Ratings The series premiere averaged 4.5 million viewers, ranking it as basic cable's number-one kids' show and top animated program for the week with total viewers.
The Legend of Korra also ranks as the network's most-watched animated series premiere in three years.
Book One: Air drew an average of 3.8 million viewers per episode. This was the highest audience total for an animated series in the United States in 2012.
Book Two: Spirits premiered with 2.6 million viewers. Suggested explanations for the reduced number of broadcast viewers were: the long period between seasons, a change in time slot (Friday evening instead of Saturday morning), the increased availability of digital download services, and generally reduced ratings for the Nickelodeon channel.
Book Three: Change aired on short notice in June 2014 after Spanish-language versions of some episodes were leaked on the Internet. The season premiered with 1.5 million viewers. After declining TV ratings in the third season, Nickelodeon stopped airing the series on its main network and shifted its distribution to sister channel,
Nicktoons and online outlets. The online distribution is where the show had proven to be much more successful.
Critical response On the
review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes, the show currently has an average score of 89%, based on critic reviews. Its first season holds a score of 91% with an average rating of 8.25 out of 10, based on 11 critic reviews, with the website's critical consensus saying, "
The Legend of Korra expands the world of
Avatar: The Last Airbender with narrative substance and crisp animation – and progresses the drama and action with a female lead." The second season holds a score of 67% with an average rating of 8.35 out of 10, based on 9 critic reviews. Both
Book Three: Change and
Book 4: Balance receive the score of 100% based on 9 critic reviews, with average ratings of 9.5 out of 10 and 9 out of 10 respectively.
Style and production values David Hinckley of the
New York Daily News wrote that the "visually striking" series is "full of little tricks and nuances that only true fans will notice and savor, but nothing prevents civilians from enjoying it as well." Writing for
Vulture, Matt Patches highlighted the second season's loose, handheld-style cinematographychallenging for an animated seriesand the "weird, wonderful", wildly imagined spirits fought by Korra; "a
Kaiju parade with beasts that mirror
velociraptors". Max Nicholson for IGN described the third season as "easily the show's most consistent season to date, delivering complex themes, excellent storylines and unmatched production values." And Oliver Sava, for
The A.V. Club, characterized it as a "truly magnificent season of television, delivering loads of character development, world building, socio-political commentary, and heart-racing action, all presented with beautifully smooth animation and impeccable voice acting".
Writing and themes Before the first season's finale, Scott Thill of
Wired hailed
The Legend of Korra as "the smartest cartoon on TV," able to address adults' spiritual and sociopolitical concerns while presenting an "alternately riveting and hilarious ride packed with fantasy
naturalism,
steampunk grandeur, kinetic conflicts, sci-fi weaponry and self-aware comedy." In
The Atlantic, Julie Beck characterized the series as "some of the highest quality fantasy of our time", appreciating it for combining nuanced social commentary with
Avatar: The Last Airbenders "warmth, whimsy, and self-referential wit". Brian Lowry of
Variety felt that the series "represents a bit more ambitious storytelling for older kids, and perhaps a few adults with the geek gene." At
TV.com, Noel Kirkpatrick commented favorably on how the second season of "one of television's best programs" handled the necessary quantity of exposition, and on its introduction of the theme of conflict between
spiritualism and
secularism. Covering the third season, Scott Thill at
Salon described Korra as one of the toughest, most complex female characters on TV, despite being in a cartoon, and considered that the "surreal, lovely sequel" to
Avatar "lastingly and accessibly critiques power, gender, extinction, spirit and more — all wrapped up in a kinetic 'toon as lyrical and expansive as anything dreamt up by
Hayao Miyazaki or
George Lucas". David Levesley at
The Daily Beast recommended the series to those looking for "beautifully shot and well-written fantasy on television" after the end of
Game of Throness most recent season, noting that in both series "the fantastical and the outlandish are carefully balanced with human relationships and political intrigue". Several reviewers noted the
sociopolitical issues that, unusually for an animated series on a children's channel, run through
The Legend of Korra. According to
Forbes, by telling "some of the darkest, most mature stories" ever animated,
The Legend of Korra has created a new genre, "the world's first animated television drama". Thill proposed that the Equalists' cause in season 1 reflected the recent appearance of the
Occupy movement, and DiMartino responded that though the series was written before
Occupy Wall Street began, he agreed that the show similarly depicted "a large group of people who felt powerless up against a relatively small group of people in power." Beck wrote that
The Legend of Korra used magic to illustrate "the growing pains of a modernizing world seeing the rise of technology and capitalism, and taking halting, jerky steps toward
self-governance", while portraying no side of the conflict as entirely flawless. Writing for
The Escapist, Mike Hoffman noted how the series respected its younger viewers by explicitly showing, but also giving emotional weight to the death of major characters, including "one of the most brutal and sudden deaths in children's television" in the case of P'Li in season 3. By portraying Korra's opponents not as stereotypical villains, but as human beings with understandable motivations corrupted by an excess of zeal, the series trusted in viewers to be able to "resolve the dissonance between understanding someone's view and disagreeing with their methods". And, Hoffman wrote, by showing Korra to suffer from "full-on
depression" at the end of the third season, and devoting much of the fourth to her recovery, the series helped normalize mental health issues, a theme generally unaddressed in children's television, which made them less oppressive for the viewers. Levesley also highlighted the "many examples of well-written women, predominantly of color" in the series.
