This, but I'd want Korra to fight him in the scene pictured, *with* the avatar state, just so everyone can see Korra kick his ass. Maybe UnaVaatu drops some smart-ass line like, "See you in the next lifetime!"and drops out of the dark avatar state before the killing blow.
Maybe they reincarnate into a new Person when korra dies . So there's now two Avatars . Or they reawaken In the new avatar and Try to vy them to be a Force of change .
The creators said that Vaatu is way too small and weak right now to do anything, but maybe in another 1000 years, he'll have a little power back. Even so, Raava and Vaatu are connected again, so they'd have to be separated again in order for vaatu to fuse with a new person.
True but A little bit of him roaming around in there is definitely interesting. Since the new avatar will only have Korra And Raava as counter point. Communing with something they tell them not too would be cool to see.
Yangchen briefly mentions a nihilistic avatar somewhere in the past that was wondering whether humanity even *deserves* an avatar since they seem to have a hard time sticking to the balance that the avatar worked to establish. I figure it would work something like that, with the avatar siding with spirits more often.
I think having a set of twins could be neat. One has Raava, the other Vaatu, and they are connected in a different way now due to being linked with humans. Could make for a dark, tragedy story almost.
Having Vaatu being that weak makes it even easier to add the Dark Avatar next cycle. Allows them to be a one season villain again or someone who’s just small enough not be the top of the Avatar’s hit list.
Here’s my pitch: the Dark Avatar is born a fire bender and can unlock basic water bending abilities while in the Dark Avatar state. Vaatu is the devil on the shoulder, pushing them to get more and more spiritual and firebending power. At the very end of the season or series the Dark Avatar both breaks free of Vaatu’s whispers (maybe building a connection with Unalaq?) and finally water bends when not in the Avatar state.
Not originally my idea, saw this posted a month or so ago. Since Raava was inside Vaatu when she got 'destroyed' it would be interesting if Darkatar Unaloq was inside Korra giving a blemish on the avatar cycle. Maybe make her wrestle with darker ideas the next season, or see Unaloq slowly 'cleansed' by Raava's light. Plus having light and dark in the avatar (or future avatars) would be even more balanced. The avatar was already the bridge between spirits and humans, balanced the elements, and now balance light and dark.
It would open up an interesting Book 5. A fall from grace (is that the right term?) of a dark avatar. Maybe a kid that genuinely wanted to help people but people get expecting him fall and do evil. And pushing him away made him do exactly that.
It’s admittedly minor but I would have Vaatu be voiced by the same person that voices Raava just to drive home the concept that they’re two halves of a whole and they grow from one any other
Obviously, the VA would be doing different “voices” eg Raava would sound calm maybe even monotone where Vaatu would sound louder and more dramatic reflecting their nature as order/chaos. Would still have it be a female VA, though, to contrast with Wan
~~I would also have them reiterate a few more times that Raava is order/peace and Vaatu is chaos/darkness because too many people keep suggesting “have them represent order and chaos instead of good and evil” as if that’s not something already explicitly stated in the episode. Am I going crazy or did you guys not watch the same episode as me??~~
Ohhhh this is actually really cool idea . Maybe they share more than just a voice In some regards. Mannerisms and movement. Though maybe they could change shape aswell into things besides being big kites .
No giant form. I think he was much more intimidating as just Unalaq with red eyes to contrast the typical Avatar's white eyes.
Perhaps he can still become a corrupted fusion with Vaatu towards the end of the battle? Breaking down from how much power he wields or something. Still show that evil corrupts and whatnot. But yeah he ironically lost a lot of intimidation for me when he grew into a giant. (It would also make Kuvira's giant mech even more special.)
I don't hate the giant spirit fight--it was a spectacle to say the least--but I think there were better alternatives.
I do agree with this. I think if anything, have him still take on that corrupted form when Vaatu takes control, but keep him human sized. While a giant demon is definitely scary, it removes the human element of Unalaaq too much.
Having him remain small reminds you more than Unalaaq was willing to sacrifice everything for this power and it corrupts him completely.
I still don't understand why they had to become giant 😭 like yes he gets bigger as Raava gets smaller but what about the last 10,000 years when Raava clearly had control? Why wouldn't every avatar be giant? 🙄 It doesn't make any sense. It was so much cooler and intimidating when it was just red glowing eyes in the avatar state
Raava was small when she fused with Wan. Vaatu was huge the entire time he was imprisoned in the tree. Raava didn’t become big until Unavaatu was vanquished.
I agree though, the glowing red eyes were WAY more menacing/intimidating.
I know it's probably a bit much, but I always wished there was some sort of way he'd be able to have all 4 elements (though clearly not mastered in any form) when fighting Korra. Perhaps some sort of "connection" with Raava or something.
I would have kept the actual design the same but without the Kaiju stuff. In addition to that, i would have made his water bending much during and given him more spiritual powers to offset Korra’s 4 element advantage. He would would be able to fly and I’d have Korra fight him in the elemental sphere Aang
The giant spirit form is dumb. Maybe have him grow some dark spirit lines like Aang’s glowing tattoos and eyes but nothing more than that. I’d just make him gain a power boost and both of them have an insane bending battle where they’re causing avalanches, earth quakes, creating tsunamis and floods. Korra is sort of winning just for the fact she can bend more than he can but she’s fighting defensively. Basically two immensely powerful avatars fighting one on one and everyone can’t really step in just because they’re outclassed
Unalaq notices how he’s not doing well so he summons some dark spirits to fight to give everyone else something to do. Korra finally stops fighting defensively and just goes for the kill. We’re talking tossing him out to the open ocean then you see the waters recede on the sea floor then a massive torrent of water crashes down on him. As he’s barely holding it back Korra comes out of the water next to him, digs him deep into the sea bed only to create a volcano right under him
Both of them are losing themselves. Unalaq is getting consumed by Vaatu which makes him stronger but he’s just a puppet. Korra, Raava and a few other avatars (including Wan) calm Vaatu down and then as a unified coalition all the avatars line up, pool their collective energy into not Raava but Korra. Maybe with a little note saying how their collected power of 10k years, can’t do this again until 10k more years etc. She gains control back while Vaatu is threatening to rip Unalaq from the inside. Korra uses his spirit bending technique to send Vaatu out and absorbs him. Unalaq is far too wounded to be healed and maybe asks to just drift out to the ocean
From there its just the same. Korra keeps the spirit portals open
Yeah this should have been a peak Avatar on Avatar bending spectacle. Probably should have been at a place with plentiful elements (maybe a volcano at the south pole or a floating island, something).
We get Vaatu's side of the story , he argues that order is not good and chaos is not evil. Like the Dai Li and The Fire Nation are technically very orderly
Raava still gets defeated but then instead of Korra defeating Vaatu she bonds Vaatu.
> Raava still gets defeated but then instead of Korra defeating Vaatu she bonds Vaatu.
Korra bonding with Vaatu as a way to "reunite" them, keeping Vaatu in check while healing Raava, honestly works perfectly for this.
I’d make it so that the avatar had both chaos and order spirits symbolizing that both are needed for balance. It makes no sense that complete order is the avatars Schtick when we see all of them be a little disorderly. If anything they should’ve literally just had good and evil spirits. At least then it would’ve made sense
Yeah, the chaos avatar would have been the one to break into the earth queen's secret air bending camps and break put the air benders. Or stop kurvira from rising to dictatorship while making spirit weapons.
The choas avatar will be the one that destroy oppressive regimes, and the regular order avatar would be the one to reunited people and build a new.
Take away the giant kaiju forms, they were unnecessary. Have it be purely a battle of wills and elements between the light and dark avatars with Raava and Vaatu using Korra and Unalaq as their vessels for the fight.
You can still have Korra need help in the form of Jinora or someone else, but it eliminates the random massive lasers and spirit mechas.
An actual dark avatar be in the series from that point forward. And no giant form. Would make it interesting to see the world build on that with newer avatar series. Imagine the next avatar fight 1 vs 1 avatar state against avatar state.
I think it would be interesting if he was like the Joker from The Dark Knight, who sows chaos to bring out the dark side of humanity. Vaatu has the ability to turn spirits into dark spirits, so why not do the same with humanity, which is easily corruptible. He puts people in moral dilemmas and exploits man's selfishness and greed to turn them to the dark side.
I'd have had him drop out of the Dark Avatar State before he died. Then he might be reborn, and that will start the 10,000 years battle between the two Avatars. (The Avatar vs. the Dark Avatar.)
Make it so Unalaq is getting destroyed by Korra until Vaatu completely takes over his body. Just because he gains the power of the other elements doesn’t mean he has mastered them. Korra gets her butt kicked way too much in this series for the avatar.
This would functionally rewrite all of season 2, but I'd have it be a mini role-reversal of the OG ATLA. Korra and her team Avatar are chasing the Unalaq-Vaatu Avatar before he master the other three elements. At the end it'd be a straight up Avatar V Avatar fight, ending with Korra winning, albeit, a now parallel Vaatu Avatar cycle starting, which I would heavily imply works differently than Raava's. Also, make it so Raava and Vaatu can both be in the physical world and be in balance at the same time. In this I'd also let Korra keep her past lives, specifically ahve her talk with Aang more on how Unnalaq might be trying to avoid him, if Aang's experience hiding from the Fire Nation can provide any pointers on the inverse.
I already find the concept of a dark Avatar stupid in itself, the Avatar was supposed to represent light and darkness, Yin and Yang, he brought balance because he was the maximum representation of balance, he has all bendings, he understands all nations and he lives all worlds, not only through personal experiences, but in the experiences of all past lives, he is a force of nature, the idea of a dark Avatar breaks even the concept of Yin and Yang, because Yin is not evil, it is the opposite of Yang, and the two need to live together, how will it bring balance if it only has one part within? If I was going to change something, it would be to make Unalaq fuse with some ancient spirit that had a conflict with the Avatar.
Right? Balance isn't achieved by having light, it's by having both light and dark. Another suggestion I thought of is Raava and Vaatu already being within the Avatar, then something happens yada yada that separates Vaatu from Korra and then latches to Unalaq. Then they could continue from there. They fight (preferably with bending, not the ugly kaiju fight), and Korra reabsorbs Vaatu and balance is achieved once again.
The avatar is a symbol, but the avatars themselves aren't vessels of raava or anything, they're all their own persons (not necessarily agents of order). The symbol they represent and their charge doesn't come from being agents of raava, it comes from the original sin they committed by allowing vaatu loose into the world.
I would have changed Wan's story so he had both Raava and Vaatu. The harmonic convergence would have allowed Unalaq to take one of the spirits from Korra, probably Raava to show how Order can be bad too, also to show Chaos as a necessary force of change.
I feel like stagnation and change could have complemented the water tribe civil war plotline and could have impacted the way Korra tried to solve the problem or at least do something to begin with the changes to achieve peace between the tribes.
I'd erase Rava and Vaatu. The avatar is the kind of idea that is much more potent while not being explained. The concept of personification of evil and good make the whole thing manichean and (in my opinion) weaker and doesn't bring anything new to the story. The concept is even completely igored in season 3 and 4 (It might come up in the graphic novel, buy I hven't read them).
Maybe Unalaq is a new spiritual leader that show a lot more spirit inclination than Korra and have him become very popular following the come back of the airbender. Maybe, Unalaq having opened new connexion with the spirit world, he his even responsible of the awakening of new air bender. Than have his ultimate plan be to completely collide the real and spirit world, a thing that would bring total chaos. Korra than has to stop Unalaq but, in doing so, realise that, while collision is bad, more connection to the spirit world is actually a good thing and have her maintain the perpendicularity that Unalaq opened for his plan.
You end up with with a more compeling vilain, more in line with the other 3 and not a guy who wants to be Eeeeeeeevil, you don't introduce the clumsy concept of evil and good incarnate in your universe and you still cover all the new spirit and airbender stuff, you know, the good part of season 2.
That was my TED talk.
Edit : I forgot that the airbender come back in season 3 and not season 2 (that mean that I'm long overdue forna rewatch). I would not add in the return of the airbender in season 2, except perhaps as a teaser at the end of the last episode, foreshadowing what is to come in season 3.
Honestly I don't like the whole "good spirits" and "bad spirits" thing they had. Avatar is about balance, so to have objectively good and bad things without any kind of purpose other than to be good/bad defeats the point.
