Once again, the Avatar series has delivered a sensational adventure in total. Nearly every single aspect of the series was altogether flawless, from the anti-bender propaganda of Amon to Unalaq's craving for dark power through spiritual unity. Where The Last Airbender sought to build the world, The Legend of Korra spent an adequate amount of time expanding on it, especially with the added touch of a 1940's civilization mixed in with the prior oriental influences.
Regarding the last two books, which I marathoned for a few days, they brought about a deeper, more satisfying development than the first two arguably did. Korra primarily was pushed to her limits countless times, and struggled with feelings of inadequacy ever since the ties with her past lineage were severed in Spirits. Tenzin, Bolin, Mako, and Asami all stuck by her side through thick and thin, and received strenuous hardships that impacted their behavior and made them seem all the more likable and mature. Their teamwork and camaraderie is what really pushed me to keep watching while they faced devastating foes such as Zaheer and Kuvira, both of whom tested Team Avatar's very ideals and ideologies, even to the point of disillusionment.
All of the side characters left a memorable mark as well, with the exception of two. The first is Prince Wu (early on in the show) who 1. even for a young adult could not get a grasp on doing some of the most basic human functions without Mako attending him everywhere; and 2. kept making incessant, eye-roll inducing attempts at "comedy" that served as nothing more than boring filler. When he developed, though, it was well-done. The second is Bolin's grandma, easily the most obnoxious and useless character in the show. In Book 3, whenever her house was burning down and she refused to leave because "it was her home", she was endangering the lives her entire family over mere possessions. Every other scene that included her only reinforced how irritating her character was.
A number of plot points were touched on but neglected by the end of Book 4. For starters, when Korra was in the Spirit World before the final battle, Rava suddenly appeared and greeted her, but afterwards she's never heard from again. Seeing as Rava had "always been with/inside of" Korra, why wasn't this used as an advantage to restore all of the past Avatars? I'm also curious as to what happened between Opal and Bolin, because last everyone had heard they were not on speaking terms. The former especially should have been elaborated; it seemed that they wanted to bring Rava back to assist in the last showdown, but dropped it last second.
Overall, the conclusion tied together in a pretty solid manner, and despite some loose ends and annoyances the whole series was spectacular. My one and only complaint is that Toph never had a chance to face off against Kuvira; even in her elder years, the matriarch of metalbending would have dismantled the Great Uniter and could do some serious damage to the giant mech suit (from within).
