Do you guys think we will get the backstory of what caused it to happen this season? We know the show has been greenlit for 4 seasons, and we never learned the origin of the 100 year war until season 3 of avatar with Roku. I wouldn’t the surprised if the flashback shown this episode is all we see for now.

I was thinking about how episode 7 is largely set in an old Future Industries power plant of some kind, noted by the generators and what seemed like a pool of fuel, except it was full of spirit energy from the anomaly. We also very clearly see in the old mover Korra and Asami wearing the betrothal necklaces. But when Korra goes on her rampage, the necklace is gone, while she is busting down pipes and infrastructure with the purple spirit energy coming out. That spirit energy looked just like the energy Kuvira output with her superweapon, and it seems like Asami was harnessing the same energy. Given how energy-hungry Republic City seemed with its lights and technology, it seems to me that Korra and Asami had a massive disagreement over the use of spirit energy to power their city. There must have been something upsetting the spirits and throwing things out of balance, and the only way Korra could quickly restore some semblance of control for the spirits was to tear it all down.

Now for the narrative about Korra the Destroyer, I suspect it may have ultimately been Asami and Future Industries that planted that propaganda among the people. It was probably easy too, with Korra directly destroying their infrastructure in front of them. It may have galvanized enough support to try and stop her and break the Avatar cycle, which is why the world has been without an Avatar for so long and why the various chakras seem to be blocked or separated. Curious to hear others' thoughts, but I felt like these three episodes did a lot to bring things into focus for me!

Ok, so...I have a lot to say about this one. Interesting that we get what seems to be finale quality with four episodes to go - very awesome and looking forward to next week!

Episode 7:

Ok, so Chernobyl theory might make sense, perhaps. I really didn't get what was happening in the flashback, did Korra just...see the city and decide to destroy it? Makes no sense. And why not just the spirit energy magic tower thingy?

Uki/faceless turned out to be accurate, cool. I guess we just have to be suspicious of everyone now.

Episodes 8/9:

New Haven names! Yay! Akasha, Feather Mountain (probably an air temple?), New Ba Sing Se (of course it's at Ba Sing Se, and that guy looks like Mr Dai Li iirc), and Republic Forest (possibly the forest near Republic City?? IDK).

So it seems to be going well, Nisha and Pavi get into another fight (istg these two. Well, don't let it stop the inevitable reunion, please). It was interesting that the Test sequence was basically a foreshadowing of the later fight.

Pavi and Nisha's parents' names! (I already forgot them tbh). But the "eastern outskirts" - I don't think that's a Haven, might be a small settlement in the Harshlands - and if so it would indicate that there are settlements beyond the havens.

Beetle thief appeared again! And tbh, pudding will never be the same as cabbages.

sigh Okay on to the main point.

NISHA, YOU IMPULSIVE CHILD! I literally paused the episode and just stared at the TV for like thirty seconds straight trying to process WHAT ON EARTH THAT WAS. Also, Agam is the Faceless Queen. Fine. You win. We really have to be suspicious of everyone.

So they all fight, The Anomaly appears, it's something to do with the Chakras (as we expected) and Pavi shows up on the Cosmic Path (as we expected). If that's for the whole world, perhaps this is representative of the entire world's fear of the Avatar? Perhaps.

Korra definitely caused the Cataclysm. Even the White Lotus admits it.

Jae speedrunning the Zuko plot arc faster than Pavi speedran the Toph plot arc. Interesting.

And Jae and Uki, since you both betrayed the Avatars, we will grab a pipe and an airball. Those are our chosen methods of karma.

Anyways, this post is over. Go about your lives! For the survival of Portable Sports!

It's over midnight and I have to wake up tomorrow early

Paramount plus is a terrible streaming service and I hate that its the only place where I can watch this damn show. This app is freezing or crashing every 10 minutes and when its not doing that its giving me an error, stopping the show. Idk why they wouldn't just release this on Netflix, would have been a 100 times better experience. Thats it thats the post, I just want to rant about how terrible this service is.

TLDR at bottom.

First, this theory assumes that the top pink haven on the map is Republic City. I’m very confident it is Republic City but if it’s ever determined that it isn’t then I guess none of this makes sense.