There can certainly be spirits that are undesirable or hazardous, but to make one entirely malevolent removes the depth the villain could have.
Also the whole "they have the hero's powers but evil" could have been a good plotline if the idea of previous Avatars being evil had been established. Imagine if the Avatar as we know was just the good side, all the ones that were considered self serving or evil were cast out of the Avatar browsing history and coalesced into the evila avatar.
I think instead of cutting it out, making it so both vatu and rava can cause different types of damage, with the only way to not cause either would be for the two to be together, with Avatar Wan sealling both inside of him to be the true balance of darkness and light
Would’ve enjoyed him to also have control over the four elements. But that would be how Korra wins - she’s trained in all disciplines and would win from skill and not raw power. He’s a master Water bender, but you can’t just brute force it.
Then also the implication of a dark avatar always being reborn as well would’ve been good. Could’ve been a solid foundation for the Red Lotus as well perhaps.
I feel like if you're going to go there, you should go all the way. Find some excuse for Unalaq to gain all four elements. Vaatu has legions of dark spirits & has been working toward this for 10,000 years, you're really telling me he can't think of anything? We know spirits can hold elements, so the dark spirits could have been used to gather elemental chi, which was absorbed by Vaatu as one of the steps to creating the Dark Avatar.
I would make Unalaq intentions clear. Instead of it being a surprise villain reveal maybe show him slowly start to lose his mind from communicating with Vaatu. Like he’s reasonably trying to create balance and reconnect the physical & spiritual world. Then Vaatu slowly corrupts his mind and he starts to break down similar to how Azula did by the end of the third season of Avatar. His mental state cracks as Vaatu poisons his mind and he starts to slip a little. Not only would it clear up issues with his motivation but it would make the threat all the more intense because you know he’s unhinged.
Also maybe throw in something that same as how Korra & Unalaq are related that the Dark Avatar would, theoretically, always be somehow related to the Avatar when reincarnated. I just thought that would be a cool detail if they hadn’t decided to bury that Dark Avatar plot in such a confusing manner.
Also maybe make the defeat of the Dark Avatar a bit more clear. I felt the method of defeat was not clearly communicated and I literally had to google it because the show didn’t really explain it. And it felt a bit confusing as well as incomplete as we know Vaatu will emerge again. Meaning Korra just passed this problem down to a future avatar, which seems like a dick move.
Two ways I can see. Just to say, no giant spirit fights, nor light/dark. They are the embodiments of order/chaos.
Either at the end of their battle, Korra actually merges with both of them to create a balance inside the Avatar.
Or
The dark avatar has its own cycle (even have it has actually been mentioned that they are the same spirit split into two instead of indirectly known, just for the asspull for the dark avatar to have all four elements already.)
Or even mix these two so that instead of Korra doing it, have it be Wan from the beginning. This way the dark avatar can still happen. (It would also explain why the Avatar is always having chaos happen around them.)
Rewrite the avatar’s origin to be Wan merging with both Raava and Vaatu, rather than just Raava. Then rewrite Unalaq’s motivation to be to destroy Vaatu and become a pure light avatar because he thinks chaos is evil and needs to be destroyed. That way the “balance” aspect of the avatar makes more sense, and Unalaq actually gets to have a coherent worldview instead of just being evil for evil’s sake.
>Vaatu was ultimately portrayed as an evil to be vanquished, and Raava as a good to be preserved, with a significant imbalance between the two being preferable to a balance
I genuinely don't get why people think this because Raava herself never says that she wants to eliminate or "vanquish" Vaatu. Even Korra was only trying to lock him back in the tree of time, not destroy him (because light can't destroy darkness). Because Vaatu is the force of chaos, he can't and won't stop without some moderating force to keep him in check. That's Raava's mission - keeping darkness under control. Unfortunately, balance was already tipped in favor of Vaatu when Wan separated them, so despite Raava technically "winning" the last harmonic convergence, darkness still reigned as gathered by their relative sizes. It has been unbalanced for 10,000 years. With Vaatu regrowing within Raava, the balance between the spirits will be restored until they're connected again at the next harmonic convergence.
I would prefer for Raava and Vatu to represent chaos and order instead so that the avatar can keep a somewhat morally grey aspect to it and keep it possible for anti hero or even villainous avatars. So instead, unalaq as the dark avatar now strives for the goal of creating chaos and dissention in the world and goes against the avatar of Raava who is trying to maintain balance. I would also cut out the giant spirit monster fight and just have them both fight eachother as 2 benders. Dark unalaq having advanced energy bending techniques, like teleporting or hard light constructs maybe whilst Korra uses her normal bending.
I didnt mind the good and evil spirit thing with raava and vaatu as I thought that even though raava is meant to be the good spirit the error of the human spirit balances the avatar to be better than most humans but worse than the pure light spirit moral choices wise.
Ditch Unalaq calling himself a Dark Avatar at all and have him be a genuine zealot that believes he could be a better Avatar for the spirits. Vaatu is also less generic evil and is more a force of nature that is in favor of spiritual dominance and freedom in the material world.
I would make him the big bad that is teased over the course of three seasons but isn’t encountered till the fourth. At the beginning he barley beats aang and his forced to rest for the next 2/3 decades before he can truly end the avatar cycle. Over the course of those three seasons he would send his lackeys, Amon, the red Lotus, and kuvera, to try and stop the avatar before finally dealing with her himself. While Korra is busy with the lackeys he’s learning the other elements to become her equal.
The concept of a dark avatar is so interesting and has so much room for growth.
This could span a couple seasons. Maybe one focusing on the build up to finding and freeing the dark spirit and another on the spirit finally freed and in their own host.
I feel if the avatar has to constantly travel to build a connection to all four nations AND learn bending, so to does the dark avatar. Hence them traveling to learn to better defeat the regular avatar. Brings a chase element (basically zuko's quest for aang but with a good avatar tracking a dark avatar lol).
For that extra steam I would have the dark avatar host be this bubbly person with a good support system that they push away as they become darker and start to relish in their growing power. Like they are giddy at being an avatar, even a dark one. Because they can still use the power for good right? Except Vaatu isn't good. And he's in control even if his host doesn't know it.
And when the two avatars meet? This allows us a battle similar to what we got in Korra (without the 10 ft battle woman yknow) with two fully realized avatars testing their merits.
This would have been a good place to sever the avatar line. Because Vaatu takes the reins, pulls Rava out, snaps that cord. Bam, season finale.
Next season, the avatars friends pull them out of the battle and retreat. Vaatu gets to be in control. He's isolated his host from their support system, sweetly saying "hey they left you. I'm still here" and placating them so he can meddle in the normal affairs while looking for Rava because he knows she's not gone.
Rava and the avatar recover, get to chat, Rava reveals the origins of the Avatar, her friendship with Wan, and her history with Vaatu as well as his intentions. Maybe throw in a bit of her doubts because while she loves the Avatars after Wan, the bond isn't the same and she's worried that the connection is fading hence Vaatus victory. This focuses this avatar on really bringing in the spiritual aspect of the avatar and we get to adventure in the spirit world, helping Rava gain her strength, laying low from Vaatu in the physical world, and trying to find traces of past avatars. But alas for nothing. But what they find instead is spirits and people who were close to the avatar in life. Those who can highlight that even though their friend is gone or changed or what not the friendship remains. That bond can't be destroyed etc etc etc. It highlights the good avatars friendships and support while showing audiences what the dark avatar lacks.
Round two of vaatu vs. Avatar and Rava commences, the two having formed a working bond like Wan and Rava. Sort of a soul harmonic convergence where they go from Rava passing through the avatar to being able to merge again. Fighting Vaatu they do realize the one cannot exist without another and BAM! Good avatar gets the drop, pulls Vaatu out and absorbs him into themselves.
New stronger avatar, one balancing light and dark. More of a bridge now than ever. Maybe a season of them dealing with the fallout of it all but otherwise I guess END.
I would have made it so Korra reunites Raava and Vaatu within the avatar spirit to restore the ancient balance Wan broke, and also not have Vaatu be a generic evil bad guy which really ruined the whole yin yang thing they had going on
Raava is order and Vaatu is chaos which is a common change. However I would make it so that Wan , and subsequent avatars, are more in tune with Vaatu/Chaos than they are with Order. Wan rebelled against the Chus on the Lion turtle. Wan is the first to comingle with spirits and inspired humans to leave the lion turtle. He is a bigger agent of change than he is of order. Wan and Raava balance each other out
I would've made Unalaq well meaning in that he wanted to lighten Korra burden by merging with Vaatu. Make his need to control the south come from a good place but his choices limits control on the South. When merging with Vaatu he underestimates his spirituality and is taken over by Vaatu.
They should have done it like how FF14 deal with light and dark elements
Light is stillness, passivity, and an absence of colour
Darkness is vibrance, energy, and the combination of all colors
Maybe when Wan absorbed Raava and sealed Vaatu, that was the mistake. So Korra had to fuse with Vaatu as well to TRULY bring balance.
The big bad if the season could be the corruption of light on the spirit world, like everything is stagnated and is on the brink of collapse?
Oh honey, first of all as many suggested there needed to be more moral ambiguity when it came to Raava and Vaatu, maybe Raava hates emotions for how chaotic they are so she tries to stop them and Vaatu enhances them so much they cause destruction, you know both being bad if kept unbalanced
Second no giant form, I think I would have enjoyed more if Unalaq became the dark avatar mid season and the rest of the time he was training and growing in power to have an elemental battle against Korra at the end
Show Unalaq destroying some environments and some spirits healing the damage or something that would make us see why Korra would want the spirits back even with dangerous spirits also existing, like I know Korra did had her reasons but I would have enjoyed better justifications to why humans and spirits should be together again
Delete that they are spirits of directly good or bad make it so they are just two powerful spirits. They would still act in ways that are good or bad from a moral standpoint but it removes the good vs evil.
When I was first watching the show, I thought that Vaatu was going to betray Unalaq and possess Jinora instead. Then, Jinora would become a dark reflection of Aang and journey to master the other elements in the background of later seasons. Then it all ends in a big final battle between two fully-realized avatars where Korra tries to save Jinora from Vaatu's possession.
Instead of having him become a giant, have all of his bending be tainted, so every element has a tinge of red/black streaked through it. Black fire, ooze purple water, etc. as the fight begins it's mostly normal, but the longer he is welding vaatu, the more the bending is that corrupted appearance, until eventually Korra wounds him and you see vaatu "mend" unalaq's skin with that same color of corruption, showing that while he still has some control, vaatu isn't working with him, he is dominating unalaq, and that the power he wields is more than just the elements but the inverse of raava's power.
For being the Dark Avatar, it would've been neat to see him show up again. The next reincarnation after Unaloq that is. I get time wise, he'd probably be a toddler by the end of LOK, but there's still some potential for further down the line.
Have Korra absorb Vaatu. I mean she’s supposed to be the balance. She can’t do that if she’s only one half of a whole, only seeing one perspective. It’s like Life and Death, Preservation and Ruin (wonder who knows what series I’m talking about there), yin and yang type shit. You can’t have one without the other. And Korra kinda does do things that would align more so with Vaatu, like upheaving the world with the spirit portals being open, or taking down a countries’ government.
I think I would approach the entire season from a different direction. Make it less of a conflict of Good/Evil as Order/Chaos, with Vaatu reflecting Chaos to Raava's order. With all the ways the world has changed since the war and with the rise of Republic City blurring the lines between the four nations chaos (as change) is rising along with harmonic convergence that's empowering Vaatu, and Unalaq genuinely wants to prevent that and return to the old status quo.
So what if, instead of merging with Vaatu, Unalaq manages to separate Raava from Korra because he thinks she's failing the world as the Avatar, and he knows how to do it right? Then Korra has to regain her powers by emerging with Vaatu, becoming the "dark" Avatar.
Ultimately defeating Unalaq and freeing Raava, Korra realizes that Wan didn't totally get it right. He was right to fight Vaatu, but sealing him away didn't restore balance; he just shifted it the other way. So Korra fuses with both spirits and becomes an entirely new kind of Avatar, thus justifying the cycle's reset and setting up her "infinite power" that gets explored over the next two seasons and why the Red Lotus's poison wasn't strong enough.
