Review: The Legend of Korra: Enemy at the Gates

If at first, you don’t succeed, bring your entire army, because you’re crazy.

This week, The Legend of Korra takes a week off from the heartstring-tugging and brings you the prelude for the inevitable faceoff between Korra and Kuvira’s forces. Last week, Kuvira’s army was making its way into Zaofu. This week, the knocking on the metal barricades while Su is turtling up in her metal lotus pods. There was a lot to take in with the minimal time Kuvira was in the same room as Su.

Zelda Williams follows in the footsteps of Henry Rollins of fantastic voice actors to come through on The Legend of Korra. The appearances that Kuvira had in Book Three were few and far between, not to mention the speaking parts were even farther apart. Bringing in Kuvira over the top to be the antagonist of Book Four was a borderline genius. Having Mako and Bolin on opposite sides was a fantastic side effect of this plot. I want to say it’s obvious that those two will come back together. Kuvira’s sanity has been brought into question on more than one occasion this week, and Kuvira is definitely showing cracks in the armor. Bringing this full circle, Zelda Williams has shown great prowess in riding that line of sanity, especially when threatening Varrick and Bolin. Another nice touch was bringing to light what has happened to the villages, towns, and cities that joined Kuvira, Come on, did you really think everything was going to be gumdrops and rainbows when the Great Uniter comes to town?

Kuvira walked into Zaofu, with hopes of finding a diplomatic solution to bring the city into the Earth Empire. It’s the logical choice, but the army breaking walls and gates down is the next logical choice after that. The ending involving Su pretty much solidifies where the writers are going with this story, and with Su. She is showing a darker side to her character and is willing to do as much as Kuvira to make sure that her end goal is reached. Su even tried to get Korra to attack Kuvira, but Korra finally decided to try and talk things out. After three seasons, Korra finally grew up and decided to use diplomacy. Anne Heche has been killing it as Su, especially with the flashback that actually said what happened between Su and Kuvira. The only thing I could nitpick about this encounter is that it came suddenly, and it was a change from what Kuvira has done so far. She has just walked into a village and took it for her Earth Empire. The change in pace seemed slightly odd, and a bit out of place when compared to the rest of the season so far. But like I said, it’s nit-picky.

Generally, these lead-in episodes would drive me nuts for any show. I never know why we would need an entire episode just to build up to an event when we can better use that time starting the event. For instance, “Enemy at the Gates” had Kuvira and her army show up at the front door of Zaofu. But I wasn’t even feeling nuts at all this week. I think the writers did a great job trying to implement Korra, and trying to diffuse the situation before a full-scale war were to happen. Zaofu wouldn’t last, because everyone who would be defending the city went with Kuvira. What “Enemy at the Gates” did was flesh out how bad Zaofu has it when an entire army is at the gate, and the de facto leader takes a separatist approach to things. Su is pretty stubborn as well. It must be a family trait.

We are five episodes in right now, and it was great to see the writers pump the breaks a little. Last season showed, that when you go balls out from the word go, you burn out rather somewhere close to the end of the season. The first four episodes were Korra’s journey to fix herself, and it was handled beautifully. With Korra’s slow-rolling getting back to the world as a whole, the introduction to the second arc of the season had to begin somewhere. It was great to see how they planned it out. Like Korra said before, Kuvira saved her father’s life, and it’s going to be hard to fight her. It’s going to be something really big to get Korra to fight because she is still dealing with the self-doubt she’s had. However, I think those seeds to get Korra fighting have been planted. There is very little to dislike about “Enemy at the Gates.” I watched episode three more times to find something, but I could really find Kuvira’s sudden change in tactic as a detriment. You know what? Just watch the episode on Nick’s website. You won’t be disappointed.