Have you read part 3 of RoTE yet? What were your thoughts if you have?
I did read it and it lived up to my very low expectations after part 2, unfortunately. Part 1 was SO strong, raising interesting issues about starting a democracy and the use of power in politics, and RotE 3 did give Wu a surprisingly decent throughline, but other than that, and the art which remained fantastic throughout, I really can’t say I’m a fan. I’m not a Kuvira stan. She’s an interesting character with a lot of potential, but she’s complicated and to unpack her motivations would take either a lot more time or a lot better writing than we saw here. If the point of this series is her relationship with the Beifongs, they sure took a LONG time to bring the Beifongs into it. The flashbacks to her childhood are very spartan on detail -- just like the show kinda pulled ‘oh, she was given up by her family!’ out of nowhere in the last episode, this felt like the ‘she injured her mother!’ was equally unclear. So information was parsed out in an uneven way which undercut the overall apparent goal of exploring and redeeming Kuvira.
This comic trilogy seems to have set out to be a redemption arc for Kuvira, and in that it failed. Kuvira barely shows remorse for what she did, the narrative went out of its way to hand her excuses and victories -- I was surrounded by MORE evil people, here I’m helping rescue Asami see how nice I am? I’m against mind control, I can’t be all bad! Instead of redemption, this comic seems to have tried the quickest rehabilitation of Kuvira possible, and that’s not a story I’m interested in these days when plenty of truly heinous people manage to escape consequences or even be rewarded.
Zuko had a wonderful redemption arc in AtlA... and it took 50ish episodes to accomplish. Rounded down to the parts focusing on him, it still took at least 20. Trying to pull off a proper redemption arc for a character in 3 short issues was a tall order to start. Especially more when I kept being distracted by the side characters, Korra and Asami, and their nearly nameless sidekicks, Bolin and Mako.
I purchased a copy out of brand loyalty, but I don’t particularly wish to read any more Legend of Kuvira comics. Perhaps if they did some more Korra-centric comics sometimes, maybe even a series where Asami doesn’t get thrown callously under the bus to support somebody else’s development (much less the guy who killed her dad a few months prior), I’ll be more excited. Until then, at least we have cute canon confirmation that these two adult girlfriends do adult bedtime things together.