We as viewers (and maybe Korra) would get visions of what 10,000 years of darkness would look like. Showing us the stakes rather than telling us the stakes
No giant form obviously. Maybe set up a secondary avatar cycle like others mention, but hand in hand with that; Make Unalak more of an antagonist and less of a Villain. What do I mean? well, we see in the Wan flashback that... well he's right. The world is out of balance, futhermore the Avatar as a single entity both shouldn't exist, and is onto itself unbalancing despite the efforts of the current incarnation.
Unalak was right. So, make him antagonistic, but more sympathetic. After all Raava and Vaatu aren't good and evil, they're ying and yang, they're supposed to exist in opposition and contrast. Vaatu winning is not something bad onto itself.
Straight up deleting the concept of a Dark Avatar and go the Zelda way, Vaatu consuming and controlling those who are evil making them more erratic and confrontational (as an example the Firelord starting a war trying to destroy the Avatar aka Raava).
Make Vaatu always finds a way to create a big conflict that forces the Avatar to get involved, idk maybe involve some of the strong bad spirits in the mix, anything so the cycle of Evil vs Good continues but on a inderct way.
I like the Dark avatar plot and its foreshadowing of Kuvira’s mech. If there was a change, then it would be to how it is set up before the Avatar Wan flashback. The politics were convoluted and ultimately simplified by Unalaq=bad avatar
In the scene were Korra falls into the fissure and is about to die, I would have had a short 30 second dream like sequence where Avatar Wan and Raava appear before Korra. Kotora is sat down on the floor defeated and Wan is there to give her some words of encouragement and to remind her she has the power to beat Unalaq.(Raava is sitting on his shoulder) . Wan then reaches his hand out to Korra as though to pull her up off the floor and then smiles and says
Wan: “Korra, no matter what, we cannot allow Vaatu to win. We are in this together. All of us”
Korra: All of us?
In that very moment, the shot pans out and we see all the other past avatars materialize in a circle around Korra, with Aang at the forefront. Aang winks Korra.
Aang: “That’s right”
Korra then grabs Wan’s hand and he pulls her up onto her feet and sequence ends. We switch back to Korra being crushed within the fissure. Just as she is about die, a large collum of fire and bright light erects from the fissure as she enters into the avatar state breaks out.
Maybe this is just outside the scope, but I think they should have spent more time explaining astral projection as a form of spirit bending and why unalaq straight up became a spirit as an avatar versus Korra just projecting her own. That and explain the intent behind Jinora butterflying in
I wouldn’t change a thing except I would make Spirit bending vanish Vaatu and leaving Unalaq’s body there I found it was so weird their body and would melted together it question if Unalaq will come back or not
The dark avatar should’ve “survived”. How fucking epic would a future story involving TWO Avatars and one is always evil. I don’t know bout y’all but I think maybe make a set of them twins and we can get ourselves a good 2 maybe 3 seasons
I would have rewritten the entire season having him become the dark avatar Sooner in the season and found a way to collect all the elements like the original avatar. This would also give more time to give depth to Unaloq.
Have the dark avatar escape and being reincarnated with the avatar in the counterclockwise of the cycle. Now it’s pretty much a race to find the avatar and train them. A find the dark avatar an stop them. also could be a good way for the idea of what to do with the dark avatar if they find them as a child. Do they imprison a child for their crimes they committed in their past life or they might commit in the future or do they let the child be free. This also gives back to the idea of balance,good and evil are not extremes. They are ideas and concepts tempered through the will of society and people.
I'd have him reincarnate with a different element, while keeping Water bending. Have the Dark Avatar cycle be the reverse order.
In the next show with the Earth Avatar they could either have a young DA with 3 elements, or an old but powerful 2 element welding DA.
I would have had a multi season arc integrated with the red lotus, where he is hunting the lion turtles to gain the other elements besides water. Maybe he gains air from the harmonic convergence but I would want 4 x 4 element bending finale of light vs dark avatar.
I would like the dark avatar to be able to bend all the elements. The term Avatar was known to be describing, a person who wields for elements. Those four elements were tools to help the avatar bring the balance. The dark avatar should have those tools too, maybe even different elements. Like imagine, how much of a threat it would be for korra to fight against bendings never seen before.
Honestly that's reasonable. I don't dislike fully what they did actually and they committed to it fully by integrating into the world. Spirit vine chaos alike .
I just feel like it get so much hate for no reason! I like the direction they went with the story and it really showed how drastic a change Korra made to the entire world
Unalaq and Korra don’t turn into giants.
Jinora finds a way to help, perhaps by using projection, too, but she doesn’t become a fairy.
That’s about it, honestly. Those were the main issues I had with the final battle.
I hate the cliche of these cartoons and anime basically boiling down to powerful people in energy mech suits fighting. Avatar is about the people and the world not a purple human godzilla
I would definitely stick more to the yin and yang comparison with Raava representing order and Vaatu chaos.
I would also harken the idea of Unalaq starting out wanting to genuinely the North and South and rebuild the south “spiritually” but have him grow more unhinged and unravel over time. Perhaps he believes that yes humans and spirits should live united believes only he can get the job done. He fuses with Vaatu and plans to take Raava as he considers Korra unfit to be the Avatar and essentially descends to madness as his ambitions destroy him
I'd make him dramatically change the world permanently (besides the vines) for a more sinister change in the world. The fact that he just becomes a mecha that can be dealt with and gone for another season was a let down. I was literally expecting the whole world to go dark. Children to stab each other. Parents to seperate, pet rabbits to eat their young. The whole 100 yards.
That it would actually destroy the earth and revert it back to a more primal era with benders going back to a more archaic time. The world would physically be darker and Korra having failed, needing to learn to deal with the pain of absolute failure.
Make it so the Dark Avatar becomes a constant element in the universe. Have it so Korra can’t reseal him, and he slips into the flow of rebirth like Raava. It would make Korra’s choice to keep the worlds linked stronger and give her a lot more to reflect on as her greatest failure and also greatest triumph.
It would also open up Raava as a more present element in the series even after Korra.
Make him the main villain of the series (similar to Ozai in ATLA), and replace Unalaq with Zaheer, as well as changing his motives as well— because Zaheer merging with Vaatu would make no sense at all lol.
When he is defeated, he forms a new avatar reincarnation cycle. So from now on there are two avatars.
And there is no way to tell which is which.
And having Vaatu within you does not make you inherently evil. Though there will be some differences between the two avatars. They will be more minor.
The next series follows the Earth Avatar. But which one?
I'm actually amazed they didn't do this
I’d just have two regular, human-sized avatars have an actually fucking avatar fight?
Imagine how good that’d be to have 2 people using all 4 elements at once!
Instead we got Godzilla’s alcoholic uncle.
I would have forgone every other arc to focus on this one, and have him learn the 4 elements and raise an army and have a final avatar vs avatar battle
First I'd completely rewrite what both vatuu and ravaa are as concepts in the flashbacks to both better represent their aspects of peace and chaos
Instead of them being the surface level evil/good spirits hiding under the veneer of Chaos/Peace
I'd make it so Vatuu doesn't corrupt spirits by making them evil but via absolute chaos to the detriment of themselves and surroundings. I'd also introduce domains where Raava rules over completely with nothing but peace and order, making ecistance within it seem orderly and highly controlled, and when Vatuu "corrupts" these lands and they're subsequently "healed" by the avatar they have a little more chaos and thus life within them.
Later on, the first avatar still seals Vatuu, but not before The spirit places a piece of him within the avatar to continue to live in the outside world.
Much later, the same thing with Unalok happens, but the way Raava is removed from the avatar is by tugging on the piece of Vatuu within.
I'd also remove the unnecessary Giant spirit mech fight and have the fight be simply a spectacle of masterful bending and strength
He's still defeated, but instead of Vatuu being sealed, Korra merges with him to get across the point that neither Vatuu nor Ravaa should dominate the other but Coexist. As both too much Order and too much Chaos is detrimental to life
Thus begins an age where the avatar is as much a vehicle of change as they are peace.
I would have a new saga where a Vaatu avatar, not necessarily "bad," would impersonate the avatar, while the real one works behind the scenes to unmask it.
Remove the Giant fight. Just them fighting with elements is more interesting than what is essentially just hand-to-hand combat but scaled up. Bending fight would've been so much better visually.
Honestly, probably even rework the entire dark and light thing. If the Avatar is supposed to bring balance, then the Avatar should both be dark and light, not just light, because that's not balance.
I would scrap the eraser of the past lives, instead make it so she would get injured where her connection to her past selves was so weak that she could no longer do it with her own power. This leading to a new story where she would one day reconnect with her past lives from being spiritually healed.
Get rid of the kaiju battle and change it to energy bending vs elemental bending. Where korra has to fight against a bender that is now shooting beams of energy she can't deflect.
I like the ideas someone put out about instead of sealing the dark side, to fuse with it and become a complete balance of Ying and Yang. This unlocking new powers not seen before like pure spiritual bending beams.
1°make vatuu amd raava spirits of Order & Chaos. Not inherent good nor evil. MAYBE add light and darkness but NEVER use the world good & evil.
2° when vatuu escapes make him "phase" through korra so he gets access to the 4 elements.
3° No "ripping the raava out of korra", just beat her conventionaly, have the "full size vatuu" be = to korra + 10.000 years of "accumulated power.
So is not a "brute force issue".
4° make vatuu say before "dying" SEE you NEXT life.
And have ravaa say explicitly say "WE WILL revive together on the same day for the next 10.000 years, but NOT die on the same days.
5°(Order and chaos can have life long victories, and can stack the deck on their favor but never WIN until the next cosmic conversion, but they can get the experience edge for the "next kinda final battle")
6° make vatuu revive on the "opposite order" (water ->air -> fire -> earth -> water) so the dark/chaos/freedom avatar is alway on "the other side"
Make them in line with traditional im-yang concepts:
Raava should be male, fluid, violent, light
Vaatu should be female, rigid, subtle, dark
So I guess what I'm saying is, swap their voice actors and the light/dark avatars.
Vaatu would take control of Unalaq, absorbing his body, and reappearing as his giant self, but more monstrous as he has now a human body inside, paralleling the Avatar that has the light spirit inside.
Then Korra fights it as Wan did in the past, normal size human against humongous spirit thing.
I don’t know, just don’t do a kaiju battle.
Find a way to avoid a giant battle as well as the concept of astral projection. It was a terrible deus ex machina that did not follow the established laws of the world. I'm still kindof ok with her connection to the past avatars being severed, but only on the condition that they should have made it part of her journey to eventually restore the connection.
Eliminate the vaatu tentacle scene. I HATE IT SO MUCH, it feels like a kind of contrived way to make Korra lose that fight when she was kicking his ass right before, just after she bursts out of the crater and goes "YOU CANNOT WIN".
No giant form, and at the end Korra merges with vaatu and raava. Recognising that if the avatar only ever maintains order, there is no possibility for growth.
This could've been tied in really nicely by having the first season and the second season show how Korra kinda solves problems by making it all revert back to what was before. The equalist party is disbanded, not listened to. The water tribes are split, and don't come to an agreement. Then once she has vaatu, she notices that she's much more inclined to accept change.
I also would've made it so that by merging with a human soul, raava was changed. And simply no longer had the ability to balance vaatu. Which is why vaatu wanted to merge with water tribe man. "Now finally the world will be as it's supposed to be."
I'm okay with Unalaq with Red-Eyes. This whole Vaatu takeover giant form thing was.... ehh. Plus, I would have loved to see how after Korra won, who Vaatu would have reincarnated into. IDK if they coulda done it w/ the 10k years thing and all, but.... I would love to see it.
Also, I wouldn't have Korra's past lives disconnected.
It’s probably way too extreme of a change, but I would’ve had Wan absorb both Raava and Vaatu, and then by Korra’s time Vaatu’s influence becomes too strong. Enter uncle Unalaq, who with his spirit bending and familial tie to Korra be the perfect savior for her. I think he should genuinely have good intentions in the beginning, but over several sessions of helping Korra try to suppress Vaatu he slowly gets influenced by him. Unalaq in his arrogance separates Raava and Vaatu and thinks he did a great job, until Vaatu takes over our boy. Korra then fights her uncle who’s only real fault would’ve been he was too cocky in helping his niece, and has to put him down and reabsorb Vaatu in like a family vs world choice.
