| “ | You think what Avatar Wan did was good? Driving almost all the spirits from this world? The Avatar hasn't brought balance, only chaos. | „ |
| ~ Unalaq trying to justify his actions by saying that Avatar Wan caused nothing but disharmony even though this is exactly what he wants. |
| “ | The evil Unalaq! The diabolical but incredibly boring and unpopular sorcerer from the north! | „ |
| ~ Varrick detailing exactly how everyone remembers Unalaq. |
Unalaq is one of the 4 main antagonists of The Legend of Korra, serving as an unseen antagonist in Book I: Air, one of the 2 main antagonists of Book II: Spirits and the posthumous overarching antagonist of Book III: Change (both along with Vaatu) and a posthumous antagonist in Book IV: Balance.
He is the fanatical and power-hungry younger brother of Tonraq and the uncle of Avatar Korra, who seeks to fuse with the all-mighty spirit of destruction and chaos, Vaatu, to bring forth the end of the world so he can start a new Draconian Age where he rules the world as a god. Unlike other villains in the series except Vaatu, despite his claims, Unalaq is the only without any genuinely good intentions for his evil actions.
He was voiced by Adrian LaTourelle.
What Makes Him a Scrappy?[]
- He is an extremely dull and unmemorable villain to the point some viewers forgot he even existed at all, lacking any of the intimidating presence the other villains, especially his predecessor Amon, and even the villains of the other series like Azula or Ozai had. Unlike many other villains in the series (barring Vaatu, Hou-Ting, and Chou the Elder), Unalaq lacks any of the well-intentioned motivations with legitimate points on how flawed the world is that genuinely wants to fix it their way that made them such compelling villains, and is instead a boring, bland, power-hungry, rotten to the core, cartoonish, and purely evil tyrant with nothing else interesting about him.
- To add salt to the wound, Unalaq initially had a similar set-up but took such a huge 180 that he somehow becomes the most evil person in the world. He was actually meant to be the same well-intentioned extremist that other villains are that made them such compelling characters, who believes the world lacks spiritual harmony and that spirits and humans should coexist, but that is vaguely alluded to and mostly comes off as a preachy and sanctimonious fanatic, and is then drowned out by the fact that his entire endgame is to fuse with a powerful demonic entity after he successfully united both human and spirit worlds to plunge everything into ten thousand years of darkness (that would end up wiping out most, if not all, of humanity and enslaving all of spirit kind) which contradicts the notion of spiritual unity beyond what is believable, especially to the teenage audience the show is geared towards.
- Strangely enough, for a character who writers want to come across as well-intentioned, other characters literally call Unalaq out on his selfish and petulant personality. Varrick says all he cares about is power as an end in and of itself, Korra proceeds to say the exact same thing, and even Zaheer has come to despise him for being such a terrible person.
- To make matters even worse, there are also various times where Unalaq is, at best, a card-carrying supervillain. He makes it obvious that he wants destruction and sorrow for its own sake because he knows full well that he is evil and he loves it and takes deep pride in his own black heart. He commits numerous For The Evulz crimes in pretty much every episode such as scorning the Spirit Glacier Festival for getting people to have fun, telling Eska that Desna is better dead than alive, and condemning Jinora to the Fog of Lost Souls, and he just generally spends the whole season going around spewing Obviously Evil garbage from his lipless cake hole. And as soon as Harmonic Convergence arrives, Unalaq just blatantly abandons all superficial pretenses of meaning well, in his determination to destroy the world in the open alongside Vaatu so that way he can finally bring forth ten thousand years of darkness and evil like he's spent the last two decades sadistically looking forward to and reign as a god over everyone, a god who intends to be as tyrannical as possible, solely for its own sake. To summarize, for being "a well-intentioned extremist", Unalaq repeatedly states in the open that he is a self-aware picaro who just simply loves to be evil.
- If the writers wanted to convey him as a compelling anti-villain, his endgame alone is enough to show they have failed at conveying that properly and any "good intentions" of his are just a flagrant lie.
- As a human, his design is generic. He looks less of a significant character and more of a random background character, and that is excluding how it looks suspiciously similar to the design of both Tarrlok as well as his father Yakone (post-surgery at least).
- His endgame is yet again another generic End of the World scenario in which the stakes feel inflated rather than actually high. A whole lot applies to Unalaq's method of bringing "ten thousand years of darkness" is by wrecking whatever he sees.
- Another huge problem with Unalaq is that he is basically a clone of Ozai (no, not that Ozai) to such unprecedented levels that it is not even funny:
- Their backstory sums up to are the power-hungry second-born of the rulers of one of the four Nations envious of their older brother for their birthright to succeed their father and thus orchestrate a plot to usurp that birthright and be horrible tyrants to their people and a worse one to others.
- Both are the father of a boy and a girl and are terrible ones at that, being emotionally abusive through neglecting at least their daughter (while Unalaq does so to his son as well) and willing to sacrifice the lives of their son (with Ozai actively trying to kill him).
