Suyin - Blog Posts
People always say they want complex characters. They ask for nuance, for gray areas, for emotional depth and realistic growth. But when a character starts feeling too real, so much so that they stop acting like someone in a story and start feeling like someone you could actually meet – that's when the discomfort kicks in. That's when admiration often turns into criticism. And very few in The Legend of Korra walks that tightrope quite like Suyin Beifong.
Su doesn’t follow the typical “lesson of the week” formula. She doesn’t get handed a tidy moment of reckoning, followed by an instant transformation. Her arc isn’t flashy or obvious. It’s slow, subtle, and sometimes contradictory. Just like real people. Because the truth is, most of us don’t change overnight. We grow a little here, slip back there. We learn something, but that doesn’t mean we always apply it in every situation. That’s Suyin in a nutshell.
Look at how she changes as a mother. At first, she tries to micromanage Opal’s choices out of fear, mostly, and a need to protect her. But eventually, she lets Opal go and lets her live her life without trying to control her path. That’s a win. That’s real growth. But then Baatar Jr. betrays the family, and Su reacts by putting him under house arrest. It’s easy to point at that and call it hypocrisy, but that misses the bigger picture. Her deepest fears for her kids came true with Baatar, and so, of course, she tries to regain some kind of control in the aftermath. And yet, she doesn’t try to rope Opal back in. She lets her stay free. That shows her earlier growth wasn’t erased, just complicated by pain.
This is the part people tend to ignore. They rush to call her a hypocrite without stopping to think about what hypocrisy really is. People are full of contradictions. We want conflicting things. We act on emotion. We stumble. We grow unevenly. No one is morally consistent all the time. Su isn’t some moral failure she’s just human. And that’s what unsettles people. They want characters who get what’s coming to them or learn the “right” lesson. But Su doesn’t fit into that framework. She just keeps going, flaws and all.
That’s also what makes her so compelling. She’s not a straightforward hero or a satisfying villain. She’s a complicated woman trying to balance power, family, control, and identity in ways that are messy and real. When people critique her, it’s often not because she doesn’t make sense, but because she makes too much sense.
She’s too familiar. Too human.
Everyone says they want nuanced characters... until they’re faced with someone like Suyin. Someone who holds up a mirror. And when that reflection hits a little too close to home, people tend to look away. But it’s in that raw honesty where her character really shines.
Now that’s interesting: Su rebuilt the domes of Zaofu. I always thought Kuvira’s order to dismantle the domes was a very important symbolic act. While her order was a practical directive to acquire enough refined platinum to build her mech, it also illustrated a fundamental difference between Suyin and Kuvira. Su’s concern was always to maintain Zaofu as a personal fiefdom separate from the Earth Kingdom. The city was built in a valley and each district had its own dome to isolate it from both the outside world and its neighbors. By contrast, Kuvira saw Zaofu as a model for how the EK could become a modern multinational "nation” that Su kept for herself. By dismantling the domes, Kuvira not only asserted her ownership of Zaofu, she also broke down the barriers that Su had erected to isolate Zaofu from the EK. To spread the gospel of Zaofu to the rest of the EK, Zaofu needed to come out of its shell and join the EK as a city like Omashu or Ba Sing Se. Seeing the domes rebuilt makes me feel that Su ultimately didn’t learn anything from her experiences in Book 4, and her main concern after returning home was to put everything back to the way it was and pretend the last four years never happened...which is a very Su thing to do. Unless, of course, this is a flash back, in which case disregard all that I have written. (Gonna tag @coppermarigolds and @the-moon-avatar in this post for funsies.)
The metalbending city of Zaofu, from The Legend of Korra: Ruins of the Empire Part Two.
I have to admit, I liked the conceit of Suyin being on the side of our heroes despite not actually being a good person herself, but I feel like the Suyin/Kuvira conflict was mishandled, in large part because Bryke couldn’t decide whether Kuvira was a well-intentioned hardliner who went a little too far in places or Hitler with geomancy powers. The way I see it, when Suyin refused to take any role in stabilizing the Earth Kingdom, she essentially threw away Zaofu’s one chance to influence events in the civil conflict(s) and left its fate to the whims of chance. By the time Book 4 rolled around the question was not if, but when Zaofu would be annexed. Even so, I’d argue that Kuvira considered Zaofu to be the spiritual home for the new modernized Earth Empire she wished to create, and as such may have been prepared to offer a sweetheart deal to Zaofu in exchange for its peaceful entry into the empire. Of course, if they when with that deal, Suyin wouldn’t be top dog of her own little modernist fiefdom, so Suyin attacked Kuvira under cover of truce, placing the safety of her citizens and their accomplishments in jeopardy because her pride had been stung. And this would have been great, dramatic stuff if Bryke had acknowledged it! Have Kuvira annex Zaofu, but have Korra and gang hold Suyin responsible for escalating the conflict. Heck, have her escape with them, then have them worry about the repercussions of their actions on Kuvira’s strategic goals, the United Republic’s diplomatic relationship to the Earth Empire, and with whatever the hell Suyin’s doing with the anti-imperial exile groups in Republic City. But instead of that, Bryke made Suyin the victim, Kuvira the tyrant, and we ended the show with a giant mech with a death laser. If there’s one thing Korra taught me about writing stories, it’s this: if you want to be political, commit to your premise. Consider the implications, and follow them through. If you pull up and settle for half-measures, you’ll make a farce of the whole thing.
She was more than that. She was like a daughter to me. I took her in when she was eight years old and nourished her talents. Kuvira was smart, a natural leader, and quickly rose through the ranks. I saw myself in her.