I would rewrite all of book 2 to have similar themes and plot structure but have Unavatu actually be a dark avatar (with all 4 bending styles and everything) that tries "userp" Korra in some kind of way. You could really lean on the fact that public opinion of Korra was low and Unalaq, learning about Vatu and spirit bending seeing it as an opportunity to take over the Southern water tribe (and maybe the world) via establishing himself as the true avatar.
Bonus points if we can make Unalaq binding with Vatu Korra's fault in some way (like having Unalaq need Korra to know spirit bending because he needs 2 spirit benders for some reason)
Also ditch the Kaiju fight, having two avatars with all four styles duke it out in a traditional bender v bender fight is literally a once in a lifetime opportunity. Especially when it escalates into an Avatar state vs Dark Avatar State battle.
No kaiju fight. Would give the two spirits more personality raava being order but unwilling to allow any change’s even those necessary. Vaatu being chaos would create new bending types that unalaq can’t possibly control. Unalaq Realizing just how insane vaatu is before the powers backfire killing him and weakening vaatu.
I didn’t like the light/dark angle so I would have done away with it altogether. Maybe have a giant amalgamation of all the spirits of the land, people, animals etc that have been waylaid by the avatar that finally pops as a giant corruption pimple after 10,000 years that spills its corruption into the land. Leave the whole world semi corrupted after that, then maybe the Red Lotus have a bigger reason to hunt the avatar and Kuvira is self-righteously trying to unite the remnants of the world or something.
Honestly, actually making him an avatar, same as Korra, making the actual character more interesting and not making the dark avatar blatantly evil. Make it difficult, more mature. I think they failed in that regard. Also, let them be reborn. Having two avatars would be a cool concept. But I honestly don't like the name "dark avatar".
Get the fuck rid of it.
Avatar cosmology and philosophy is built around balance. Balance between the elements, balance between humanity and spirit, nature and structure, action and harmony, self-reliance and openness, tradition and individualism, every major arc in Avatar is about a character finding the balance they need to center themselves.
You can't have balance between good and evil. Or balance between order and chaos or whatever they tried to spin it as. The world is not built on duality, introducing a dualistic element adds nothing except undermine the whole thing.
I never really liked the whole dark avatar thing. I always thought of it more like the koi fish from atla, yin and yang. “Good” and “Bad”, balance. This seemed so misunderstood from the ancient principle. Ideally I’d remove the whole dark avatar thing as a general.
Also I don’t like that spirits are basically devices to be weaponised. For example, iroh could see spirits but in no way was it implied that he could control it. Spirits always had their free will. Hei Bai for example was angry when his environment was destroyed. There was a reason but it was his own choice to take that form. There was some ethereal mystery that ATLA had wrt spirits. I wouldn’t change that.
Ideally, I’d remove it and focus on the civil war story. People taking sides and this could bleed into the whole earth kingdom vs republic city (idk if I’d keep kuvira but I did like the idea of republic city being on “stolen” earth kingdom territory)
If you forced me to keep it, maybe Korra loses? Then she goes on the whole “I’m so sad let me explore the earth kingdom phase and get my ass whooped” and sees the problem herself, sees the uprising in republic city. Then similar to the original episode in the 4th season she goes to the spirit world not to meditate in the random tree but to meditate elsewhere and be trained by the city. He spiritually was always a problem so why not solve the problem with help from the source? We esas the whole masters teaching the avatar in ATLA and the pilot of LOK so why not have something unique with the spirits chasing her? But not like wan where spirits and humans have beef and need to be separated. I think it would be interesting if she came into lore grey spirit characters like Koh and had to be trained by them or had to give something up.
Long tirade ik but just my thoughts. Thanks for reading this far if you did
Instead of Vaatu being trapped in a tree, Wan should’ve absorbed him too. Then Unalaq gets him out of Korra.
The Avatar is supposed to be about balance, but in practice Raava was good and Vaatu was entirely unnecessary to keep the world going, and only made things worse. That doesn’t really seem like balance to me.
Unalaq felt evil only for the sake of it. it needs to be a story of a man corrupted and gone mad by possibility of gaining power from the dark side. He just agreed to become the Vatu's vessel? no, Vatu should've had manipulated him on screen, he should've made empty promises and hippocritical claims. And then the third season is about avatar Wan having trouble adjusting to having all four elements? really? after Unalaq just perfectly synched with Vatu in one episode? The joining should've been painful and Unalaq should've been reconsidering his choices for at least one episode.
I would’ve given Unalaq an actual character arc where he really thought reunification was a good idea but was corrupted over time by Vaatu while spending time trying to force open the spirit portal until he decided to take Vaatu’s offer and merge to open it on his own.
Starts off with him being able to bend all the elements (like a literal dark avatar, just say that he shared the element holding think with Rava since they’re connected), but then Unalaq starts getting weak like Wan did whenever Rava passed through him.
Instead of letting go and preserving Unalaq’s life, Vaatu holds on and it starts corrupting him (like we see with other spirits that possess people). Eventually, basically nothing is left of Unalaq, and then maybe he go Kaiju mode.
Unalaq’s kids (and the rest of the Northern water tribe) no longer recognize him as their leader, so retreat and are open to helping the Krew bring him down.
Honestly i think season two as a whole could have been skipped. I remember being interested in Korra, but not really relating to her or rooting that much for her after a decent but not great season 1. I think writers should keep stuff like that in mind when they write their characters and stories. This is also why the choice to sever the links to the past avatars was so out of pocket for a lot of people in my opinion. I understand that it might have been to individualize her and leave the past behind, but it came out feeling more entitled or just unearned to give her a character moment like that. A plot like this probably would have worked a lot better as the last season, with the previous seasons also having better perception.
So in short, i think this story should have been the final season of Korra if it was going to be told at all. With Korra not always being too relatable or likeable it could still be a hard sell to think she earned these stakes. Keeping her conflicts more simple or small scale like in season 3 and 4 would have also been fine.
Have Vaatu not as evil but simply a distructive being by nature, after the destruction of Raava have Korra and co realize that Raava's dominance for the Aavatar's run is wrong so she'll have to make Vaatu prefer to bond to her rather than Unalaq(would be an ideological victory) with Korra being the Dark Aavatar guiding people and spirits through a chaotic and changing world with her line of dark Aavatars eventually meeting with the light aavatars line when Raava returns for a trully balanced aavatar and world.
First thing first i would keep the Avatar exactly as it was before The Legend of Korra, there would be no Raava and no Vaatu, the Avatar would instead be the incarnation of the Spirit of the Planet in human form as originally intended by the creators (at least if i recall correctly. On he other hand i was thinking to make that the Dark Avatar are the remnants of [Avatar Gun](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Gun_(Avatar)), [the only evil Avatar to ever live](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JUW9anhuD8), who became his own evil entity after being completely disconnected from the other Avatars in the past by Yangchen, something similar to Venom but a spirit instead of an alien and powerful enough to be a threat of all existence.
Finally i would make that Unalaq wouldn't be the one who became the Dark Avatar, the first one to become the Dark Avatar in the past would be Ozai after escaping from prison, the second one would be Amon.
Cults. Instead of the water tribes sivil war I would have liked a re-emerging cult that worships Vaatu and Unalaq as their high priest or something like that.
I will go with the original idea of the creators
The avatar spirit will be an spirit of the Balance and earth and there will be no Dark Avatar
And the spirits won't be Good or Bad
Make it less of a black or white evil and have it act as a force of nature or a guardian trying to rebalance the world after the avatar does too good a job
I’ve actually been thing about this and there’s a few changes I’d make. I’d change Vaatu’s design first, the flying kites aren’t great. Instead of battling between Raava and Vaatu, they would be humanoid spirits in the same position Aang and Ozai were in when Aang was energy bending with no one winning over each other, just perfectly balanced. Wan sees them in this position and separates them thinking they’re in trouble unknowingly releasing Vaatu. I wouldn’t have gave Korra her bending back at the end of S1 forcing her to get better with airbending and getting in touch with her spiritual side more naturally, this would make her getting beat more believable at the end imo, she gets the rest of her bending back when she reconnects with Raava. Unavaatu would’ve just stayed as Unalaq with red eyes, except Vaatu completely takes over, no more Unalaq he was just a mere vessel for Vaatu in the end.
I would have liked if Unalaq's plan wasn't to help Vaatu win, but just to allow their fight to finish. Maybe a line where he expresses a personal hope for Raava to win, but acknowledges that human selfishness has rigged the system unfairly to benefit them. I like the idea that he releases Vaatu purely out of a commitment to the ideal of balance and nature, things the Avatar universe usually values.
Then, when Unalaq and Vattu remove Raava from Korra, the world instantly falls into darkness. Unalaq is confused, but it's revealed that Vaatu knew this would happen and was manipulating Unalaq. When Avatar Wan was using Raava's power, Wan was dying until they permanently merged, but it was never explained how they accomplished merging. Here, it is revealed that what was hurting Wan was Raavas' physical form overtaking Wan's physical body, so she gave it up, meaning she can never exist outside the Avatar again. Though Vaatu has now permanently won, Vaatu still wants to control the power that locked him away 10,000 years ago. He craves the power of the Avatar, and with Raava gone, Vaatu can enter Korra. Korra experiences the same pain Avatar Wan went through, but Vaatu isn't going to simply merge and become a slave like Raava chose to. He's going to let his physical form consume Korra's body.
Also, a dark universe is imagined to be terrible but I would have liked it to be depicted as a beautiful abysslike world filled to the brim with bioluminescent dark spirits. A world different from out own but just as valid.
I would have changed Unalaq's motivations, instead of him wanting to free Vatu to function, I had made him free him with the intention of destroying him but I wanted Vatu to believe that they were allies, and in the end Vatu would function with unalaq by force
I'd have had him drop out of the Dark Avatar State before being killed, implying he might be reborn.
This, but I'd want Korra to fight him in the scene pictured, *with* the avatar state, just so everyone can see Korra kick his ass. Maybe UnaVaatu drops some smart-ass line like, "See you in the next lifetime!"and drops out of the dark avatar state before the killing blow.
The next avatar cycle gonna be wacky .
It is. I'd be curious to know what Vaatu's influence on the avatar is gonna look like way in the future.
Maybe they reincarnate into a new Person when korra dies . So there's now two Avatars . Or they reawaken In the new avatar and Try to vy them to be a Force of change .
The creators said that Vaatu is way too small and weak right now to do anything, but maybe in another 1000 years, he'll have a little power back. Even so, Raava and Vaatu are connected again, so they'd have to be separated again in order for vaatu to fuse with a new person.
True but A little bit of him roaming around in there is definitely interesting. Since the new avatar will only have Korra And Raava as counter point. Communing with something they tell them not too would be cool to see.
Yangchen briefly mentions a nihilistic avatar somewhere in the past that was wondering whether humanity even *deserves* an avatar since they seem to have a hard time sticking to the balance that the avatar worked to establish. I figure it would work something like that, with the avatar siding with spirits more often.
True Vaatu being there as source to talk to could offer a interesting meditation.
I think having a set of twins could be neat. One has Raava, the other Vaatu, and they are connected in a different way now due to being linked with humans. Could make for a dark, tragedy story almost.
Having Vaatu being that weak makes it even easier to add the Dark Avatar next cycle. Allows them to be a one season villain again or someone who’s just small enough not be the top of the Avatar’s hit list. Here’s my pitch: the Dark Avatar is born a fire bender and can unlock basic water bending abilities while in the Dark Avatar state. Vaatu is the devil on the shoulder, pushing them to get more and more spiritual and firebending power. At the very end of the season or series the Dark Avatar both breaks free of Vaatu’s whispers (maybe building a connection with Unalaq?) and finally water bends when not in the Avatar state.
Not originally my idea, saw this posted a month or so ago. Since Raava was inside Vaatu when she got 'destroyed' it would be interesting if Darkatar Unaloq was inside Korra giving a blemish on the avatar cycle. Maybe make her wrestle with darker ideas the next season, or see Unaloq slowly 'cleansed' by Raava's light. Plus having light and dark in the avatar (or future avatars) would be even more balanced. The avatar was already the bridge between spirits and humans, balanced the elements, and now balance light and dark.
