I'll bite - how?

WHAAAAA!!!! Season 3 was brilliant. Even more brilliant than MLP:FIM. You're a disappointment. Korra deserves better fans than you!

Season 2 was disappointing. Season 3 is phenomenal. It's probably the best season of either Avatar series.

This looks pretty damn cool. I only know about it because of some movie whose clips are up there with Garbage Day. I stopped watching after about 2 minutes because there's probably spoilers, but this is fantastic animation and looks a lot more fun than AoT.

So the whole show is a Final Fantasy cutscene.

Basically a music video without the music.

Meant as a reply to the above, but I done goofed.

I feel like Korra choosing to undo Avatar Wan's division of human and spirit worlds was a pretty huge accomplishment. The world is forever changed because of that, and it was entirely her choice NOT to return things to the status quo.

Is it really an accomplishment or is it a choice she made when the opportunity fell into her lap? And why did she make it, and how have things improved as a result?

I think your biggest gripe is the series' strongest character arc. She's not a faux action girl, and the characterization of her being beat up and tortured, while true, is undermined by the fact that she decided the course of action after rebelling against and overriding the people who wanted to protect her, her decision last season to open the portals, and the kick ass fighting in the clip above. People want to hide her away because the Avatar state is permanently threatened, but she doesn't let them, and that's pretty consistent.

Since series 1 they've been stripping away or threatening her Avatar identity. She defined herself from the start as 'the Avatar' and not much else, and was eager to prove that after being sheltered from harm all her life. Then she lost her bending season 1, and was about to commit suicide. Having an 'Avatar' around was more important than her life, and she didn't consider herself anything without it. She's lost her connection to the past lives, now her mobility and probably bending again, and repeatedly been at the brink of losing the Avatar forever. People don't see her as a hero, they despise her for the trouble spirits cause.

The best moment from the finale was after Jinorra, looking just like Aang, someone who comes across as a better Avatar when dealing with the spirit realm and who saved Korra in both last seasons, took over the Avatar's responsibilities. With all the best intentions, they told clearly depressed Korra she's not needed anymore, and the season ended on that body blow.

She takes every loss as her failure to live up to the title, even though she's making good hard decisions that have undone what Aang and based Avatar's caused by their failures. She's restored the imbalance caused by Wan, and undone Aang's failure to stop the Fire Nation's massacre. Granted they had good reasons as well, they weren't gods who could stop everything. But Korra judges herself by an impossible standard.

She's been asked repeatedly in the spirit world and elsewhere, who she considers herself to be other than just the Avatar. And she's not answered it yet. Aang ran away from his responsibilities and didn't want the power, he wanted to be himself. He had to painfully grow up into the role, including facing that he needed to murder someone. Korra has the opposite path. She has to find herself and learn to be more than a combat hero, which makes sense given the nature of the Avatar as someone who brings balance.

As for the others, yeah season 2's characterization wasn't great. But your complaint about Mako and Asami having a forced romance is out of date, they've barely interacted this season, instead both were useful, although not with major character arcs. And while Bolin is overly comic for the shows tone sometimes, he's miles more restrained than Sokka.

I agree with takewithfood, and I'm also getting really sick of how much of a buttnugget Tenzin keeps on being. Every time he makes any sort of stride personality-wise he still ends up regressing into a pompous, arrogant asshole, and it's no wonder his siblings hate him, except his siblings are also terrible thin characterizations as well.

Season 3 of Korra was way better than seasons 1 and 2, but I almost didn't even bother to watch it. Ultimately I'm still not sure if it was worthwhile, except that it did have some amazingly-executed fight scenes. (This wasn't one of them.)

They keep on getting right on the cusp of an interesting morally-ambiguous situation but then they end up ruining it by going back to the same old shitty good-vs-evil tropes. Why doesn't Korra even briefly consider working WITH Red Lotus to find a solution that works for everyone? Why do the showrunners show how terrible and corrupt all the world governments have become but then fall back on "but anarchy is worse" sunshine and flowers resolutions? How is it that all of these deep-seated family issues can get neatly wrapped up by one simple apology and then never get brought up again? And how many times does the president of Republic City have to be a petulant asshole?

I'm still going to watch season 4 just because season 3 was BARELY good enough to keep me interested. I almost didn't watch season 3 at all, though.

Only clip of this fight out there. Either I post it as it is, or I don't.

I don't know, a (the) metalbender on a metal airship is pretty fucking scary. And the Katara/Zuko vs Azula agni kai scene was fantastic, if largely unnecessary.

Season 3 has some really strong episodes, but the ending really was a giant ass-pull. I gather the creators regret not taking more time to set up the whole lion turtle thing.