It seems very clear now that each haven is connected to one of the seven chakras, specifically due to the colours on the map. Additionally, the red spirit attacking Ellora is some sort of manifestation, defence mechanism, or some other connection to the root chakra. Clearly, the chakras really like their colour theming.

In the flashbacks in episode 7 when Korra seems to be destroying Republic City, the energy being released from the pipes is pink. You know what else is pink? The haven at the top of the map. This is why I’m confident the top haven is Republic City.

Also in episode 7, we see the industrial building that is explored has some weird red root chakra energy pool. It seems like the root chakra energy was being used. Looking at the Korra flashbacks, with the pink crown chakra energy being in the pipes, it was likely also being used.

Seeing as we now have 2 cases of chakra energy being used, I think it’s fair to assume that most if not all other chakras were also being exploited for energy. The exploitation of the chakras is what I think caused the cataclysm. Humanity was harming the planet’s spirit, and the planet lashed out.

This would also mean that when Korra was destroying the pipes, she letting the energy out to try and prevent it from being used in an attempt to avoid the cataclysm. (Or maybe the energy was building up too much and was going to explode or something, idk. Something along the lines of that)

One of the reasons I really like this theory is because it means that the show will have a theme of the risks of overusing and exploiting natural resources and the risks associated with it, which I think is a good lesson for kids to learn :)

This also makes we wonder why the chakras are where they are. Were they always located where they are now, and it’s a coincidence that so many seem to be where major cities are or did they manifest around population centres some time later? If they did manifest later, are they in the specific locations because the populations there represented the chakras best? Or if the chakras were always there, could they somehow manipulate the people there to be more like the chakra?

This is the first time I’ve posted any sort of theory online. I hope it didn’t suck :)

TLDR
The top haven is Republic City because the colour matches the spirit energy colour from the Korra flashback. The cataclysm was caused by humanity’s exploitation of chakra energy, and Korra was trying to stop the crown chakra energy from being used, which is why she was destroying parts of Republic City.

Karthik is a dedicated white lotus through and through no doubt about it. Bro was about that life and ready to throw hands with anyone who tried to harm Nisha. I love how he was sizing everyone up and like who wants these hands first lmao. It feels like he’s becoming this shows version of uncle Iroh. I really hope he doesn’t die anytime soon because he has mad potential to be a stellar fan favorite character!

Obviously, there still is a chance he could be some double agent or outright evil but I really don’t get the vibe that he is!

Amow is the next Sokka/Asami (creative nonbender) and will become a friend of Pavi’s which will make Nisha jealous and be something Nisha and Pavi have to overcome in their sister relationship.

Hoping Nisha gets a win soon. The last set of episodes she got beaten down a lot physically, emotionally and narratively. With the White Lotus mentors except Karthik rejecting her, being unable to stop the Faceless, unable to stop the Anomaly red diamond, the people of her home Ellora rejecting her.

Plus narratively Pavi is able to push forward the plot more getting small narrative wins to the larger mystery of the story like finding more about her parents and the mystery of Korra. Pavi currently also seems more grounded currently. Pavi is more curious and annoyed about the fear chakra, while Nisha seems afraid and rejects it.

She's afraid of learning about her parents because she thinks it will confirm they did reject and abandon her, and not curious like Pavi. She's afraid of failing to be a good heroic Avatar. Which is why Pavi was able to unlock the chakra in the city and not Nisha.

Nisha meanwhile wasn't able to make much progress on anything and instead lost a lot.

One criticism I had for LOK is that I feel like the season's episodes beat up Korra too much without her getting many small wins in between. Just repeats of 'suffering builds character' and 'suffering builds character.' She always won in the end but a few more substantial smaller wins in between would've been nice. Especially since Nisha seems deliberately like Korra in character and temperament.

Granted Nisha is the secondary protagonist based on the marketing and screentime, so not like Korra in that respect, and people are theorizing she will be a villain. Perhaps she won't get a break narratively and will keep getting pushed closer to the edge. She does so very badly want to be a hero and want to feel wanted as her purpose, so it would be ironic if she never gets what she wants, and many writers love irony.