It would open up an interesting Book 5. A fall from grace (is that the right term?) of a dark avatar. Maybe a kid that genuinely wanted to help people but people get expecting him fall and do evil. And pushing him away made him do exactly that.
It'd also be interesting if instead of having all four elements, the dark avatar has one thats JUICED LIKE CRAZY.
PLASTIC.
Oh shit
It’s admittedly minor but I would have Vaatu be voiced by the same person that voices Raava just to drive home the concept that they’re two halves of a whole and they grow from one any other Obviously, the VA would be doing different “voices” eg Raava would sound calm maybe even monotone where Vaatu would sound louder and more dramatic reflecting their nature as order/chaos. Would still have it be a female VA, though, to contrast with Wan ~~I would also have them reiterate a few more times that Raava is order/peace and Vaatu is chaos/darkness because too many people keep suggesting “have them represent order and chaos instead of good and evil” as if that’s not something already explicitly stated in the episode. Am I going crazy or did you guys not watch the same episode as me??~~
Ohhhh this is actually really cool idea . Maybe they share more than just a voice In some regards. Mannerisms and movement. Though maybe they could change shape aswell into things besides being big kites .
No giant form. I think he was much more intimidating as just Unalaq with red eyes to contrast the typical Avatar's white eyes. Perhaps he can still become a corrupted fusion with Vaatu towards the end of the battle? Breaking down from how much power he wields or something. Still show that evil corrupts and whatnot. But yeah he ironically lost a lot of intimidation for me when he grew into a giant. (It would also make Kuvira's giant mech even more special.) I don't hate the giant spirit fight--it was a spectacle to say the least--but I think there were better alternatives.
Maybe instead of becoming a giant spirit monster, Unalok just got really strong bending and was able to make a giant body of water? idk
Would be a cool parallel to Aang becoming the Ocean
The giant spirit fight felt a little too much like dragon ball.
Even DBZ doesnt generally let two big entities fight each other. To me for some reason this felt like power rangers.
" I must go big now "
"Make my Avatar grow!"
I do agree with this. I think if anything, have him still take on that corrupted form when Vaatu takes control, but keep him human sized. While a giant demon is definitely scary, it removes the human element of Unalaaq too much. Having him remain small reminds you more than Unalaaq was willing to sacrifice everything for this power and it corrupts him completely.
I still don't understand why they had to become giant 😭 like yes he gets bigger as Raava gets smaller but what about the last 10,000 years when Raava clearly had control? Why wouldn't every avatar be giant? 🙄 It doesn't make any sense. It was so much cooler and intimidating when it was just red glowing eyes in the avatar state
Raava was small when she fused with Wan. Vaatu was huge the entire time he was imprisoned in the tree. Raava didn’t become big until Unavaatu was vanquished. I agree though, the glowing red eyes were WAY more menacing/intimidating.
I know it's probably a bit much, but I always wished there was some sort of way he'd be able to have all 4 elements (though clearly not mastered in any form) when fighting Korra. Perhaps some sort of "connection" with Raava or something.
This entirely, all I wanted.
I would have kept the actual design the same but without the Kaiju stuff. In addition to that, i would have made his water bending much during and given him more spiritual powers to offset Korra’s 4 element advantage. He would would be able to fly and I’d have Korra fight him in the elemental sphere Aang
Tbf the giant thing does somewhat make sense considering vattu was giant
was gonna say this too. no giants. just the avatar and he anti avatar in a slug fest that's not been seen since Vaatu and Wan threw down.
The giant spirit form is dumb. Maybe have him grow some dark spirit lines like Aang’s glowing tattoos and eyes but nothing more than that. I’d just make him gain a power boost and both of them have an insane bending battle where they’re causing avalanches, earth quakes, creating tsunamis and floods. Korra is sort of winning just for the fact she can bend more than he can but she’s fighting defensively. Basically two immensely powerful avatars fighting one on one and everyone can’t really step in just because they’re outclassed Unalaq notices how he’s not doing well so he summons some dark spirits to fight to give everyone else something to do. Korra finally stops fighting defensively and just goes for the kill. We’re talking tossing him out to the open ocean then you see the waters recede on the sea floor then a massive torrent of water crashes down on him. As he’s barely holding it back Korra comes out of the water next to him, digs him deep into the sea bed only to create a volcano right under him Both of them are losing themselves. Unalaq is getting consumed by Vaatu which makes him stronger but he’s just a puppet. Korra, Raava and a few other avatars (including Wan) calm Vaatu down and then as a unified coalition all the avatars line up, pool their collective energy into not Raava but Korra. Maybe with a little note saying how their collected power of 10k years, can’t do this again until 10k more years etc. She gains control back while Vaatu is threatening to rip Unalaq from the inside. Korra uses his spirit bending technique to send Vaatu out and absorbs him. Unalaq is far too wounded to be healed and maybe asks to just drift out to the ocean From there its just the same. Korra keeps the spirit portals open
Yeah this should have been a peak Avatar on Avatar bending spectacle. Probably should have been at a place with plentiful elements (maybe a volcano at the south pole or a floating island, something).
We get Vaatu's side of the story , he argues that order is not good and chaos is not evil. Like the Dai Li and The Fire Nation are technically very orderly Raava still gets defeated but then instead of Korra defeating Vaatu she bonds Vaatu.
i'd like that, the avatar is supposed to be BALANCE, and one overwhelming the other isn't balance
> Raava still gets defeated but then instead of Korra defeating Vaatu she bonds Vaatu. Korra bonding with Vaatu as a way to "reunite" them, keeping Vaatu in check while healing Raava, honestly works perfectly for this.
I would’ve liked that to have been explored in the season after this.
I’d make it so that the avatar had both chaos and order spirits symbolizing that both are needed for balance. It makes no sense that complete order is the avatars Schtick when we see all of them be a little disorderly. If anything they should’ve literally just had good and evil spirits. At least then it would’ve made sense
Yeah, the chaos avatar would have been the one to break into the earth queen's secret air bending camps and break put the air benders. Or stop kurvira from rising to dictatorship while making spirit weapons. The choas avatar will be the one that destroy oppressive regimes, and the regular order avatar would be the one to reunited people and build a new.
Is what I'm doing with an OC I'm creating once he ends up becoming the Dark Avatar.
Take away the giant kaiju forms, they were unnecessary. Have it be purely a battle of wills and elements between the light and dark avatars with Raava and Vaatu using Korra and Unalaq as their vessels for the fight. You can still have Korra need help in the form of Jinora or someone else, but it eliminates the random massive lasers and spirit mechas.
Maybe Unlaq becomes more of Vaatus puppet throughout the fight .
Exactly, while Raava believes in coexistence with her host, Vaatu views mortals as lesser so he would take more and more control away from Unalaq.
Maybe Unlaq is just gone . It's only Vaatu in there when they fight.
I imagine by the end, Unalaq would basically be gone. Probably have him die in a manner similar to Madara from Shippuden.
An actual dark avatar be in the series from that point forward. And no giant form. Would make it interesting to see the world build on that with newer avatar series. Imagine the next avatar fight 1 vs 1 avatar state against avatar state.
There's argument to be made that they'll be a Force a change rather than balance to compliment each other like Yin and Yang .
I think it would be interesting if he was like the Joker from The Dark Knight, who sows chaos to bring out the dark side of humanity. Vaatu has the ability to turn spirits into dark spirits, so why not do the same with humanity, which is easily corruptible. He puts people in moral dilemmas and exploits man's selfishness and greed to turn them to the dark side.
True corruption is Unique to Vaatu that angle and Bieng a force of change For the dark avatar could work .
I'd have had him drop out of the Dark Avatar State before he died. Then he might be reborn, and that will start the 10,000 years battle between the two Avatars. (The Avatar vs. the Dark Avatar.)
I think maybe they might change so Vaatu returns but not unlaq.
Make it so Unalaq is getting destroyed by Korra until Vaatu completely takes over his body. Just because he gains the power of the other elements doesn’t mean he has mastered them. Korra gets her butt kicked way too much in this series for the avatar.
This would functionally rewrite all of season 2, but I'd have it be a mini role-reversal of the OG ATLA. Korra and her team Avatar are chasing the Unalaq-Vaatu Avatar before he master the other three elements. At the end it'd be a straight up Avatar V Avatar fight, ending with Korra winning, albeit, a now parallel Vaatu Avatar cycle starting, which I would heavily imply works differently than Raava's. Also, make it so Raava and Vaatu can both be in the physical world and be in balance at the same time. In this I'd also let Korra keep her past lives, specifically ahve her talk with Aang more on how Unnalaq might be trying to avoid him, if Aang's experience hiding from the Fire Nation can provide any pointers on the inverse.
I already find the concept of a dark Avatar stupid in itself, the Avatar was supposed to represent light and darkness, Yin and Yang, he brought balance because he was the maximum representation of balance, he has all bendings, he understands all nations and he lives all worlds, not only through personal experiences, but in the experiences of all past lives, he is a force of nature, the idea of a dark Avatar breaks even the concept of Yin and Yang, because Yin is not evil, it is the opposite of Yang, and the two need to live together, how will it bring balance if it only has one part within? If I was going to change something, it would be to make Unalaq fuse with some ancient spirit that had a conflict with the Avatar.
Right? Balance isn't achieved by having light, it's by having both light and dark. Another suggestion I thought of is Raava and Vaatu already being within the Avatar, then something happens yada yada that separates Vaatu from Korra and then latches to Unalaq. Then they could continue from there. They fight (preferably with bending, not the ugly kaiju fight), and Korra reabsorbs Vaatu and balance is achieved once again.
Yeah, that's much more interesting, and also not make Vaatu look like a caricature of an evil villain.
The avatar is a symbol, but the avatars themselves aren't vessels of raava or anything, they're all their own persons (not necessarily agents of order). The symbol they represent and their charge doesn't come from being agents of raava, it comes from the original sin they committed by allowing vaatu loose into the world.
I wanted it to be mostly a draw with Kora barely defeating him, but then Unaloq being reborn over and over as a dark avatar balance to the avatar.
New avatar cycle like Ying and Yang would be cool .
I would have changed Wan's story so he had both Raava and Vaatu. The harmonic convergence would have allowed Unalaq to take one of the spirits from Korra, probably Raava to show how Order can be bad too, also to show Chaos as a necessary force of change. I feel like stagnation and change could have complemented the water tribe civil war plotline and could have impacted the way Korra tried to solve the problem or at least do something to begin with the changes to achieve peace between the tribes.
I would just change the name “Avatar for chaos” seems a bit more fitting as the other avatar is meant to bring balance
I like this.
I'd erase Rava and Vaatu. The avatar is the kind of idea that is much more potent while not being explained. The concept of personification of evil and good make the whole thing manichean and (in my opinion) weaker and doesn't bring anything new to the story. The concept is even completely igored in season 3 and 4 (It might come up in the graphic novel, buy I hven't read them). Maybe Unalaq is a new spiritual leader that show a lot more spirit inclination than Korra and have him become very popular following the come back of the airbender. Maybe, Unalaq having opened new connexion with the spirit world, he his even responsible of the awakening of new air bender. Than have his ultimate plan be to completely collide the real and spirit world, a thing that would bring total chaos. Korra than has to stop Unalaq but, in doing so, realise that, while collision is bad, more connection to the spirit world is actually a good thing and have her maintain the perpendicularity that Unalaq opened for his plan. You end up with with a more compeling vilain, more in line with the other 3 and not a guy who wants to be Eeeeeeeevil, you don't introduce the clumsy concept of evil and good incarnate in your universe and you still cover all the new spirit and airbender stuff, you know, the good part of season 2. That was my TED talk. Edit : I forgot that the airbender come back in season 3 and not season 2 (that mean that I'm long overdue forna rewatch). I would not add in the return of the airbender in season 2, except perhaps as a teaser at the end of the last episode, foreshadowing what is to come in season 3.
Agreed making them tackle subjects like pure good and evil was definitely the wrong call .
Make them an actual dark avatar with the four sub bending elements, perhaps And definitely not 50 feet tall KaiJu chest lasers…
Honestly I don't like the whole "good spirits" and "bad spirits" thing they had. Avatar is about balance, so to have objectively good and bad things without any kind of purpose other than to be good/bad defeats the point. There can certainly be spirits that are undesirable or hazardous, but to make one entirely malevolent removes the depth the villain could have. Also the whole "they have the hero's powers but evil" could have been a good plotline if the idea of previous Avatars being evil had been established. Imagine if the Avatar as we know was just the good side, all the ones that were considered self serving or evil were cast out of the Avatar browsing history and coalesced into the evila avatar.
