This episode starts out well and then shoots downward.

We open with Jinora. She can see spirits now, and they’re adorable bunnyflies. On the other hand, reminding me there’s still nothing explaining how spirits are here but also prevented from coming here.

Korra’s back! And apparently the plot is Obviously Evil Guy wants power and will get it by releasing destroyeverthing spirit, because clearly destroying everything and having anything aren’t totally incompatible.

Now to Mako! Mako’s telling them what’s happening and Asami just said that the guy helped save her company so he can’t be evil, when by save, she means bought. So even she’s gotten her brain eaten in service of how Mako sue is the bestest ever and no one loves him.

Tenzin reveals that he never got into the spirit world which apparently he’s been bullshiting everyone. And by bullshitting everyone, I mean yelling at everyone around him starting at a little kid that it’s their fault for doing stuff wrong. Then it turns out everyone can see spirits if they want to be seen. Maybe Jinora can see them even if they’re hiding? Otherwise not getting what the distinction here is.

Meanwhile Obviously Evil Guy exposits that entering that way lets you keep bending because fuck it bending whatever, so he explains his “other way” of opening the portal is to try drilling into the blocked spirit portal because fucking everything is a matter of brute force in this, and with the help of his kids, which nearly kills one of them and he just tells the other one to keep trying. It’s the boy who gets backlash to the face, as makes sense given Eska’s been the one with greater screentime. So the show’s done one whole thing right.

Also, for some reason bending is something totally different from any power of the spirits. I just want everyone to stop and ponder this. Bending is completely unrelated to the spirits.

Back to Team Fucking Tenzin, they’re heading off to some new place to try meditating there, even though none of this was ever an issue before now.

“You actually got to meet the first avatar. I know about a lot of avatars, but I don’t know anything about him. Is it even a him? Or is it a her?” asks Jinora.

“It’s a him,” Korra says instantly. Everything wrong, summed up.

Now, in a show that actually had any interest of not being sexist, the dialogue would’ve had her ask about gender first. But here, of course he’s a guy, and she just asks because she remembers she did just say that she doesn’t know anything about him.

In fact, let’s pause to consider this scene. Jinora is sitting with her aunt talking, but it’s about the fact her dad is being a jerk to her because he’s jealous she can do it and he can’t. Korra then manages the only two-female-characters-talk-about-something-other-than-a-guy line, more than halfway through the episode by the way, when she says that some people have different talents, then the conversation immediately goes back to another guy.

Why? Because the only important characters here are guys. We have Obviously Evil Guy, who’s trying to open the portal. We have Wan, who blocked the portal. We have Black Evil Death Spirit, who’s the one both were dealing with. Any conversation about the entire plot will fail the test. Korra is the closest we get to having a single important person who’s not a guy, and the show shoves her to the side at every point – note that this episode is about how to get Tenzin into the spirit world, not one person has made the focus be on just getting Korra in. If that was the problem, we’d have had entire passing conversations by now.

If we were back in Republic City, Lin manages to be important, if in an infuriating way, but Asami is the only other female character left there, so it’s impossible for that side of the story to pass unless they decide to start discussing Ginger or maybe Asami hunts down Ginger to discuss Lin, and about something other than Bolin sexually assaulting her which is currently her only connection to the plot.

In the opening episodes, we had Korra, Asami, and Eska, but only two of those ever interacted with each other and they didn’t much care about the third.

And yes, Korra then tells us that wow Wan was soooo amazing so no, the moral of the last two episodes was absolutely not that Wan was a screwup too so it’s not sexist. The moral was that the first avatar was awesome and great.

Korra has successfully purified a ball of evil gnats and it only took her most of the season. We then see the place has been “purified” by all the life growing their shrinking away, becauses nature spirits hate vines.

Now Korra’s apologizing for turning her back on Tenzin just because the other guy could actually teach her and also wasn’t a constant asshole to her and everyone around him.

Now Mako’s being arrested because he was framed, because obviously Lin only bothers to investigate when the chance of incompetence outweighs her general love of being lazy and useless. Don’t care. Now Asami is all sad and conflicted and very, very silent. Only Mako is allowed to be smart.

I know it’s not going to happen but god I wish Mako would just die already.

Back to fucking Tenzin. The solution to the spirit world thing has been found, pointed out, pointed out more firmly, and fucking Tenzin is still holding things up. And then they finally finally get into the spirit world with Jinora, with it still unexplained why the most important holdup is getting someone else to go and not just getting Korra in.

God, I don’t even care anymore.

I really don’t. This episode is not about Korra. It’s about Mako and Tenzin and how hard it is being them.

Also, we really did not need yet another thing that’s apparently genetic. It’s bad enough with bending working this way, being able to access the spirit world as well be something you either have or don’t is awful, and convinces me that no, there will be no good finale to this show. In fact, hey, everyone who’s further along: yes/no, has Korra given nonbenders bending yet?

(And christ they really love the whole Aang was a shitty father who fucked up his kids idea, don’t they?)

The only good decision this show’s made is to not make Appa the last air bison. That’s the one and only thing. Everything else they add to the lore ranges from bad to going against canon while being bad.