During 2014, we watched many series including The Newsroom, How I Met Your Mother, Video Game High School, The Killing, White Collar and Sons of Anarchy come to a close. However, where there were things to be said about all of them on both the fronts of positive and negative feedback, there’s one series finale that occurred this year that completely hit the mark on every level. It may have taken all year, but finally we can say 2014 had an ending that delivered nothing but excellence, and that honor belongs to Nickelodeon’s The Legend of Korra.
While we’ve discussed much of the business decisions that surrounded and plagued the Last Airbender follow-up in recent months, there’s been little time given to the show itself. Little time given to how the series dared to take major risks in its final season that jumped in time three years from the previous finale (a rare act in American animation). However, perhaps we should have because if there’s any show that managed to fulfill every promise it made – written and unwritten a like – it’s Korra.
So, of course your first question you’re asking is, what makes the finale so great? The answer to that is one word: escalation. It’s all too typical in current Hollywood to see something blow a story out of proportion in its first outing. Man of Steel destroyed Metropolis, Transformers destroyed Los Angeles, The Avengers destroyed New York… the problem is they all did this in the first chapter of a much larger franchise, thus causing a problem in the form of wondering where to go next. How do up the stakes when topping out in the last installment? You can’t, and this is what The Legend of Korra did best. It only ever upped the stakes – both on a micro and macro level – incrementally over the course of the last two years, thus leading to the final, ultimate battle in Republic City against a giant robot.
However, while this was indeed the biggest battle Korra’s faced in the show from a destruction stand-point (there wasn’t so much property damage in the season two finale as there was a major shift in world rules), it also succeeded in bringing the series back to its initial roots: the adventures of “Team Korra” being together. We watched in the final two episodes (joined as one for their broadcast on Nick.com) as Korra and her friends banded together, like they used to, in order to defeat Kuvira and her spirit weapon. In addition, audiences were also returned back to where everything started in Republic City, thus making things clear that it, Aang’s ultimate legacy, was where the fate of the world was going to be decided, just as it was in the first season that was only meant to be a limited television event.
There’s action, there’s payoff, there’s heart break and there’s even an ending that wraps everything up in a nice, neat denouement that lets fans decide what happens next in their own minds. Like some of the great endings that came before it, The Legend of Korra closed out its story in a way that leaves the world open to interpretation, but gives viewers enough wrap-up to feel satisfied. In addition, it’s truly nice to see a show that ends by saying the most important thing to hold on to in life isn’t true love, but rather true friendship. Rarely do the two ever exist separately in the end of most traditional on screen stories, and even more rarely does the latter top the former in terms of life lesson importance.
It’s been a crazy year for the Nickelodeon series and its fans, but none of that matters anymore. Not because it’s not important, but because it’s over. Going forward, as new fans discover the series, no one will remember the days when one of cable’s top youth networks skewered the broadcast of its, arguably, best series. All they’re going to be interested in is watching the show to see if it delivers on all the hype from beginning to end, and luckily for those future fans, they’ll be getting exactly what they’re hoping for.
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‘The Legend of Korra’ Delivers The Best Series Finale of 2014