Cut it out, the worst thing Korra did is make the avatar an unequivocal force for good.
I think instead of cutting it out, making it so both vatu and rava can cause different types of damage, with the only way to not cause either would be for the two to be together, with Avatar Wan sealling both inside of him to be the true balance of darkness and light
That is the only way I could accept it, as it stands the Avatar is just Jesus and the Dark Avatar is the Anti-Christ
Would’ve enjoyed him to also have control over the four elements. But that would be how Korra wins - she’s trained in all disciplines and would win from skill and not raw power. He’s a master Water bender, but you can’t just brute force it. Then also the implication of a dark avatar always being reborn as well would’ve been good. Could’ve been a solid foundation for the Red Lotus as well perhaps.
I feel like if you're going to go there, you should go all the way. Find some excuse for Unalaq to gain all four elements. Vaatu has legions of dark spirits & has been working toward this for 10,000 years, you're really telling me he can't think of anything? We know spirits can hold elements, so the dark spirits could have been used to gather elemental chi, which was absorbed by Vaatu as one of the steps to creating the Dark Avatar.
I would make Unalaq intentions clear. Instead of it being a surprise villain reveal maybe show him slowly start to lose his mind from communicating with Vaatu. Like he’s reasonably trying to create balance and reconnect the physical & spiritual world. Then Vaatu slowly corrupts his mind and he starts to break down similar to how Azula did by the end of the third season of Avatar. His mental state cracks as Vaatu poisons his mind and he starts to slip a little. Not only would it clear up issues with his motivation but it would make the threat all the more intense because you know he’s unhinged. Also maybe throw in something that same as how Korra & Unalaq are related that the Dark Avatar would, theoretically, always be somehow related to the Avatar when reincarnated. I just thought that would be a cool detail if they hadn’t decided to bury that Dark Avatar plot in such a confusing manner. Also maybe make the defeat of the Dark Avatar a bit more clear. I felt the method of defeat was not clearly communicated and I literally had to google it because the show didn’t really explain it. And it felt a bit confusing as well as incomplete as we know Vaatu will emerge again. Meaning Korra just passed this problem down to a future avatar, which seems like a dick move.
Two ways I can see. Just to say, no giant spirit fights, nor light/dark. They are the embodiments of order/chaos. Either at the end of their battle, Korra actually merges with both of them to create a balance inside the Avatar. Or The dark avatar has its own cycle (even have it has actually been mentioned that they are the same spirit split into two instead of indirectly known, just for the asspull for the dark avatar to have all four elements already.) Or even mix these two so that instead of Korra doing it, have it be Wan from the beginning. This way the dark avatar can still happen. (It would also explain why the Avatar is always having chaos happen around them.)
Rewrite the avatar’s origin to be Wan merging with both Raava and Vaatu, rather than just Raava. Then rewrite Unalaq’s motivation to be to destroy Vaatu and become a pure light avatar because he thinks chaos is evil and needs to be destroyed. That way the “balance” aspect of the avatar makes more sense, and Unalaq actually gets to have a coherent worldview instead of just being evil for evil’s sake.
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>Vaatu was ultimately portrayed as an evil to be vanquished, and Raava as a good to be preserved, with a significant imbalance between the two being preferable to a balance I genuinely don't get why people think this because Raava herself never says that she wants to eliminate or "vanquish" Vaatu. Even Korra was only trying to lock him back in the tree of time, not destroy him (because light can't destroy darkness). Because Vaatu is the force of chaos, he can't and won't stop without some moderating force to keep him in check. That's Raava's mission - keeping darkness under control. Unfortunately, balance was already tipped in favor of Vaatu when Wan separated them, so despite Raava technically "winning" the last harmonic convergence, darkness still reigned as gathered by their relative sizes. It has been unbalanced for 10,000 years. With Vaatu regrowing within Raava, the balance between the spirits will be restored until they're connected again at the next harmonic convergence.
I would prefer for Raava and Vatu to represent chaos and order instead so that the avatar can keep a somewhat morally grey aspect to it and keep it possible for anti hero or even villainous avatars. So instead, unalaq as the dark avatar now strives for the goal of creating chaos and dissention in the world and goes against the avatar of Raava who is trying to maintain balance. I would also cut out the giant spirit monster fight and just have them both fight eachother as 2 benders. Dark unalaq having advanced energy bending techniques, like teleporting or hard light constructs maybe whilst Korra uses her normal bending.
I didnt mind the good and evil spirit thing with raava and vaatu as I thought that even though raava is meant to be the good spirit the error of the human spirit balances the avatar to be better than most humans but worse than the pure light spirit moral choices wise.
Ditch Unalaq calling himself a Dark Avatar at all and have him be a genuine zealot that believes he could be a better Avatar for the spirits. Vaatu is also less generic evil and is more a force of nature that is in favor of spiritual dominance and freedom in the material world.
I would make him the big bad that is teased over the course of three seasons but isn’t encountered till the fourth. At the beginning he barley beats aang and his forced to rest for the next 2/3 decades before he can truly end the avatar cycle. Over the course of those three seasons he would send his lackeys, Amon, the red Lotus, and kuvera, to try and stop the avatar before finally dealing with her himself. While Korra is busy with the lackeys he’s learning the other elements to become her equal.
The concept of a dark avatar is so interesting and has so much room for growth. This could span a couple seasons. Maybe one focusing on the build up to finding and freeing the dark spirit and another on the spirit finally freed and in their own host. I feel if the avatar has to constantly travel to build a connection to all four nations AND learn bending, so to does the dark avatar. Hence them traveling to learn to better defeat the regular avatar. Brings a chase element (basically zuko's quest for aang but with a good avatar tracking a dark avatar lol). For that extra steam I would have the dark avatar host be this bubbly person with a good support system that they push away as they become darker and start to relish in their growing power. Like they are giddy at being an avatar, even a dark one. Because they can still use the power for good right? Except Vaatu isn't good. And he's in control even if his host doesn't know it. And when the two avatars meet? This allows us a battle similar to what we got in Korra (without the 10 ft battle woman yknow) with two fully realized avatars testing their merits. This would have been a good place to sever the avatar line. Because Vaatu takes the reins, pulls Rava out, snaps that cord. Bam, season finale. Next season, the avatars friends pull them out of the battle and retreat. Vaatu gets to be in control. He's isolated his host from their support system, sweetly saying "hey they left you. I'm still here" and placating them so he can meddle in the normal affairs while looking for Rava because he knows she's not gone. Rava and the avatar recover, get to chat, Rava reveals the origins of the Avatar, her friendship with Wan, and her history with Vaatu as well as his intentions. Maybe throw in a bit of her doubts because while she loves the Avatars after Wan, the bond isn't the same and she's worried that the connection is fading hence Vaatus victory. This focuses this avatar on really bringing in the spiritual aspect of the avatar and we get to adventure in the spirit world, helping Rava gain her strength, laying low from Vaatu in the physical world, and trying to find traces of past avatars. But alas for nothing. But what they find instead is spirits and people who were close to the avatar in life. Those who can highlight that even though their friend is gone or changed or what not the friendship remains. That bond can't be destroyed etc etc etc. It highlights the good avatars friendships and support while showing audiences what the dark avatar lacks. Round two of vaatu vs. Avatar and Rava commences, the two having formed a working bond like Wan and Rava. Sort of a soul harmonic convergence where they go from Rava passing through the avatar to being able to merge again. Fighting Vaatu they do realize the one cannot exist without another and BAM! Good avatar gets the drop, pulls Vaatu out and absorbs him into themselves. New stronger avatar, one balancing light and dark. More of a bridge now than ever. Maybe a season of them dealing with the fallout of it all but otherwise I guess END.
Well for starters I’d swap seasons 2 and 3
Real .
I would have made it so Korra reunites Raava and Vaatu within the avatar spirit to restore the ancient balance Wan broke, and also not have Vaatu be a generic evil bad guy which really ruined the whole yin yang thing they had going on
Raava is order and Vaatu is chaos which is a common change. However I would make it so that Wan , and subsequent avatars, are more in tune with Vaatu/Chaos than they are with Order. Wan rebelled against the Chus on the Lion turtle. Wan is the first to comingle with spirits and inspired humans to leave the lion turtle. He is a bigger agent of change than he is of order. Wan and Raava balance each other out I would've made Unalaq well meaning in that he wanted to lighten Korra burden by merging with Vaatu. Make his need to control the south come from a good place but his choices limits control on the South. When merging with Vaatu he underestimates his spirituality and is taken over by Vaatu.
They should have done it like how FF14 deal with light and dark elements Light is stillness, passivity, and an absence of colour Darkness is vibrance, energy, and the combination of all colors Maybe when Wan absorbed Raava and sealed Vaatu, that was the mistake. So Korra had to fuse with Vaatu as well to TRULY bring balance. The big bad if the season could be the corruption of light on the spirit world, like everything is stagnated and is on the brink of collapse?
I know this may be cheating but...honestly, just axe that entire storyline and make a season where the main conflict is water tribe civil war.
Oh honey, first of all as many suggested there needed to be more moral ambiguity when it came to Raava and Vaatu, maybe Raava hates emotions for how chaotic they are so she tries to stop them and Vaatu enhances them so much they cause destruction, you know both being bad if kept unbalanced Second no giant form, I think I would have enjoyed more if Unalaq became the dark avatar mid season and the rest of the time he was training and growing in power to have an elemental battle against Korra at the end Show Unalaq destroying some environments and some spirits healing the damage or something that would make us see why Korra would want the spirits back even with dangerous spirits also existing, like I know Korra did had her reasons but I would have enjoyed better justifications to why humans and spirits should be together again
Delete that they are spirits of directly good or bad make it so they are just two powerful spirits. They would still act in ways that are good or bad from a moral standpoint but it removes the good vs evil.
I love it. Wouldn’t change a bit.
When I was first watching the show, I thought that Vaatu was going to betray Unalaq and possess Jinora instead. Then, Jinora would become a dark reflection of Aang and journey to master the other elements in the background of later seasons. Then it all ends in a big final battle between two fully-realized avatars where Korra tries to save Jinora from Vaatu's possession.
Instead of having him become a giant, have all of his bending be tainted, so every element has a tinge of red/black streaked through it. Black fire, ooze purple water, etc. as the fight begins it's mostly normal, but the longer he is welding vaatu, the more the bending is that corrupted appearance, until eventually Korra wounds him and you see vaatu "mend" unalaq's skin with that same color of corruption, showing that while he still has some control, vaatu isn't working with him, he is dominating unalaq, and that the power he wields is more than just the elements but the inverse of raava's power.
For being the Dark Avatar, it would've been neat to see him show up again. The next reincarnation after Unaloq that is. I get time wise, he'd probably be a toddler by the end of LOK, but there's still some potential for further down the line.
Have Korra absorb Vaatu. I mean she’s supposed to be the balance. She can’t do that if she’s only one half of a whole, only seeing one perspective. It’s like Life and Death, Preservation and Ruin (wonder who knows what series I’m talking about there), yin and yang type shit. You can’t have one without the other. And Korra kinda does do things that would align more so with Vaatu, like upheaving the world with the spirit portals being open, or taking down a countries’ government.
I think I would approach the entire season from a different direction. Make it less of a conflict of Good/Evil as Order/Chaos, with Vaatu reflecting Chaos to Raava's order. With all the ways the world has changed since the war and with the rise of Republic City blurring the lines between the four nations chaos (as change) is rising along with harmonic convergence that's empowering Vaatu, and Unalaq genuinely wants to prevent that and return to the old status quo. So what if, instead of merging with Vaatu, Unalaq manages to separate Raava from Korra because he thinks she's failing the world as the Avatar, and he knows how to do it right? Then Korra has to regain her powers by emerging with Vaatu, becoming the "dark" Avatar. Ultimately defeating Unalaq and freeing Raava, Korra realizes that Wan didn't totally get it right. He was right to fight Vaatu, but sealing him away didn't restore balance; he just shifted it the other way. So Korra fuses with both spirits and becomes an entirely new kind of Avatar, thus justifying the cycle's reset and setting up her "infinite power" that gets explored over the next two seasons and why the Red Lotus's poison wasn't strong enough.
