The Legend of Korra creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko gave us a lot to chew on at their Comic-Con panel recently. Most notably, we learned that the show was picked up for an additional 26 episodes, which brings the final tally to 52 episodes total (spread across four books). And now that Korra has mastered all four elements, Book Two: Spirits is already shaping up to be one of the most unique and exciting seasons of Avatar yet.

Comic-Con: Korra Renewed Through Season 4

At Comic-Con, I had the pleasure of speaking with the cast and crew of The Legend of Korra: DiMartino, Konietzko, and stars Janet Varney (Korra), P.J. Byrne (Bolin), David Faustino (Mako) and Seychelle Gabriel (Asami). To start, we discussed the upcoming season and talked about what the characters have been up to since the end of Season 1.

From left to right: David Faustino, Seychelle Gabriel, P.J. Byrne, Max Nicholson, Bryan Konietzko, Michael Dante DiMartino and Janet Varney

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As we learned at the Korra panel, the story picks up six months later. Mako has joined the Republic City Police Force as a cop. "He's making a big name for himself busting triads," said DiMartino. We also learned that Asami has taken over Future Industries from her father, who is now in prison. Following her breakup with Mako, Asami will be focusing on getting Hiroshi’s company back up and running. As Gabriel described it, her character is kind of like another misunderstood hero we might remember: “I saw this one cool meme about Asami that had these bullet points: she’s wealthy, she lost both of her parents, she was turned away by her love, and then it just said, ‘Asami is Batman.’”Meanwhile, Bolin just wants to find his way in the world. "He’s trying to get back into pro-bending," said DiMartino. "There’s a lot of fun stuff in there, Bolin getting into shenanigans." But as the creator noted, Season 2 is all about Korra. "We’ll get more into the spiritual side of things; we’ll learn more about the Avatar State and the Spirit World."

Both creators knew that if they extended the original 12-episode order into multiple seasons, they would want to explore beyond Korra's years in training. "We wanted to jump farther ahead into Korra’s life," said Konietzko. "We didn’t want to just start with a kid who needed to learn all four elements. That was Aang’s story. We wanted this to provide opportunities and dynamics that were different for us. In that way, having Korra be older and starting out having mastered three of the elements gave us a different story to tell... Korra is now kind of the Avatar, so how does she deal with it? Even though she has all this power... she’s kind of the bull in the china shop. She rushes in and fights with emotion and gets a little hotheaded. So that still gives us a lot of opportunity in the writing room."Adding to that, Varney recalled one instance in which she totally related with her iron-willed character. "I would not say that I am like Korra in all the ways that she’s amazing, but I am certainly like her in the ways that she’s headstrong and impatient. I was playing tennis not very long ago -- I love to play tennis, but I was not playing well -- and I actually thought to myself, 'Be the leaf!' [Laughs] I was so frustrated! I get so frustrated in situations like that, and I could hear that in my head. I literally thought, 'Korra had to learn, I have to learn,' and I played better!"

As the title of the season suggests, Korra will also be visiting the Spirit World in future episodes. While the creators mentioned that additional appearances from Avatar Aang are still possible, they also revealed that they have something special planned for Book Two. "We have one of the most flashback-y of flashbacks coming up," said DiMartino. "We have something in store. We don’t want to give it away quite yet. It seems like we always do some kind of flashback episode or sequence, something like that.""We do have a history of doing that throughout Avatar," added Konietzko, "and I think that gives it a sense of history and mythology; it’s wider than just the story that you’re watching. And [in Book Two], we’re doing it in a bigger way than we’ve ever done it before. It definitely deals with the legacy of the Avatar."