When she’s confident, cheerful, open-minded, and in tune with nature, light can dissipate all evil. Literally, when she’s mad, the world goes dark. Norman Vincent Peale is right: There’s power to positive thinking. Guided by Iroh, young Korra learns that Dr. Like Alice, Korra’s journey is full of self-discovery, confronting the life lessons we learned as kids that are easily taken for granted when we become “mature” teenagers.
With all the respect in the world, Iroh extends his hand to 6-year-old Korra and leads her to his tea party (of course!) where she discovers a human side to the bizarre wonderland. Who better to instruct young Korra than the wisest man ever to have existed? There’s a touch of sadness seeing the spirit of Iroh revived on the other side - Greg Baldwin replaced the legendary Mako, original voice of the character, when the actor passed away before Avatar Book Three - yet any sorrow is dispelled upon the sage’s first words of advice. Introducing Uncle Iroh back into the fold hits fans like a ton of bricks while still feeling earned. When they play a callback card, it always makes sense to the emotional arc of the narrative.
Legend of Korra has been careful not to depend on Avatar: The Last Airbender for quick, fan service-induced shocks. The riff is a visual feast that’s justified when Korra, magically reduced to child, meets the spirit world’s Mad Hatter stand-in. It’s bustling with creatures - a ferocious caterpillar beast, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Cheshire Cactus, and even a Legend of Korra version of the Jabberwocky. After encountering a pack of belligerent, talking prairie dogs who take kindly to strangers, Korra is drowned in her very own “Pool of Tears.” The funnel spits her out in a the middle of a gnarled forest - similar to the one seen in “Beginnings” and even more similar to the purple-hued Tulgey Wood of Disney’s 1957 Alice in Wonderland. Writer Tim Hedrick truncates Carroll’s story in faithful fashion. But in Carrollian tradition, she first had to run into the inhabitants of Wonderland. Korra arrives with a Queen of Hearts in her crosshairs, the religious zealot Unalaq who is bent on spreading darkness across the land. In “A New Spiritual Age,” connections to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland grew beyond resemblance to full-blown allusion as the duo took their first steps into the parallel universe.
Last week, Korra and her surrogate sister Jinora fell down a dragonfly bunny hole to the spirit world. A wise man (Okay, Max Bialystock from The Producers) once said, “When you’ve got it, flaunt it!” This is wisdom Legend of Korra knows well with the show’s original animation team, the meticulous artisans of Studio Mir, back in tow, and an episode set in a surreal universe where anything goes, “it” was flaunted and then some.
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