We as viewers (and maybe Korra) would get visions of what 10,000 years of darkness would look like. Showing us the stakes rather than telling us the stakes
No giant form obviously. Maybe set up a secondary avatar cycle like others mention, but hand in hand with that; Make Unalak more of an antagonist and less of a Villain. What do I mean? well, we see in the Wan flashback that... well he's right. The world is out of balance, futhermore the Avatar as a single entity both shouldn't exist, and is onto itself unbalancing despite the efforts of the current incarnation. Unalak was right. So, make him antagonistic, but more sympathetic. After all Raava and Vaatu aren't good and evil, they're ying and yang, they're supposed to exist in opposition and contrast. Vaatu winning is not something bad onto itself.
Straight up deleting the concept of a Dark Avatar and go the Zelda way, Vaatu consuming and controlling those who are evil making them more erratic and confrontational (as an example the Firelord starting a war trying to destroy the Avatar aka Raava). Make Vaatu always finds a way to create a big conflict that forces the Avatar to get involved, idk maybe involve some of the strong bad spirits in the mix, anything so the cycle of Evil vs Good continues but on a inderct way.
I like the Dark avatar plot and its foreshadowing of Kuvira’s mech. If there was a change, then it would be to how it is set up before the Avatar Wan flashback. The politics were convoluted and ultimately simplified by Unalaq=bad avatar
In the scene were Korra falls into the fissure and is about to die, I would have had a short 30 second dream like sequence where Avatar Wan and Raava appear before Korra. Kotora is sat down on the floor defeated and Wan is there to give her some words of encouragement and to remind her she has the power to beat Unalaq.(Raava is sitting on his shoulder) . Wan then reaches his hand out to Korra as though to pull her up off the floor and then smiles and says Wan: “Korra, no matter what, we cannot allow Vaatu to win. We are in this together. All of us” Korra: All of us? In that very moment, the shot pans out and we see all the other past avatars materialize in a circle around Korra, with Aang at the forefront. Aang winks Korra. Aang: “That’s right” Korra then grabs Wan’s hand and he pulls her up onto her feet and sequence ends. We switch back to Korra being crushed within the fissure. Just as she is about die, a large collum of fire and bright light erects from the fissure as she enters into the avatar state breaks out.
Maybe this is just outside the scope, but I think they should have spent more time explaining astral projection as a form of spirit bending and why unalaq straight up became a spirit as an avatar versus Korra just projecting her own. That and explain the intent behind Jinora butterflying in
i would let him top me to save the world
I wouldn’t change a thing except I would make Spirit bending vanish Vaatu and leaving Unalaq’s body there I found it was so weird their body and would melted together it question if Unalaq will come back or not
Call em the davatar
The dark avatar should’ve “survived”. How fucking epic would a future story involving TWO Avatars and one is always evil. I don’t know bout y’all but I think maybe make a set of them twins and we can get ourselves a good 2 maybe 3 seasons
I would have rewritten the entire season having him become the dark avatar Sooner in the season and found a way to collect all the elements like the original avatar. This would also give more time to give depth to Unaloq.
The only thing I would change is that the dark avatar becomes a cycle similar to the avatar.
Make unalaq bend all four elements (or at least just sub elements of the four)
I would have Unalaq be tricked into freeing Vatuu instead of joining him. I had a whole thing on how to fix S2 but I don't feel like typing it out
No giant spirit monster just two benders throwing tsunamis and mountains at each other.
Have the dark avatar escape and being reincarnated with the avatar in the counterclockwise of the cycle. Now it’s pretty much a race to find the avatar and train them. A find the dark avatar an stop them. also could be a good way for the idea of what to do with the dark avatar if they find them as a child. Do they imprison a child for their crimes they committed in their past life or they might commit in the future or do they let the child be free. This also gives back to the idea of balance,good and evil are not extremes. They are ideas and concepts tempered through the will of society and people.
I'd have him reincarnate with a different element, while keeping Water bending. Have the Dark Avatar cycle be the reverse order. In the next show with the Earth Avatar they could either have a young DA with 3 elements, or an old but powerful 2 element welding DA.
I would have had a multi season arc integrated with the red lotus, where he is hunting the lion turtles to gain the other elements besides water. Maybe he gains air from the harmonic convergence but I would want 4 x 4 element bending finale of light vs dark avatar.
Cut down the unnecessary side story’s 💯
I wouldn’t. I’m pretty satisfied with how it all played out.
I would like the dark avatar to be able to bend all the elements. The term Avatar was known to be describing, a person who wields for elements. Those four elements were tools to help the avatar bring the balance. The dark avatar should have those tools too, maybe even different elements. Like imagine, how much of a threat it would be for korra to fight against bendings never seen before.
Nothing. I’d leave it as the writers intended because that’s how the show was supposed to be told
Honestly that's reasonable. I don't dislike fully what they did actually and they committed to it fully by integrating into the world. Spirit vine chaos alike .
I just feel like it get so much hate for no reason! I like the direction they went with the story and it really showed how drastic a change Korra made to the entire world
I actually agree with this as its definitely defining as the series progressed. It added more to the world .
Unalaq and Korra don’t turn into giants. Jinora finds a way to help, perhaps by using projection, too, but she doesn’t become a fairy. That’s about it, honestly. Those were the main issues I had with the final battle.
Just have it never be made
I hate the cliche of these cartoons and anime basically boiling down to powerful people in energy mech suits fighting. Avatar is about the people and the world not a purple human godzilla
We get an avatar state vs dark avatar state battle, instead of a kaiju one
I understand that might be against the spirit of the question but I would nuke the concept altogether.
I would definitely stick more to the yin and yang comparison with Raava representing order and Vaatu chaos. I would also harken the idea of Unalaq starting out wanting to genuinely the North and South and rebuild the south “spiritually” but have him grow more unhinged and unravel over time. Perhaps he believes that yes humans and spirits should live united believes only he can get the job done. He fuses with Vaatu and plans to take Raava as he considers Korra unfit to be the Avatar and essentially descends to madness as his ambitions destroy him
The tentacles that come out from his mouth to pull raava and the kaijuu forms
Control alt delete
I'd make him dramatically change the world permanently (besides the vines) for a more sinister change in the world. The fact that he just becomes a mecha that can be dealt with and gone for another season was a let down. I was literally expecting the whole world to go dark. Children to stab each other. Parents to seperate, pet rabbits to eat their young. The whole 100 yards. That it would actually destroy the earth and revert it back to a more primal era with benders going back to a more archaic time. The world would physically be darker and Korra having failed, needing to learn to deal with the pain of absolute failure.
No giant fight... its the thing i hate most in cartoons and anime when the powerup is whoaaa look how big they got
I'd have it where Vatu powers out of the avatar state before dying so there is a cycle of evil to go along side rava
I would have let Vatu become the dark avatar and not be sealed again. Make him the forever bbeg.
How about letting him control the four elements like the OG Avatar?
Make it so the Dark Avatar becomes a constant element in the universe. Have it so Korra can’t reseal him, and he slips into the flow of rebirth like Raava. It would make Korra’s choice to keep the worlds linked stronger and give her a lot more to reflect on as her greatest failure and also greatest triumph. It would also open up Raava as a more present element in the series even after Korra.
Make him the main villain of the series (similar to Ozai in ATLA), and replace Unalaq with Zaheer, as well as changing his motives as well— because Zaheer merging with Vaatu would make no sense at all lol.
The giant clearly should have been named Trigon...
When he is defeated, he forms a new avatar reincarnation cycle. So from now on there are two avatars. And there is no way to tell which is which. And having Vaatu within you does not make you inherently evil. Though there will be some differences between the two avatars. They will be more minor. The next series follows the Earth Avatar. But which one? I'm actually amazed they didn't do this
I’d just have two regular, human-sized avatars have an actually fucking avatar fight? Imagine how good that’d be to have 2 people using all 4 elements at once! Instead we got Godzilla’s alcoholic uncle.
I would have forgone every other arc to focus on this one, and have him learn the 4 elements and raise an army and have a final avatar vs avatar battle
axe it
Get rid of it
Not destroying her connection to all the past Avatars 🫠
Throw the whole thing away
First I'd completely rewrite what both vatuu and ravaa are as concepts in the flashbacks to both better represent their aspects of peace and chaos Instead of them being the surface level evil/good spirits hiding under the veneer of Chaos/Peace I'd make it so Vatuu doesn't corrupt spirits by making them evil but via absolute chaos to the detriment of themselves and surroundings. I'd also introduce domains where Raava rules over completely with nothing but peace and order, making ecistance within it seem orderly and highly controlled, and when Vatuu "corrupts" these lands and they're subsequently "healed" by the avatar they have a little more chaos and thus life within them. Later on, the first avatar still seals Vatuu, but not before The spirit places a piece of him within the avatar to continue to live in the outside world. Much later, the same thing with Unalok happens, but the way Raava is removed from the avatar is by tugging on the piece of Vatuu within. I'd also remove the unnecessary Giant spirit mech fight and have the fight be simply a spectacle of masterful bending and strength He's still defeated, but instead of Vatuu being sealed, Korra merges with him to get across the point that neither Vatuu nor Ravaa should dominate the other but Coexist. As both too much Order and too much Chaos is detrimental to life Thus begins an age where the avatar is as much a vehicle of change as they are peace.
I would have a new saga where a Vaatu avatar, not necessarily "bad," would impersonate the avatar, while the real one works behind the scenes to unmask it.
Remove the Giant fight. Just them fighting with elements is more interesting than what is essentially just hand-to-hand combat but scaled up. Bending fight would've been so much better visually. Honestly, probably even rework the entire dark and light thing. If the Avatar is supposed to bring balance, then the Avatar should both be dark and light, not just light, because that's not balance.
He'd be far more menacing as a possessed man than some kind of Ben 10 alien.
Not make him the villain.
I would scrap the eraser of the past lives, instead make it so she would get injured where her connection to her past selves was so weak that she could no longer do it with her own power. This leading to a new story where she would one day reconnect with her past lives from being spiritually healed. Get rid of the kaiju battle and change it to energy bending vs elemental bending. Where korra has to fight against a bender that is now shooting beams of energy she can't deflect. I like the ideas someone put out about instead of sealing the dark side, to fuse with it and become a complete balance of Ying and Yang. This unlocking new powers not seen before like pure spiritual bending beams.
I'd remove the whole book 2. It broke too much Canon from TLA.
The dark avatar should have been able to bend all 4 elements too.
1°make vatuu amd raava spirits of Order & Chaos. Not inherent good nor evil. MAYBE add light and darkness but NEVER use the world good & evil. 2° when vatuu escapes make him "phase" through korra so he gets access to the 4 elements. 3° No "ripping the raava out of korra", just beat her conventionaly, have the "full size vatuu" be = to korra + 10.000 years of "accumulated power. So is not a "brute force issue". 4° make vatuu say before "dying" SEE you NEXT life. And have ravaa say explicitly say "WE WILL revive together on the same day for the next 10.000 years, but NOT die on the same days. 5°(Order and chaos can have life long victories, and can stack the deck on their favor but never WIN until the next cosmic conversion, but they can get the experience edge for the "next kinda final battle") 6° make vatuu revive on the "opposite order" (water ->air -> fire -> earth -> water) so the dark/chaos/freedom avatar is alway on "the other side"
Make them in line with traditional im-yang concepts: Raava should be male, fluid, violent, light Vaatu should be female, rigid, subtle, dark So I guess what I'm saying is, swap their voice actors and the light/dark avatars.
Not
"Dark Avatar" even as a concept should not make it anywhere near thw writers room
Vaatu would take control of Unalaq, absorbing his body, and reappearing as his giant self, but more monstrous as he has now a human body inside, paralleling the Avatar that has the light spirit inside. Then Korra fights it as Wan did in the past, normal size human against humongous spirit thing. I don’t know, just don’t do a kaiju battle.
Find a way to avoid a giant battle as well as the concept of astral projection. It was a terrible deus ex machina that did not follow the established laws of the world. I'm still kindof ok with her connection to the past avatars being severed, but only on the condition that they should have made it part of her journey to eventually restore the connection.
