Trailer Tuesdays: Legend of Korra Book 3

So after much waiting, we have finally got our hands on a peek at The Legend of Korra’s Book 3: Change. It’s full of brief snippets of awesome imagery that by no means reveal even an inkling of what the plot of the season will be. This isn’t helped by the fact that the trailer is entirely dialogue-free; it’s hard to guess what will happen when all you have is a stirring instrumental accompaniment.

But hell, I’m okay with that, because I’m finally genuinely excited to see more of Korra’s story.

The first Book of Legend of Korra suffered a lot writing-wise, in part because the writers weren’t sure if the series would be a single contained miniseries or if it’d be picked up for further seasons. (Also in part because they wasted several painful episodes on teenage love triangle drama, blech.) Thankfully it was renewed for three more seasons, and the series was able to stretch its legs in terms of plot and character development a little more than it could the first time around. Book 2 was still not the greatest thing ever, but it was significantly better than Book 1, and by the end of it I finally felt like I was actually a fan of Korra rather than a saddened Avatar: The Last Airbender fan just trying to get my fix of more in-world shenanigans.

While I can’t guess at what the plot of this season will be (besides including some of the fallout from the spirit portals being permanently opened at the end of Book 2), the trailer does promise some pretty cool-looking stuff. We’ve got some long distance travel happening in super-nifty steampunk dirigibles, and what looks like a significant amount of time spent in the Earth Kingdom. It also looks like we’ll have a ton of airbenders around this season: we see a whole crowd of air acolytes with Tenzin, as well as what looks like an Earth Kingdom kid who can airbend. (There’s real cognitive dissonance for me watching a kid in Earth greens airbend; I know it’s silly but it’s… visually unexpected for lack of a better term.) There’s also a split-second scene where it looks like Bumi will airbend—I wonder how Tenzin and Kya (and Katara) will react to that.

Old guy Zuko!

The trailer also reveals that we’ll be seeing a bunch of oldies-but-goodies this season, first and foremost, old guy Emperor Zuko! From the brief clips he’s in, it looks like being a badass old guy runs in his family. I can’t wait to see how he’s involved, and I hope it’s less gimmicky than the General Iroh character seemed. On that note, I wonder if they’ll get a different voice actor to voice old guy Zuko, since it would be double weird to hear Dante Basco’s voice coming out of both of them. We also see a glimpse of what looks like Sparky Sparky Boom Man’s sparky sparky boom granddaughter—who or what will she be blowing up this season? Only time will tell.

The Avatar world has always been excellent at portraying characters with disabilities in realistic ways; Toph is the premiere example of that. Book 3 promises even more disabled representation in a waterbending character who has no arms. Bending is a very movement-based art, especially focusing on arm movement, so I’m excited to see how this character learned to bend and account for her disability.

And while I’m on the subject of Toph, I can’t wait to see more of Lin Bei Fong this season. She continues to be one of my absolute favorite characters. I’ve heard that we’ll be learning more about the rest of Toph’s family this season, too. While this will probably joss my theory that Lin sprung fully formed out of Toph’s forehead like Athena, I am still excited to meet more awesome Bei Fongs.

The only bits of this trailer that I can guess at plot from are the scenes with Korra and Asami and the one with Jinora. I’m so happy to see Asami as she is also one of my faves on the show, but in the scene we see, Korra has clearly been hurt in some way and Asami is getting her the hell out of Dodge. Hopefully nothing too untoward will happen to either of them and maybe they’ll go off and fall in love while Asami nurses her back to health i mean what. We also see Jinora back in the spirit world doing her spirit travel thing. I’m interested to see how she grows into her new ability as the season progresses.

Thankfully, none of us have to wait very long to find out these things. Nickelodeon just announced over the weekend that the first three episodes of Book 3 will air this Friday, June 27^th, starting at 7pm. I’ll be back in a week or so with a review of the premiere, but in the meantime, what are you all looking most forward to in this season? Hit me up in the comments!