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Some Legend of Korra for your afternoon.

The Legend of Korra’s fourth and final season, Book 4: Balance, returns this Friday! You’ll be able to watch here. Trying to catch up with all three seasons in one day is a pretty tall order, but luckily the weekend will soon be here! The first three books (as seasons are called Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra) are available streaming on Nick.com.

Avatar: the Last Airbender follows Aang, the last airbender, who survived the Air Nomad genocide from the Fire Nation. Together with his friends Sokka, Katara and Zuko, Aang fights to prevent the Fire Nation from taking over the whole world, all the while mastering all four elements.

The Legend of Korra is the direct sequel to Avatar: the Last Airbender, taking place 80 years after the end of ALTA. Korra, upon discovering she was the avatar at the age of four, was placed under the direct care of the Order of the White Lotus and learned to water-, fire-, and earthbending. Korra sneaks away from the Order of the White Lotus compound to learn airbending from Tenzin, the son of Avatar Aang, in Republic City.

Important Terms

Elements: Air, Water, Earth, and Fire.

Bending: The ability to control one of the aforementioned elements, i.e. waterbending. A person who bends an element is known as a bender.

Avatar: one person who has the ability to control all four elements. The avatar is born into one of the four nations and learns to bend the four elements. The Avatar is supposed to help maintain balance between the Four Nations and the spirits.

The Four Nations

Four Nations: Air Nomads, Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, Water Tribe.

Team Avatar: the team of people who help and fight alongside the Avatar.

Pro-bending: a sport where benders fight each other with the elements. There are three benders per team: water, fire, and earth.

Order of the White Lotus: a formerly secret order that transcended the Four Nations to share philosophy and wisdom. Later, on the orders of Avatar Aang, they search and protect the next Avatar.

Red Lotus: a group that splintered off from the original White Lotus because they thought that the Order of the White lotus had become the bodyguards of the Avatar. They sought to free the world of its governments and have humans and spirits coexist. During Book 3, Zaheer leads them.

 The Major Players

Team Avatar:

Team Avatar: Asami, Mako, Korra, Bolin and Pabu (from left to right).

Korra: Korra is from the Northern Water Tribe. She is born when Avatar Aang, the protagonist of Avatar: The Last Airbender died. Korra can bend all four elements.

Asami Sato: The only nonbender on Team Avatar. Asami is the owner of Future Industries, a company that makes cars known as the Sato-mobile and other technology.

Mako: former street rat turned cop. Former captain of the pro-bending team the Future Industry Fire Ferrets. Mako is a firebender and both Korra and Asami’s ex-boyfriend. He is Bolin’s older brother.

Bolin: formerly an actor and pro-bender, he is the funny-man of Team Avatar. He is an earthbender and has the special ability to lavabend. He is Mako’s younger brother.

Other important characters

Katara: Aang’s wife, waterbending master and Korra’s teacher.

Tenzin, Bumi, and Kya: Aang’s children. Tenzin is an airbender, and Korra’s airbending instructor. Kya is a waterbender. Bumi is a retired Fire Nation general who later gains the ability to airbend after Harmonic Convergence. You may refer to them as the “cloudbabies.”

Pema: Tenzin’s wife, a nonbender.

Jinora, Ikki, Meelo, and Rohan: Pema and Tenzin’s children. All airbenders. You may refer to them as the “airbabies.” Jinora is the first airbending master in a generation.

Lin Beifong: Chief of Republic City Police, metalbender. Toph Beifong’s daughter.

Book 1: Air

Korra has a difficult time learning how to airbend, because she’s unable to tap into the spiritual side of bending. She joins a pro-bending team known as the Fire Ferrets. An anti-bending movement known as the Equalist Movement gains in popularity. The leader, Amon, wants to get rid of bending and benders. Korra tries to balance learning to airbend, practice with the Fire Ferrets and defeating Amon. Korra finally learns to airbend, when Amon seals off all of her other bending abilities.

Book 2: Spirits

Six months after the end of Book 1, Republic City has a president who is supposed to represent the interests of benders and non-benders alike. When a spirit attacks at a festival that Korra attends, she decides to focus on learning spirit-bending instead of airbending, and her uncle Unalaq becomes her teacher. Unalaq tricks Korra into opening the spirit portals. Unalaq wants to join with a dark spirit to become the Dark Avatar and destroy the Avatar cycle. Korra learns of Won, the first Avatar. With the help of Jinora, Korra defeats Unalaq. Spirits and humans were never meant to live apart, so Korra doesn’t close the Spirit Portals. The world enters a new age where spirits and humans live together.

Book 3: Change

The spirits are disrupting life in Republic City, but Korra can’t get them to live peacefully with humans. When reports of people suddenly gaining the ability to airbend reach Korra, she travels with Tenzin, his family, and team Avatar to restore the Air Nomads. The Red Lotus, a criminal organization that tried to kidnap Korra when she was young, escapes from prison. The Red Lotus’s leader, Zaheer, is one of the new airbenders. Zaheer and his cronies go on a quest to rid the world of its leaders and the Avatar. Zaheer kills the Earth Queen and Ba Sing Se descends into chaos.

When Zaheer threatens all the new airbenders to get to Korra, Korra risks her life to save them.

Several weeks later, we see Korra in a wheelchair getting ready to attend Jinora’s airbending master ceremony. Jinora, Avatar Aang’s granddaughter becomes the first airbending master in a generation. Tenzin announces that the airbenders will regain their nomadic roots

Korra returns with her parents to the Northern Water Tribe to heal.

Legend of Korra returns THIS FRIDAY.

The trailer: with Korra kicking major butt and new hair!

Watch the opening clip.

This is a clip of Kai and Opal airbending some bad guys!

I hope you’re just as excited to return to Republic City as I am!

Nickelodeon is releasing online a three-part Legend of Korra webseries called “Republic City Hustle,” presumably to help build buzz for the second season of the TV series, which will debut next month. The webseries takes place three years before the events of Book 1 and tells the backstory of two of the show’s central figures—brothers Mako and Bolin—and how they ended up with their sidekick Pabu. The first two episodes have already debuted online and can be viewed below:

Legend of Korra: “Republic City Hustle: Part 2″

Besides the obvious redesign of the characters, things were also done differently behind the scenes. This webseries was produced out of Nickelodeon’s on-air graphics department in New York instead of the regular Los Angeles crew. The animation was created in After Effects.

CREDITS
SVP Brand Creative: Matthew Duntemann
Executive Producer: James Stephenson
Producer: Eric Collins
Written by: Tim Hedrick
Directors: Chris Papa and Rob Kohr
Character Design: Evon Freeman & Rachael Hunt
Storyboards: Matthew Robinson
Backgrounds: George Berger and Alexandra DiTullio
Animation: Scott Kennell, Ross Norton, Christine Chen, Alexandra Ditullio, Brett Underhill and Mike Liu
Sound: Beatstreet

(Disclosure: The co-director of this piece, Rob Kohr, provides technical support/maintenance for Cartoon Brew.)