Raiko, and escaping from jail—and some of that carried over to my reception of the character, and still does, to a point. However, the writing for him has been very sharp this season, and John Michael Higgins, who's always great, was especially on his game this week.

I do think Korra is more comfortable working with a scoundrel inventor with a conscience who's lost the one thing that allowed him to be a scoundrel inventor than it is with a scoundrel tycoon and war criminal who lacks a conscience and just does whatever he wants. It's honestly the best version of Varrick, and the reason is that there's finally been an actual consequence for his actions in Zhu Li's apparent defection. He, like Korra, may be facing some hard truths, and it's about time.

LEAVES ON THE WIND

– "Empty cookie jar. No hot towels. Waxy build up." These are the things that haunt Varrick's soul.

– "Can we get breakfast first? While we still have hands?"

– "Ugh. Pedestrian. I wanted you to show me the inner Meelo."

– "You can't handle all this Meelo!"

– Small touch: When Kuvira rotated the earth while Korra was firebending, the spot of rotated Earth looked wonderfully out of place as the painted lines of the ground were no longer aligned.

– I haven't given her enough props, but Zelda Williams is killing it as Kuvira.

– Pageviews and comments have been steadily dropping since Book 4 began, so we're going to scale back our coverage of Korra and return to it if an episode begs for a review. If nothing else, I'll be back for the series finale, of course!

What did you think of "Battle of Zaofu"?