Korra, The Legend of Korra

Korra (Voice: Janet Varney): The Legend of Korra was an animated follow-up series to “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and set 70 years after the events of “Avatar” as it followed Korra, the next Avatar after Aang, who was from the Southern Water Tribe. With earth, water and fire under her belt, Korra had to master the art of airbending and find a balance between the Earth and the Spirit World.

As the girlfriend of Mako, Asami was originally introduced as the rich daughter of an industrialist and a romantic rival to Korra, and much of the first season revolved around the love-triangle as Mako and Korra also developed feelings for each other, culminating in the two kissing and Mako breaking up with Asami. Over the course of their relationship, Korra and Mako said “I love you” to each other on three different occasions, in episode 1×12, 2×14, and in a flashback in 4×08. Two of those declarations were also followed up with a kiss. Korra and Mako eventually end their relationship at the end of Season 2, deciding to remain friends.

After Korra was critically injured towards the end of Season 3, Asami volunteered to care for her and was shown to be willing to leave everything to accompany Korra to her home in the Southern Water tribe while she recovered. Though Korra turns her down, it was revealed at the start of the fourth season that three years had passed and Asami was the only one of their friends Korra would write letters to, confessing her fears about the difficulties recovering her powers and apologizing for leaving her. When they were finally reunited in the fourth season, they had grown noticeably closer.

In the series finale, the two decided to take a vacation together in the Spirit World, just the two of them. In the final shot of the series, Korra and Asami departed through the Spirit portal holding hands and gazing lovingly at each other. The scene recalled the earlier wedding scene in the episode, as well as the last shot of Avatar: The Last Airbender, in which Aang and Katara kissed. As the ending was somewhat ambiguous, it was subject to discussion outside of entertainment media, notably after the series’ creators took to Tumblr to confirm that the scene was meant to signify Korra and Asami becoming a romantic couple. According to Joanna Robinson for Vanity Fair, who described the series finale as “the most subversive television event of the year”, it “changed the face of TV” by going further than any other work of children’s television in depicting same-sex relationships, an assessment shared by reviewers for TV.com, The A.V. Club, USA Today, IGN and Moviepilot. Megan Farokhmanesh of Polygon wrote that by portraying Korra and Asami as bisexual, the series even avoided the error of assuming sexual orientation, as many other TV series did, to be a strict divide between “gay” and “straight”.

The upcoming comic book canon continuation series has promised to show Korra and Asami in a relationship.

Read more: Korrasami is canon (from co-creator and executive producer, Bryan Konietzko)

Appearances:

• 52 episodes.

Female love interests:

• Asami Sato (Voice: Asami Sato, main cast 37 episodes)

Relationship story arc with a woman: Questionable

Male love interests:

• Mako (Voice: David Faustino, main cast 44 episodes)

Relationship story arc with a man: Yes

Filter Relationship Arc:

• Male (Regular)

Storyline during sweeps? No

[1] A relationship story arc is defined as explicit, developed on screen, and lasting more than 3 episodes. It is listed as questionable or subtext if romance is only implied, mentioned instead of shown on screen, part of a dream sequence, or otherwise not explicit for the viewer.
[2] Sweeps episodes air in February, May, July and November, the periods when advertising rates are set. A character is marked as "sweeps" when there is a very limited number of episodes that address their sexuality, all air during sweeps period, and the storyline is otherwise ignore/dropped.