The A.V. Club,
IGN,
Moviepilot and
The Advocate. Mike Hoffman, on the other hand, felt that Korra and Asami's relationship was not intended as particularly subversive, but as something the writers trusted younger viewers, now often familiar with same-sex relationships, to be mature enough to understand. In 2018,
io9 ranked the series' final scene #55 on its list of "The 100 Most Important Pop Culture Moments of the Last 10 Years". As
Korra was made widely available again on
Netflix in 2020, Janet Varney called her role as the voice of Korra "the most profound and meaningful part of my career" on account of the impact the ending had on queer fans.
The Washington Post and
Vulture have since credited
The Legend of Korra with changing the landscape of LGBT representation in western animated children's cartoons, paving the way for more overt queer content in shows such as
Adventure Time,
Steven Universe, and
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
Accolades The first season of
The Legend of Korra received numerous accolades. It received two nominations for the 2012
Annie Awards;
Bryan Konietzko,
Joaquim Dos Santos Ryu Ki-Hyun, Kim Il Kwang and Kim Jin Sun were nominated in the category of Best Character Design in an Animated Television Production, and the first two episodes were nominated in the category of
Best Animated Television Production for Children. The series was also nominated for the "Outstanding Children's Program" award from among the 2012
NAACP Image Awards, which "celebrates the accomplishments of
people of color". IGN editors and readers awarded the series the "IGN People's Choice Award" and the "Best TV Animated Series" award in 2012, and it was also nominated for "Best TV Series" and "Best TV Hero" for Korra. The series also took second place (after
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic) in a
TV.com readers' poll for the "Best Animated Series" of 2012. The first season also received three Daytime Emmy Award nominations, winning in the category of "Outstanding Casting For an Animated Series or Special." The second season received fewer awards and total nominations than the first; it was nominated for three Annie Awards in 2014, winning in the category of "Outstanding Achievement, Production Design in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production." It was nominated for two more IGN awards, being nominated for "Best TV Animated Series" and winning the "IGN People's Choice Award" for the second year in a row. The third and fourth seasons, combined into one entry, were nominated for six IGN awards, winning the "People's Choice Award" for the third time in a row, as well as "Best TV Animated Series" for the second time, "People's Choice Award for Best TV Episode" for
Korra Alone, and "People's Choice Award for Best TV Series" for the first time. The third and fourth seasons were nominated for two Annie Awards; "Best Animated TV/Broadcast Production for Children's Audience," and winning "Outstanding Achievement, Storyboarding in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production."
Fandom ing as Korra and Mako in 2012 Like its predecessor series,
The Legend of Korra has a broad
fandom, including on social media and at
fan conventions. Most fans are young adults, according to
The Escapist, but many are children and younger teenagers. According to Merrill Barr writing for
Forbes, few series "boast as vocal a fan base as
The Legend of Korra", including such popular series as
Game of Thrones and
Orphan Black. In January 2015, after the series ended, the media reported on a fan petition to have
Netflix produce a series in the
Avatar universe garnering more than 10,000 signatures only in 2015.
Influence The
A.V. Club and
io9 noted that the live-action TV series
Warrior, for which
NBC ordered a pilot in early 2015, has a premise almost identical to that of
The Legend of Korra: It is to be about "a damaged heroine" who "works undercover with physical and spiritual guidance from a mysterious martial arts master to bring down an international crime lord" in a "contemporary multicultural and sometimes magical milieu". In an interview with
GLAAD's Raina Deerwater,
ND Stevenson, creator of the series
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power talked about queer representation in animation, situating
The Legend of Korra alongside
Steven Universe as an inspiring series that has taught young fans to expect "nothing less than a variety of solid queer representation and central queer characters.". ==Other media==