What Exactly Happened Between Korra and Asami Onscreen in ‘Legend of Korra’?
Most fans of the series Avatar: The Last Airbender also love its sequel, The Legend of Korra. In the TV series, Asami is one of Korra’s best friends: a powerful, sarcastic, and imposing teenager with a beautiful face. Do Asami and Korra kiss in The Legend of Korra?
Frenemies to crushes
From the beginning of Legend of Korra, the tension between Asami Sato and Avatar Korra is palpable. Asami had to become mature at an early age and is already an engineer by the time she is a teenager and meets Korra. Asami is skeptical of Korra’s easygoing nature, and Korra mistakes Asami for a demure girlfriend to Mako when she is anything but. Eventually, the two girls learn to trust and even lean on each other, as they face the problems of Republic City, their families, and growing up.
Queerbaiting in The Legend of Korra
“Queerbaiting” refers to plotlines and storylines that seem as if they might become an open LGBTQIA+ relationship or story, but never do. It’s a method that TV, film, and book writers have used for a long time to lure in queer audiences with no real fulfillment. Legend of Korra does seem to use this kind of storyline, since Korra and Asami are brought closer over time, flirt with each other, and have intimate and personal conversations that help one another heal through their trials.
The Avatar series never shied away from straight teenage romance in the original series or in Legend of Korra. Nickelodeon had no problem showing Asami kiss Mako, or writing in romantic entanglements for Aang, Katara, Sokka, Mei, and Zuko, just to name a few. Yet they prevented writers from putting in any onscreen affection between Korra and Asami because LGBTQIA+ relationships were deemed “mature.” Perhaps queerbaiting was not the writers’ intention, but the moratorium on a blatant relationship between queer characters was a letdown for audiences at the time.
Do Korra and Asami ever get to kiss in The Legend of Korra?
Sadly the answer is no, they never kiss onscreen. Though Asami and Korra don’t get to kiss or confess their romantic feelings for each other in the animated Legend of Korra series, they do hold hands and go into the spirit world together in the final episode. Beyond this, we got canon confirmation from the writers that Korra and Asami aren’t just holding hands as friends, and that they are officially together. And, thankfully, this doesn’t mean that we can never see “Korrasami” as a couple!
As some compensation for all the so-subtle-it-was-hard-to-detect queer tension between Korra and Asami in the show, early on in the comic book The Legend of Korra: Turf Wars, we do finally get to see a Korrasami kiss. The comic book series is written by Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra writer Michael DiMartino and picks up quickly after the TV series ends. Illustrated by comics creator Irene Koh and well worth a read, it’s a direct canon continuation of Avatar Korra’s story. So go check it out and get all the blatant Korrasami you can read!
(featured image: Nickelodeon)
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