airbenders:

airsurf:

I’m sorta-kinda watching the finale over again (at least the first half… it’s nearly 5am though so I need to get to bed soon), and one of the arguments I’ve heard about Asami in the finale, is that she never got her own “big hero moment.” Bolin did get to bend lava (the “hot foot” moment), as well as bend half or more of a building on top of the colossus (though that was with help from Suyin and Lin). Mako, of course, got his Big Damn Hero Moment that I don’t even need to go into. We all know what it was. Same goes for Korra. Anyway… yes, Asami was not the one to cut the hole into the colossus. Hiroshi did that. But, based upon past scenes in the series — Asami is the one who “drives” things (there’s actually a specific gifset showing that she is, time and time again, the “driver”). She flew the hummingbird suit, and they were the only ones who could then finish the job once Varrick and Zhu Li had to eject themselves before their suit crashed into a building and blew up. I don’t know if the Book 4 commentary will go into this more (or the art book), but from what I’ve seen of the inside of the hummingbird suits — Asami was the one who had the most autonomous control over the mecha suit. Hiroshi could use the plasma saw and the ejection controls. In the scene captured above, she easily lifted them away from the colossus the first time around, which suggests that she could have done the same and saved both her father and herself, but she didn’t. This is likely due to knowing that they were the last chance to break into the colossus and put a stop to it all (as at this point, again, Varrick and Zhu Li were out of the picture). She may have just been ready and willing to give it all up, including her own life, for the sake of finishing the job, if Hiroshi had not ejected her. She was visibly frightened while she watched the colossus grow stronger and progressively break through the ice, but she never moved to eject either herself or her father, or made any action to fly them away again. She waited. And she seemed set on waiting it out even if she died in that process. She stayed loyal to their mission. That was her “big hero moment” to me, at least. She chose to stay, making no hint of a movement to get herself (or her + her father) out of there. She was ready to damn well die. Now that, my friends, is what I call a real show of bravery. Despite her fear, she was willing to stay put even though faced with the very real threat of death.

It slipped my mind to mention this earlier today, but also, what is courage without fear? That is simply not courage. As a quote by Nelson Mandela says, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” To show Asami as afraid, terribly so, yet also showing her making no move to whisk them away from the colossus, it is apparent to me right now that she was exhibiting a courage I doubt many of us would have.

Acts of bravery and courage are not always flashy. In a world where bending the very elements is possible, non-bending acts of courage can be even more easily overlooked when compared to seeing benders using their bending to display an act of bravery. Take Mako, for example, who used lightning generation. His selfless act of courage and bravery was blatantly obvious, though commendable all the same. He put his life at risk (and suffered what may be a life-long scarring at that) to play his part to help stop the colossus.

Yet we should not gloss over non-benders risking their own lives (and of course, Hiroshi losing his) to land right on the colossus that not even benders could break into. With all of the abilities they possess, they could not break through platinum, and so the non-benders used their own skills, their intellect and innovation, to provide the benders with a route inside to finish the job. Without the ideas from Asami and Hiroshi, and with help from Varrick and Zhu Li, the five benders who got into the colossus afterward would not have been able to get inside.

Moving on from that, however, I also wanted to address the argument that has been made about Korrasami during this part of the finale. Specifically, that it was Korra who returned to “battle mode” faster than Suyin, Mako, Lin, and Bolin after they watched Asami being ejected and Hiroshi being killed. That is, this moment here:

“Hiroshi’s plan worked…”

“There’s our opening.”

Taking into account what I’ve already said, what was Korra supposed to do? Feel sad several seconds longer, exhibit some grandiose show of an emotional reaction, and then miss their only opening? If she had waited any longer, it is likely that Kuvira could have done something to prevent them from getting inside. Which, in turn, would have made Asami and Hiroshi’s actions (and his sacrifice, her loss) a waste.

The way I see it, at least, is that Korra saw that they finally had their opening, due to Asami and Hiroshi’s actions, and did not want it all to be in vain. She collected herself and focused her anger on Kuvira for yet another horrible act she committed, on top of everything else she had done, and pragmatically put aside her sadness to make sure that the Sato’s actions were not all in vain.

Here are the last shots we have of Korra in the episode, right before the credits appear:

She is righteously enraged and furious at Kuvira, more so now than at any other time in the entire episode. And what just happened, on top of everything else? Asami’s father was murdered right in front of his daughter’s eyes. Interpret this scene as you will, but what I see here is Korra rechanneling her emotions into a pragmatic fury (or anger/wrath/etc.) to deal with Kuvira. She can’t simply sit around and stay sad, she has to do something about it. She is a person of action, and so she is rechanneling her emotions to actively go after Kuvira and physically, finally, do something about it all.