The Legend of Korra: The Stakeout (3x09)

Let's not dilly-dally. Plot time!

Korra, Bolin, Mako, and Asami follow Aiwei, trying to track him down and get some answers. Mako thinks they should follow him to a meeting place with Zaheer, so they can get even more information. After a long and fruitless stakeout, Korra bursts into Aiwei's room to learn that the meeting with Zaheer is in the Spirit World. Korra quickly enters it. While there, Zaheer throws Aiwei into the Fog of Lost Souls.

Zaheer then stalls for time, keeping Korra in the Spirit World and answering her questions, all while getting a message to his friends in the mortal world to capture Korra. Zaheer tells Korra that he is part of the Red Lotus, an organization that wants to restore balance to the world. Turns out, Unalaq used to be a part of them, before he went rogue and tried to take too much power for himself.

Ming-Hua and Ghazan (two other Red Lotus members) show up to take Korra, but Bolin and Mako hold them off, while Asami and Naga escape with Korra's body. Bolin and Mako are no match for these incredible Benders, however, and they are subdued. However, the Red Lotus doesn't get their hands on Korra - the Earth Kingdom does that first. They capture Korra and Asami, as it turns out that the Earth Queen put a price on their heads for letting the Air Benders escape.

With the brothers captured by Zaheer, and the girls held captive by the Earth Queen, things are not looking good for our heroes.

Alright. So the only thing I really have to complain about is Nickelodeon's BS handling of this show. They keep threatening us that we can't watch Korra online, and then abruptly inform us that the rest of the episode will only be available online. I know this happened last week, but I forgot to mention it there, so I'll do it now: this is a great show! Why is the network messing around with it?! It's irresponsible, and were the show allowed to stand on its own merits, I think it would be doing a lot better than it is. How annoying.

But in terms of this episode, I don't have a lot to complain about. I guess sometimes I'm still looking for a bit more balance - we go these long stretches without checking in with Tenzin and the others, and it makes me forget about rebuilding the Air Nation. Isn't that the focus of this season?

One other little thing: in this episode, we saw some Spirits, which was cool, but I couldn't help noticing that they stood out quite a lot, because we usually don't see random Spirits casually interacting with our characters. This is one element that could have been more smoothly dealt with throughout the season.

But overall, I think there are a lot of things to praise, here.

Another great episode for Mako. He put his detective skills to work. He's a good moderating influence for Korra, who still tends to dive in without thinking. We got to see this character trait in her: she's logical and practical, but her temper can get the best of her, and when she's had enough of waiting around, she barges straight in. I like this about her. It's very different from Aang, the last Avatar we knew.

Some good comic relief from Bolin and Asami - I loved watching them play their game, and Bolin's increasing distress and frustration!

The reveal about the Red Lotus is very interesting. Learning that Unalaq used to be allied to Zaheer and the others was a nice little twist, and actually retroactively gave some more sense to Unalaq's very confusing character.

Basically, the Red Lotus are anarchists. They want to restore the world to its natural order, which happens to be chaos. What I loved about Zaheer's speech in all of this was that it makes a sort of sick kind of sense. Even Korra hesitates when Zaheer brings up President Raiko and the Earth Queen, pointing out how corrupt the world's leaders are. When there are uncomfortable agreements between our hero and our villain, you know they've got some great storytelling going on. The tension is amazing.

Also, I love that all four members of Team Avatar have been captured, but by different people. It's a nice twist, in a way. When Korra and Asami got caught in the rocks, I thought it was going to be Red Lotus members. I was surprised when Korra woke up and we learned the truth. Very nice.

And so... yep. I'm pretty happy with this one! We're getting close to the end of this season, and I think I can feel some lovely culmination coming our way.

8/10