Cactus Game Design Message Boards

To me, this season started out pretty poorly, only to get amazingly good around Beginnings, and then to have a really odd, and in my opinion shaky ending, for which I have a lot of questions as to what actually happened in it.  The whole Korra becoming a giant blue person from "cosmic energy," thing was odd, and seemed to come out of no where, but I could live with it.  But then Jinora comes out of nowhere, and does.... something which saves the day (seriously what in the world did she do, it obviously had something to do with Raava, but I really am at a loss for what it was), and Korra apparently just bends Unalaq and Vaatu away, somehow (I know she used the spirit bending thing she learned from Unalaq, but I feel that was never really explained either.  What happens to the spirits, what does this bending actually do).  What happens to Vaatu here?  Is Unalaq reincarnated (since he is a second avatar now, albeit one that can only bend water)?  Is Vaatu destroyed?  And if Vaatu is destroyed, won't he just be reborn in Korra?  The specifically say that Ravaa and Vaatu cannot destroy each other, yet no one seems to care now that Vaatu is bended away.  Isn't it kind of important what happens with the great spirit of chaos and darkness?  Where is Vaatu?  I know these questions could all end up being answered in the next season or two, but it doesn't sit right with me that the audience is left in the dark about significant portions of the final battle.

And now for a small nitpick, Korra says Wan made a mistake when he closed the spirit portals, but he specifically says he did it so that no human could enter the spirit world and release Vaatu, and that's exactly what happens and nearly causes the end of the world.  I think he was justified in keeping the two worlds separate to stop Vaatu from destroying both.  I know they are trying to say the spirits and the humans shouldn't be separate, but it bothers me that they are trying to say that Wan was mistaken for essentially improving the security on Vaatu's prison (and that wasn't even enough, if anything, I'd say he should have made the two worlds more separate.  A human entering the spirit world with just his spirit was able to be corrupted by Vaatu, open both portals, free Vaatu, combine with him, beat Raava and almost destroy the world.  The world only got saved because of some weird Jinora thing).

All things said, I am looking forward to the next season to see what they will do with this new world, and Varrick's escape could set him up to be an interesting villain for the future (honestly he and Tenzin's side stories where the only saving grace of a lot of the first part of the season for me).

The more  I think about it, the more I agree with you about the two worlds being connected not being a good thing.  When the worlds were connected in Wan's time, the spirits had forced the humans back to the lion turtles, and everywhere else was pretty much death for humans.  Every time the humans enter the spirit world it is rife with danger, and not just when they are encountering the dark spirits.  Koh, the scorpion-spider spirit, Wan Shi Tong, the Fog and other spirits have been shown to be very hostile to humans, I don't know that its a good idea for them to be allowed to just wander into the physical world if they want.

Iroh got into the spirit world by leaving his physical body, so he's just a spirit at this point.  Entering the spirit world in a physical body would presumably not result in one being immortal like Iroh (also, most people are not as in tune with the Spirits as Iroh, I doubt most of them would last long in there).