Legend of Korra Episode Revealed Avatar Origin Story 13 Years Ago

When Aang first showed up in Avatar: The Last Airbender as a small bald boy who had spent a century trapped in ice, the show talked about the Avatar in fairly generic terms. Only the Avatar can wield all four elements. The Avatar must restore and maintain peace in the world. We accepted Aang’s duty, and later Korra’s, at face value. We assumed the world had always worked that way. A chosen one is reincarnated, and they’re special. Did we need to know more?

Then Legend of Korra reached a dire point midway through season 2. The South Pole spirit portal had opened and pushed the water tribes into civil war. A massive dark spirit swallowed Korra while she was at sea, and she lost her memory. Each Avatar’s journey has leaned on reconnecting with past selves and drawing on memories, shared knowledge, and skills built up over thousands of years. For perhaps the first time, Korra has to go all the way back to the very beginning.

Fans who want to rewatch one episode now that Avatar: Seven Havens is in full swing should pick the two-parter “Beginnings,” which is episodes 7 and 8 of Korra season 2. It first aired 13 years ago.

Korra must return to the beginning

After the incident at sea, the sages tell a delirious Korra to find Raava before they lower her into spirit waters. She sees the most recent Avatars, namely Aang, Roku, Kyoshi, and Kuruk, but she doesn’t recognize them. Then a young man with an easy smile calls out to her and begins to tell his story.

Ten thousand years before Korra’s age, the world looked remarkably different. Spirits roamed the wilds, while humans cowered on the backs of giant lion turtles and ventured out only to gather food. When humans left their cities, the lion turtles lent them the power to bend an element for protection. People lived in isolated communities, safe from the dangers outside, and they saw spirits as monsters more than anything else.

The story presents Wan right away as an Aladdin-like trickster, or even something closer to Robin Hood, since he steals food from a wealthy family to feed his poor friends. He’s mischievous and warm, and he quickly befriends any animal he meets. He echoes Aang’s warmth and kindness, but he also has Korra’s bold habit of standing up for what’s just. Wan tricks his way into receiving the power to wield fire and uses it to raid the palace, hoping to feed the hungry and establish some semblance of balance. For that, he’s cast out into the wilds. He befriends the spirits and lives among them for years, but his greatest challenge is getting others, spirit and human alike, to see the world through his eyes.

Wan’s empathy sets the Avatar cycle in motion

That backstory makes his first great mistake more painful. Wan sees two spirits grappling in a massive contest. The white spirit, Raava, is dismissive and imperious, while the black spirit, Vaatu, pleads for help. Wan learns of his mistake only after he steps in. He was simply trying to help someone in danger, but his empathy triggers a crisis he can’t solve alone.

Vaatu is the spirit of darkness, chaos, and destruction. Raava is the spirit of light, order, and peace. Every ten thousand years, the two primordial spirits battle for the fate of the world during the Harmonic Convergence, when the planets align and amplify spiritual energy. Whoever wins ushers in an era of light or darkness. Neither can exist without the other, so the cycle always repeats.

It went on that way for eons before Wan intervened. Because he did, Vaatu gained the upper hand. The dark spirit grows stronger while Raava shrinks, and spirits turn dark as the next Harmonic Convergence approaches. With Raava’s help, Wan gathers all four elements from different lion turtles. He and Raava can fuse temporarily so he can wield all four elements at once, but when it’s time to face Vaatu, that isn’t enough. Their only option is to permanently merge their essences, using a healthy dose of spiritual energy during the Harmonic Convergence. Wan’s choice is selfless, but it’s also desperate.

Related: Avatar: Seven Havens episode 6’s ending finally takes a big leap forward

Across the rest of the series, Wan can control all four elements at once only while fused with Raava, and they can hold that fusion for just a few minutes at a time or Wan will die. Once they merge completely, Wan sheds that limitation and also gains the seemingly limitless Avatar state. With it, he easily imprisons Vaatu in the Tree of Time.

Korra happens to be the Avatar exactly ten thousand years later, when Vaatu and Raava’s fateful encounter comes due again. That clash doesn’t play out until the end of Korra season 2. Still, “Beginnings” proves vital for understanding the franchise’s overarching cosmology and the true purpose of the Avatar.

Wan’s promise to be a bridge comes with a contradiction

Wan deliberately coaxes the spirits back into the spirit world and seals the portals, proclaiming himself the bridge between both worlds. Yet he spends many decades fighting, and failing, to bring peace to the human world. Korra sees the contradiction in his choice. It’s why she decides, at the end of season 2, to leave the spirit portals open in the hope that humans and spirits can learn to coexist in harmony.

If the remaining Korra seasons have a fault, it’s that they only indirectly grapple with what that decision means. The remaining core conflicts mostly center on powerful bender villains, even though the consequences of Korra’s choice are both immediate and gradual. A new generation of airbenders is born. Spirit vines begin to invade and grow in the material world. The Legend of Korra ends with the latest conflict resolved and a third spirit portal opened by accident.

Looking back 13 years later, we have to wonder whether Korra’s choice to reunite the two worlds was a mistake. We also have to ask if it ultimately led to the Cataclysm the world now blames on her. We know Pavi and Nisha are Korra’s immediate successors, but that doesn’t account for the 225 years between Korra’s era and the present day of Seven Havens.

The twin-Avatar mystery matters beyond the shock of two people inheriting the same title. If the Avatar’s purpose began with Wan’s promise to bridge two worlds, what does that promise mean when the next generation arrives as twins? Are they a consequence of something Korra did, a new way to fulfill the Avatar’s mission, or something the old rules can’t explain?

“Beginnings” can’t answer those questions. It was made years before Seven Havens, and the new series is still withholding its biggest secrets. But the two-parter gives the mystery a meaningful history. The Avatar has never been a simple solution to the conflict between humans and spirits. Wan’s good intentions helped create the crisis he spent his life trying to contain. Korra inherited his mission, lost her connection to the Avatars before her, and chose a different path that in some ways feels more honest to Wan’s promise. Now the world sees her as its destroyer.

Maybe, like Korra, we should start at the beginning if we want to understand the Avatar’s true purpose. Only then can we begin to see how and why the world wound up in such a sorry state, and how the twins might finally fix it.

The Legend of Korra is available to stream on Paramount Plus.

Source: Polygon