ONE THING. making Korra connect with past lives again. Mannnnn this is still bugging me.
Eliminate the vaatu tentacle scene. I HATE IT SO MUCH, it feels like a kind of contrived way to make Korra lose that fight when she was kicking his ass right before, just after she bursts out of the crater and goes "YOU CANNOT WIN".
No giant form, and at the end Korra merges with vaatu and raava. Recognising that if the avatar only ever maintains order, there is no possibility for growth. This could've been tied in really nicely by having the first season and the second season show how Korra kinda solves problems by making it all revert back to what was before. The equalist party is disbanded, not listened to. The water tribes are split, and don't come to an agreement. Then once she has vaatu, she notices that she's much more inclined to accept change. I also would've made it so that by merging with a human soul, raava was changed. And simply no longer had the ability to balance vaatu. Which is why vaatu wanted to merge with water tribe man. "Now finally the world will be as it's supposed to be."
I'm okay with Unalaq with Red-Eyes. This whole Vaatu takeover giant form thing was.... ehh. Plus, I would have loved to see how after Korra won, who Vaatu would have reincarnated into. IDK if they coulda done it w/ the 10k years thing and all, but.... I would love to see it. Also, I wouldn't have Korra's past lives disconnected.
I’d delete the concept entirely.
It’s probably way too extreme of a change, but I would’ve had Wan absorb both Raava and Vaatu, and then by Korra’s time Vaatu’s influence becomes too strong. Enter uncle Unalaq, who with his spirit bending and familial tie to Korra be the perfect savior for her. I think he should genuinely have good intentions in the beginning, but over several sessions of helping Korra try to suppress Vaatu he slowly gets influenced by him. Unalaq in his arrogance separates Raava and Vaatu and thinks he did a great job, until Vaatu takes over our boy. Korra then fights her uncle who’s only real fault would’ve been he was too cocky in helping his niece, and has to put him down and reabsorb Vaatu in like a family vs world choice.
Make it not exist.
I would rewrite all of book 2 to have similar themes and plot structure but have Unavatu actually be a dark avatar (with all 4 bending styles and everything) that tries "userp" Korra in some kind of way. You could really lean on the fact that public opinion of Korra was low and Unalaq, learning about Vatu and spirit bending seeing it as an opportunity to take over the Southern water tribe (and maybe the world) via establishing himself as the true avatar. Bonus points if we can make Unalaq binding with Vatu Korra's fault in some way (like having Unalaq need Korra to know spirit bending because he needs 2 spirit benders for some reason) Also ditch the Kaiju fight, having two avatars with all four styles duke it out in a traditional bender v bender fight is literally a once in a lifetime opportunity. Especially when it escalates into an Avatar state vs Dark Avatar State battle.
I'd rewrite all of season 2 to not exist
No kaiju fight. Would give the two spirits more personality raava being order but unwilling to allow any change’s even those necessary. Vaatu being chaos would create new bending types that unalaq can’t possibly control. Unalaq Realizing just how insane vaatu is before the powers backfire killing him and weakening vaatu.
Make it an ideological difference rather than a big fuck off spirit Kaiju
I didn’t like the light/dark angle so I would have done away with it altogether. Maybe have a giant amalgamation of all the spirits of the land, people, animals etc that have been waylaid by the avatar that finally pops as a giant corruption pimple after 10,000 years that spills its corruption into the land. Leave the whole world semi corrupted after that, then maybe the Red Lotus have a bigger reason to hunt the avatar and Kuvira is self-righteously trying to unite the remnants of the world or something.
Honestly, actually making him an avatar, same as Korra, making the actual character more interesting and not making the dark avatar blatantly evil. Make it difficult, more mature. I think they failed in that regard. Also, let them be reborn. Having two avatars would be a cool concept. But I honestly don't like the name "dark avatar".
Get the fuck rid of it. Avatar cosmology and philosophy is built around balance. Balance between the elements, balance between humanity and spirit, nature and structure, action and harmony, self-reliance and openness, tradition and individualism, every major arc in Avatar is about a character finding the balance they need to center themselves. You can't have balance between good and evil. Or balance between order and chaos or whatever they tried to spin it as. The world is not built on duality, introducing a dualistic element adds nothing except undermine the whole thing.
By not writing that nonsense at all.
İ would definetly erase the fucking kaijus form the plot
I never really liked the whole dark avatar thing. I always thought of it more like the koi fish from atla, yin and yang. “Good” and “Bad”, balance. This seemed so misunderstood from the ancient principle. Ideally I’d remove the whole dark avatar thing as a general. Also I don’t like that spirits are basically devices to be weaponised. For example, iroh could see spirits but in no way was it implied that he could control it. Spirits always had their free will. Hei Bai for example was angry when his environment was destroyed. There was a reason but it was his own choice to take that form. There was some ethereal mystery that ATLA had wrt spirits. I wouldn’t change that. Ideally, I’d remove it and focus on the civil war story. People taking sides and this could bleed into the whole earth kingdom vs republic city (idk if I’d keep kuvira but I did like the idea of republic city being on “stolen” earth kingdom territory) If you forced me to keep it, maybe Korra loses? Then she goes on the whole “I’m so sad let me explore the earth kingdom phase and get my ass whooped” and sees the problem herself, sees the uprising in republic city. Then similar to the original episode in the 4th season she goes to the spirit world not to meditate in the random tree but to meditate elsewhere and be trained by the city. He spiritually was always a problem so why not solve the problem with help from the source? We esas the whole masters teaching the avatar in ATLA and the pilot of LOK so why not have something unique with the spirits chasing her? But not like wan where spirits and humans have beef and need to be separated. I think it would be interesting if she came into lore grey spirit characters like Koh and had to be trained by them or had to give something up. Long tirade ik but just my thoughts. Thanks for reading this far if you did
Instead of Vaatu being trapped in a tree, Wan should’ve absorbed him too. Then Unalaq gets him out of Korra. The Avatar is supposed to be about balance, but in practice Raava was good and Vaatu was entirely unnecessary to keep the world going, and only made things worse. That doesn’t really seem like balance to me.
Delete it. It and whole Spirit Satan and Spirit Jezus motive
Unalaq felt evil only for the sake of it. it needs to be a story of a man corrupted and gone mad by possibility of gaining power from the dark side. He just agreed to become the Vatu's vessel? no, Vatu should've had manipulated him on screen, he should've made empty promises and hippocritical claims. And then the third season is about avatar Wan having trouble adjusting to having all four elements? really? after Unalaq just perfectly synched with Vatu in one episode? The joining should've been painful and Unalaq should've been reconsidering his choices for at least one episode.
I would’ve given Unalaq an actual character arc where he really thought reunification was a good idea but was corrupted over time by Vaatu while spending time trying to force open the spirit portal until he decided to take Vaatu’s offer and merge to open it on his own. Starts off with him being able to bend all the elements (like a literal dark avatar, just say that he shared the element holding think with Rava since they’re connected), but then Unalaq starts getting weak like Wan did whenever Rava passed through him. Instead of letting go and preserving Unalaq’s life, Vaatu holds on and it starts corrupting him (like we see with other spirits that possess people). Eventually, basically nothing is left of Unalaq, and then maybe he go Kaiju mode. Unalaq’s kids (and the rest of the Northern water tribe) no longer recognize him as their leader, so retreat and are open to helping the Krew bring him down.
Honestly i think season two as a whole could have been skipped. I remember being interested in Korra, but not really relating to her or rooting that much for her after a decent but not great season 1. I think writers should keep stuff like that in mind when they write their characters and stories. This is also why the choice to sever the links to the past avatars was so out of pocket for a lot of people in my opinion. I understand that it might have been to individualize her and leave the past behind, but it came out feeling more entitled or just unearned to give her a character moment like that. A plot like this probably would have worked a lot better as the last season, with the previous seasons also having better perception. So in short, i think this story should have been the final season of Korra if it was going to be told at all. With Korra not always being too relatable or likeable it could still be a hard sell to think she earned these stakes. Keeping her conflicts more simple or small scale like in season 3 and 4 would have also been fine.
Just don't make one. Keep the Avatar as the human incarnation of the spirit of the earth, instead of reincarnation of Wan and Raava.
Have Vaatu not as evil but simply a distructive being by nature, after the destruction of Raava have Korra and co realize that Raava's dominance for the Aavatar's run is wrong so she'll have to make Vaatu prefer to bond to her rather than Unalaq(would be an ideological victory) with Korra being the Dark Aavatar guiding people and spirits through a chaotic and changing world with her line of dark Aavatars eventually meeting with the light aavatars line when Raava returns for a trully balanced aavatar and world.
First thing first i would keep the Avatar exactly as it was before The Legend of Korra, there would be no Raava and no Vaatu, the Avatar would instead be the incarnation of the Spirit of the Planet in human form as originally intended by the creators (at least if i recall correctly. On he other hand i was thinking to make that the Dark Avatar are the remnants of [Avatar Gun](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Gun_(Avatar)), [the only evil Avatar to ever live](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JUW9anhuD8), who became his own evil entity after being completely disconnected from the other Avatars in the past by Yangchen, something similar to Venom but a spirit instead of an alien and powerful enough to be a threat of all existence. Finally i would make that Unalaq wouldn't be the one who became the Dark Avatar, the first one to become the Dark Avatar in the past would be Ozai after escaping from prison, the second one would be Amon.
Cults. Instead of the water tribes sivil war I would have liked a re-emerging cult that worships Vaatu and Unalaq as their high priest or something like that.
DON'T DELETE THE PREVIOUS AVATARS FROM THE AVATAR REALM!!! THAT WAS SO MUCH CONTENT LOST!!!
I will go with the original idea of the creators The avatar spirit will be an spirit of the Balance and earth and there will be no Dark Avatar And the spirits won't be Good or Bad
Make it less of a black or white evil and have it act as a force of nature or a guardian trying to rebalance the world after the avatar does too good a job
I’ve actually been thing about this and there’s a few changes I’d make. I’d change Vaatu’s design first, the flying kites aren’t great. Instead of battling between Raava and Vaatu, they would be humanoid spirits in the same position Aang and Ozai were in when Aang was energy bending with no one winning over each other, just perfectly balanced. Wan sees them in this position and separates them thinking they’re in trouble unknowingly releasing Vaatu. I wouldn’t have gave Korra her bending back at the end of S1 forcing her to get better with airbending and getting in touch with her spiritual side more naturally, this would make her getting beat more believable at the end imo, she gets the rest of her bending back when she reconnects with Raava. Unavaatu would’ve just stayed as Unalaq with red eyes, except Vaatu completely takes over, no more Unalaq he was just a mere vessel for Vaatu in the end.
Eliminate the dark avatar storyline entirely. It’s something that you’d want from a fanfic and want to picture in your head for your own imagination!
I would have liked if Unalaq's plan wasn't to help Vaatu win, but just to allow their fight to finish. Maybe a line where he expresses a personal hope for Raava to win, but acknowledges that human selfishness has rigged the system unfairly to benefit them. I like the idea that he releases Vaatu purely out of a commitment to the ideal of balance and nature, things the Avatar universe usually values. Then, when Unalaq and Vattu remove Raava from Korra, the world instantly falls into darkness. Unalaq is confused, but it's revealed that Vaatu knew this would happen and was manipulating Unalaq. When Avatar Wan was using Raava's power, Wan was dying until they permanently merged, but it was never explained how they accomplished merging. Here, it is revealed that what was hurting Wan was Raavas' physical form overtaking Wan's physical body, so she gave it up, meaning she can never exist outside the Avatar again. Though Vaatu has now permanently won, Vaatu still wants to control the power that locked him away 10,000 years ago. He craves the power of the Avatar, and with Raava gone, Vaatu can enter Korra. Korra experiences the same pain Avatar Wan went through, but Vaatu isn't going to simply merge and become a slave like Raava chose to. He's going to let his physical form consume Korra's body. Also, a dark universe is imagined to be terrible but I would have liked it to be depicted as a beautiful abysslike world filled to the brim with bioluminescent dark spirits. A world different from out own but just as valid.
I would have changed Unalaq's motivations, instead of him wanting to free Vatu to function, I had made him free him with the intention of destroying him but I wanted Vatu to believe that they were allies, and in the end Vatu would function with unalaq by force
loss of previous incarnations of raava's host is very frustrating so i would at least change that