Avatar: The Legend of Korra

I'm still squeeing about this.

“The Legend of Korra takes place 70 years after the events of ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ and follows the adventures of the Avatar after Aang - a passionate, rebellious, and fearless teenaged girl from the Southern Water Tribe named Korra.”

Korra’s quest eventually leads her to Republic City - the epicenter of the world of “Avatar.” A metropolis powered by steampunk-type technology, the city is inhabited by people from all nations. Korra finds that Republic City suffers from rampant crime and is also dealing with an anti-bender revolt. Korra is tutored by Aang’s son, Tenzin, is the ways of airbending."

Interesting things I'm looking forward to:

1. New set design. Seventy years means a lot of technological advances. The designers did such a terrific job painting the Avatar world that adding more steampunk to it might detract from the beautiful traditional Asian setting, but considering how awesome some of the sets look, I'm not too worried.

2. Korra. The new Avatar will likely be taking a more traditional path towards training for her career. And considering the bulk of the ATLA audience have been women ages 14-40 (and older!), it will be very interesting to see where the series takes the viewers in what was previously a primarily boys 9-12 viewership.

More specifically, I want to know:

a) What will Korra's spirit guide be? (Roku had a dragon, Aang had Appa...)

b) Will she Bloodbend? (Please say yes.)

c) What nation will her love interest be from? I'm voting fire...because I bet Bryan and Mike are going to squeeze that Zutara in somehow... And yes, don't doubt for a minute that there won't be a romance subplot. Teenage female Avatar? It begs for a YA romance.

3. Tenzin. It's terrific we'll get to see the next generation carry on, an important theme in the ATLA universe. Considering our happy little Airbender would have died at age 83 (the series ends when he's about 13), I can only imagine Aang's son being adult-aged: heck, he could be an old man or, if Aang was particularly virile, a teenager himself. Will he take after his father? Will he resent the fact that he has to contend with yet another Avatar? Will he resent and brood over the fact that he is one of the last Airbenders? (Or is he...?)

4. Whatever happened to...? Everyone still has questions about Zuko's mom, about the Spirit World, about all our favorite characters. Perhaps a few flashbacks will resolve those issues and satisfy our curiosity.

2011 can't come soon enough, and it'll probably be late in arriving...that's okay, though. I waited 3 years for the Shyamalan movie, I'll wait however long I need to to wash its taint with this glorious new series.