Which is why the bandits get shuffled off to some division of her army that's not in contact with the "legitimate" parts of it. Heck, for all we know, as soon as the train pulls out of sight, they go right back into the hills and wait to ambush the next one.

No, she did that because Bolin and the others were watching and it wouldn't go over well if they knew she was the one giving the bandits orders. It was all a big charade for the sake of keeping her double-dealing under wraps. At least, if RelapsedCt's theory is right, which I'm leaning toward. It's protection-racket…

It also meant they wouldn't yell out something like, "Break off, everyone, it's the boss!" for everyone else to hear.

Assuming they were "new" recruits. The theory posited elsewhere in the comments is that they were working for her already, and the performance she put on was just a charade to keep her "legit" staff in the dark.

I'm going to take exception to the reviewer's complaint that the episode didn't have much of Korra in it. This has always been an ensemble show, and the ensemble's gotten bigger with every season. It takes time to catch up on what they're all doing.

Yeah. And looking at it from a narrative point of view, Kuvira is being presented with the kind of ruthlessness that, combined with her working with a known ex-villain (Varrick), her biggest heroic supporter being an easily-fooled schmuck who wants to believe, and her opposition to characters we know are both…

That would make her decision to go take them on alone make more sense. You don't generally have the boss come out and waste her time to clean up the riff-raff; that's what the soldiers are for. At the time I watched it, I read her speech to mean that even the bandits were just afraid of her, but it makes more sense…

The thing that's always puzzled me is how sandbenders do it. They don't even bend air, they bend sand around in a dust devil. How does that push their craft forward?

I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else make the comparison yet, but it looks like Rollins is playing Zaheer as a sort of viciously amoral Kwai-Chang Caine. Really zen and detached, like that Guru Lahima he idolizes.

I don't think it's a matter of quiet menace, but more of zen detachment, like that Guru Lahima he so idolizes. As I've said upthread, Rollins seems to be playing this character like a viciously amoral Kwai-Chang Caine.

I get the feeling Avatar Kyoshi is going to be rolling in her grave, or at least complaining a lot from wherever she is now that Korra's lost her link to them. This is EXACTLY the kind of thing that caused her to create the Dai Li in the first place, only a lot more successfully executed.

Right. Zaheer isn't being "wooden," he's being zen. He's basically an amoral Kwai-Chang Caine.

By way of "Heart of Darkness".

The thing is that with Aiwei doing the interrogation, anyone he questioned could have been in on it. Su could very well have been in on it. (Which seems very likely given that she just sent Team Avatar out against a band of thugs who they needed the help of the whole Beifongs and the city guard to even stalemate…

Either way, I expect the question will probably be settled next time fans have a chance to ask Bryan and Kevin questions about the show. Perhaps it will come up at their ComicCon panel.

Regardless, I expect it'll be cleared up in the next fan interview with Bryan or Kevin. "Did the Earth Queen REALLY eat Bosco?" will probably be the first thing they ask.

Oh, come on. Real life or not, we've already SEEN how not everything people "heard" is accurate in the Avatarverse.

He said he heard she ate the bear. Even if he wasn't lying about that, it's easy to imagine just what kind of wild rumors have grown up around that tyrant of a queen.

I would think that, in favor of keeping everything standard, they'd go to a 4 vs 4 format all around. If you suddenly have the possibility of nonstandard teams, you get the possibility of a rock-paper-scissors mismatch, where one combination might be more powerful than the rest. Forcing everyone to have the same…

My suspicion is that by the end of the season, Tenzin is going to realize that the old Air Nomad culture is gone for good, and he can't impose it unwillingly on airbenders from the new world. It's just taking him a while to reach that aesop.