Zaheer's role in this season has been that of the spiritually attuned mysterious and somewhat threatening dispenser of arcane wisdom.

The best way to write a compelling female character….

"Least constructive possible" seems a little extreme. Suboptimal, sure, but "least constructive manner possible" has quite a lot of candidates.

Given Toph's style of story-telling, we can't be sure if poor Kanto is even still alive, or was still alive during Lin's childhood….

Certainly that deathball would have meant that Zaheer would not have been able to get close to Korra at all with any of those slicing attacks he used effectively in the fight. The air part of that ball really looks like an absolutely impenetrable defensive shield. Not sure if she would have been able to keep up with…

We also cannot say for certain that Azula's lightning was worse than Mako's.

It wouldn't be easy. But if one follows the pattern of how things go in real life (and TLK does often try to in this regard) of how innovations arise and spread, once the knowledge of that it *can* be done spreads, even if it is baffling in the begging, once even the tiniest details about how gets out (ie it was done…

Their goals could be the purest of the pure, but when their proximate means to those goals are murder, blackmail, and the kidnapping of children, and the secondary mechanism is anarchy, riots, looting and civil unrest, it flat out doesn't matter what they actually want.

I always thought the brief flash as a momentary entrance into the Avatar state to gain some insight/wisdom from the previous Avatars on what to do/how to do it, and then they leave the Avatar state and do what has to be done with their own, normal, power.

The traditional Chinese 5 elements (as opposed to the Western 4) were Water, Earth, Fire, Metal and Wood.

I dispute your characterization that Korra suffered a defeat here, temporary or otherwise. She won. It's just that she had to pay a high price for that victory.

I have this sneaky suspicion that a fully realized Avatar who still had access to the wisdom of the past avatars would call up the Avatar who lived at the same time as Guru Lahima and learn immediately the secret to neutralizing that flying ability with the ice-blob-on-the-leg ploy, do it immediately, and curbstomp.

Perhaps. But Zuko was not soaking wet at the time…

Not so surprising now that he fathered an Avatar, is it?

The dramatic tension was tighter in this one because the fight throughout was closer. Aang vs Ozai was two phases, the first of which was Ozai curbstomping Aang, and the second of which was Aang curbstomping Ozai. But with this fight it was like the tables could turn either way at any moment.

Perhaps. But Lightningbending is a facet of Firebending, and you don't see too many Firebenders spontaneously figure out how to lightningbend without having someone else who already knows how teach it to them….

If she still had the Avatar connection she could go Avatar State and let Aang take over and do it, I suppose.

You know it is actually possible that their spirits might make an appearance in the future in the spirit world….

For all his preparation and research, he obviously didn't read the classified Earth Kingdom report from that one general who tried to force Aang into the Avatar State. The one that ends with "DO NOT REPEAT." on the last page…

Well, in many ways the Airbenders do fly. They are moving the air around their gliders to create lift, which is self-powered flight (since they are powering the air currents with their bending).