- Both are power-hungry conquerors and war criminals that intend to use a major event that comes less than once per lifetime to lay waste to the world to remake it in their image to satisfy their god complex. They even do this alongside another destructive psychopath, Vaatu and Azula respectively.
- Both of them are brought to their knees by the Avatar following an over-the-top dueling sequence and the Avatar does a very unique specialized bending technique upon them.
- This wouldn't be as huge of an issue if Unalaq had the threat and intimidation that Ozai had in the original show, or at the very least, could give Amon a run for his money. However, due to the above, Unalaq is now seen by the few people who remember him as just Ozai again but without all the intimidation he had.
- The biggest disappointment on Unalaq is how he utterly wastes the entire concept of a Dark Avatar. What one would expect is Unalaq having the ability to bend all four elements like the Light Avatar upon fusing with Vaatu and provide a huge battle of all the four elements for the fate of the world. What we get instead is just a highly spiritually charged waterbender as a lame copout and a painfully generic kaiju battle.
- He isn't even a good foil to Korra to be even a fitting villain to be the Dark Avatar. Unlike Tarrlok and Kuvira, he lacks any major traits that makes him an antithesis to Korra and is instead more of an antithesis to Tenzin so thematically, it just does not fit.
- To clarify, he and Tenzin are leading authorities in their nations, powerful in the spirituality of their element. They are both related to an Avatar. Tenzin lacks a connection to the spirits while Unalaq did. Unalaq had low regard for his family and was willing to use them as pawns or betray them wherein Tenzin truly loves and cares for his family and is protective of them. They also mentored Korra, but wheras Unalaq used her for his own ends that included her destruction, Tenzin guided her so she could be the best Avatar she could be and live up to her potential. If Tenzin was willing to unleash Vaatu to restore airbending and ignore it was because of Harmonic Convergence, he would be just like Unalaq; if Unalaq cared for his children and wanted to spread his influence by earning respect instead of wreaking havoc, he would be just like Tenzin.
- He isn't even a good foil to Korra to be even a fitting villain to be the Dark Avatar. Unlike Tarrlok and Kuvira, he lacks any major traits that makes him an antithesis to Korra and is instead more of an antithesis to Tenzin so thematically, it just does not fit.
- Unalaq's strategizing is questionable at best. As soon as he has Korra's trust, he smashes it by directly endangering her father, and when she renounces him as her mentor, he naively convinces himself that a little bit of waterbending can open the portals single-handedly. Desna said it himself: dark spirits spent a hundred and fifty lifetimes trying to accomplish just that to no avail, but such logic comes nowhere close to working on him. The same rings true when Desna points out that he has successfully brought back the spirits, but once again, he reprimands his teenage son for daring to ask logical questions. And he frequently flip-flops between needing Korra for opening the Northern Spirit Portal and not needing here, with him telling her to her face he doesn't need her, and then in the next episode he suddenly tells Desna he needs her, making him come across as grabbing the idiot ball and unable to make up his mind.
- While Vaatu is a base-breaking character regarding if he feels like an actually threatening villain, Unalaq is unanimously regarded as the worst villain in the series. All the other The Legend of Korra villains (except for Vaatu) being approved as Magnificent Baddies certainly does not help his case.
- Unalaq was so hated that the creators outright acknowledge this in the show, with an entire comedy segment in Varrick's far from true recap of Book Two: Spirits having him described in a very unflattering way by the latter and ditched from all the main villains (except Kuvira for obvious reasons) for how much of a lame villain he was received as.
Trivia[]
- Unalaq is one of six characters in the Avatar franchise to be a Scrappy, with the others being the live-action movie versions of Aang, Katara, Sokka, Ozai, and Zuko.
- He is the only animated character to qualify.
- Unalaq's poor writing has infamously caused him to be an accidental Pure Evil rather than an actual anti-villain.
- Due to his crime of conspiring with Vaatu, leaving his own son to die, falsely damning an innocent little girl simply for its own sake, mutilating his own niece, ravaging a spirit forest just so he can be Chief, trying to remake the world in his image, and cutting off all of the past avatars including Aang himself, Unalaq became one of the most (if not the most) hated characters in the Avatar franchise. This cements him as the most evil despite Ozai also appearing in the franchise, who nearly equals his sadism, making him even more treacherous, foul, and disgusting than the execrable Fire Lord. That said, he would be an utterly quintessential Hate Sink if Word of God didn't state him as an anti-villain despite all evidence to the contrary, just like Femto.
External Links[]
- Unalaq on the Villains Wiki
- Unalaq on the Pure Evil Wiki
- Unalaq on the Avatar Wiki
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 Scrappies
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Animated Films Live-Action Films The Last Airbender Other Live-Action Television Animated Television Hey Arnold! SpongeBob SquarePants The Loud House/The Casagrandes Other Shorts Fanon Peppa Pig Others See Also | ||
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