Season 1 was dynamite.  I loved the Equalist arc.  I felt like it was a realistic inevitability of the world.  Amon was an awesome villain.  I still can't believe his brudder blew them both up like that.  They Ned Stark'd 'em.  That was as big of a mindf*ck as old Ned.  Blood bending was one of the coolest things in Airbender, and I always wanted to see more of it, and more development of it, so having a whole blood bending arc was awesome.

Season 2 was a little weird and little weak, and let's face it, the climax battle was stupid.  The God of War battle, as I call it.  Now, GOW is my favorite game series of all time, but that's not what the bending franchise is suppose to be.  The giant titan battle between Unalaq/Vatu and giant Korra/Rava was just stupid.  The story was fine, and the outcome was fine, but execution was overdone and silly.  The giant titan battle was just an eyeroller.  And the deus ex machina of Jenora with the light ball was silly as well.  Yeah, that was the bending franchise low point, for sure.  But the rest of the series more than made up for it.

Season 3 was awesome as well.  Zaheer was such a great villain.  The perfect villain.  That's the kind of villain that's really interesting--the kind that really believe they're a good guy, and really believe that their cause is just and right.  Despite the horrible things he did, you just couldn't hate Zaheer because there was something admirable about him, and that was his truly selfless devotion to his cause, which he believed down to his bones would make the world a better place.  And plus, he's just cool.

And then you have the stark opposite--Kuvira--the most insufferable f*cking piece of sh*t ever conceived in all of fiction.  What a f*cking b*tch.  The complete antithesis of everything that Zaheer was and believed in, Kuvira cared about nothing but herself and power.  She just wanted to be the Phoenix Queen.  Her smugness irritated me even more than Azula.  I have never wanted a character to die so badly in all of fiction.  I was disappointed that she didn't.  It really ground my gears when Korra repeatedly saved Kuvria's life.  I wanted Korra to tear Kuvira's head off, but I know that that would have been a betrayal of Korra's character.  Bah.  Humbug.  Harrumph.

Uh, let's see... the inclusion of Old Man Zuko was great.  Toph's role was spectacular.  Seeing grown-up Aang in the flashbacks and spirit connections was awesome.  I got a kick out Varrick, or A Pimp Named Slickback as I called him.  That's who he reminded me of.  He got pretty cool in S4.  He actually became rather selfless and courageous at times.  Bolin was kinda stupid until S4.  He was the Sokka of this Team Avatar, but with an important difference.  See, Sokka was the jokester and the goofy one, but he was also skilled, competent, and serious when the situation demanded it.  Bolin, on the other hand, was just a useless f*cking idiot most of the time, and his arc as Nucktuck: Hero of the South was stupid.  Kinda funny, but still stupid.  Ironically, if I was going to dress as anyone from the bending franchise for Halloween or cosplay, it would totally be Nucktuck: Hero of the South, just to be funny.

But I was thrilled to see Bolin finally grow up in S4.  He was still the jokester and the goofy one, but no longer a useless idiot.  He matured.  And he was awesome as a lava bender.

There were lots of other great things sprinkled throughout the show.  I'm not gonna mention everything, but there's two really special things I want to talk about.  First is the ending scene.  Yeah, I was thrilled and blown away by that ending.  Getting Korra and Asami together was an amazing move.  I did some reading about it, and was pretty amazed at what I discovered.  Having any kind of same-sex romance in a kid's show was still taboo at the time of Korra's making, and the writers had to fight quite hard for that ending.  That was as far as they were allowed to go, and the only way they were allowed to do that was if they did it in such a way that the network execs could maintain plausible deniability that it was purely platonic.  Isn't that ridiculous?  But it's amazing how much heavy lifting that 10 second scene did.  Korra has been widely celebrated for championing LGBT representation, and is credited with breaking the glass ceiling and paving the way for more such representation in kid's shows.  So awesome.

But the thing that made the show so incredible for me was Korra's trauma arc.  The show was lauded for it's mature handling of many complex themes, but none was so well done as the trauma arc.  Korra's brutal treatment and poisoning by the Red Lotus, and her subsequent struggle to heal, was an unbelievably powerful and moving journey.  It makes you forget that it's supposed to be a kid's show.  It was a brilliant depiction of trauma and recovery for any show, period.  When that tear flowed down Korra's cheek in the S3 finale, and we knew that her scars ran much deeper than anyone realized, I was blown away.  I was also hoping that they would do her recovery struggle justice and not gloss over it quickly.  They did it better than I ever could have imagined.

I figured that her recovery might take weeks or months, but my face was melted off when I saw that three years had passed in the S4 opener, and Korra was a destroyed wreck.  I know it sounds weird, but I was rooting for her to struggle greatly, because it makes a character so likeable and relatable, especially for one with severe depression irl, like me.  I absolutely loved watching her internal battle.  Then we had her Empire Strikes Back training with Toph (I mean, that's totally what it reminded you of, right?), which was awesome, of course.  That segment concluded with Korra bending the last of the metal poison out of herself, and I thought, "Oh, okay.  That's it.  Now she's all better."  Right?  I mean, that's what it seemed like, and honestly, I would have been satisfied with that.  But here's where the show went above and beyond.  Bending out the poison was only the end of the physical trauma arc.  The emotional trauma remained, and still had to be dealt with.  She had never really processed it.  Korra later confronts Zaheer in a powerful scene, but that's still not the end of the trauma arc.  That's only the end of the lowest point.  Then began the gradual upward climb.  This is why the trauma depiction was so realistic.  It's not as if she was all better at once after confronting Zaheer.  Not at all.  It was just the process that allowed her to start to heal.  As she later told Tenzin, she would never really be "over it", but she had finally "accepted it", and could start to move on.  They treated Korra's trauma arc like a rape.  There will be ups and downs, but on average, each day will be slightly easier than the last, but the emotional scars will be with her for her entire life.

The trauma arc is what elevated the show to something truly transformative and transcendent for me.  It was incredible.  Take notes, everyone else.  That's how it's done.