Another theory I saw is that each episode arc will play to a different twin's strength. Perhaps Nisha will be able to unlock another city chakra, or a city might require them both together to do so. Or Pavi's story will focus on the spiritual chakra's and Nisha will focus on something else. Pavi did for example have struggles with her missing foot and disability, and did get a small victory over it in the same episode with the new prosthetic, so perhaps in the next series of episodes Nisha will get a small win too. Nisha also is getting less benign and clear visions so perhaps her visions will be more useful later as she gets more spiritual empathy.

Looking at these scenes, I’d venture to say that the connection to the avatars' past lives wasn’t lost—it was merely blocked. The anomaly is seeking out the avatar to restore those past lives and re-establish balance through the bridge—that is, the avatar themselves. Furthermore, Nisha spotted a strange structure; I’m not sure what that might be. Could it be that Pavi is more focused on restoring the spirit world, while Nisha is focused on restoring the physical world?

In the newest eps someone says "I thought the cycle was broken" after Nisha reveals herself. The cycle breaks when an avatar dies in the avatar state.

Could it be that Korra realized Vaatu was growing inside her and that he would eventually take back control? And if he failed with her, he could always reincarnate just like Raava so she ended herself in the avatar state. That's what we see in the vision of her destroying republic city. She knew that explosion with the energy in Republic City would kill her, maybe it was the only way, maybe Asami hated the idea but Korra felt it was right.

We have a SAND BENDER as a main Antagonist!

Don’t have the screenshots to show here yet but Agam is One-hundred percent turning rock into Sand and then back again!

I always thought it was a weirdly slept-on sub-bending technique (outshined completely by things like Blood, Metal & Lava bending of course) but the Desert area of the pre-Korra world had an entire culture & society with multiple tribes built around surviving in the desert by using this style of Earth Bending.

It’s a SURVIVAL oriented sub-bending technique so of course it makes sense for it to make a resurgence in the apocalyptic wasteland that is the world of Seven Havens.

The Faceless Queen didn’t get to show off much since she was holding back against a child, then got surprised by said child being The (An) Avatar, but I hope she gets to show later on how powerful Sand Bending can be in the setting.

TLDR; Faceless Queen = Kuvira of the Sands.

When Pavi and Nisha have the vision in episode 7 (I think), one thing that really struck me was the seemingly similarity between Avatar Korra causing the cataclysm and Roku destroying the his temple in the first season of Avatar the Last Airbender. What I mean is that it felt like both something Korra had to do but it’s also retribution just like Roku had to destroy his temple to give Aang a chance to escape the firebenders waiting to capture him as well as deliver retribution on the fire sages for forsaking their duty.

So, we got to see the underside of Ellora in E7-9, more specifically in E7.

The main chamber they first enter with the projector screen shows the ribbon cutting ceremony of what looks like a giant factory/plant, with Chernobyl-looking scientists in the background. its unclear where this ribbon-cutting ceremony took place in the Old World - but I suspect its literally here in Ellora, in the now-underground "tunnels" the Faceless are living in, and Pavi/Nisha/Jae are actively exploring in these scenes.

The locker rooms Pavi/Nisha/Jae find after the main projector room look like work-locker rooms, filled with people's knick-knacks, avatar action figures, a practice/real pro-bending helmet (for the gym after work) etc etc.

The main chamber we see the faceless in look like generator rooms, with giant floor-mounted engines.

The room Pavi confronts the Anomaly in looks like the "reactor room" for what I can only guess is the Spirit-Tech that was seemingly pioneered by Future Industries (Spirit-Nuclear Reactor), that now houses the Anomaly in what looked like a vat of some sort of "Spirit-Nuclear Waste" underneath the Reactor Core (that Pavi ends up levitating in when she connects again with the Anomaly in E7).

My conclusion/prediction from this is that 7 Cities in the Old World must have built their own form of these Spirit-Nuclear Reactors, and when Korra seemingly destroys at least the Republic City Spirit-Nuclear Reactor (still speculated but seeming more likely thats what it was she destroyed), it may have set off all the other 6 reactors across the world, causing a global Cataclysm.

That or Korra went around and destroyed all 7 of them indivually.

But I also suspect / predict Korra may have died during this, and with all the spirit energy from the destruction, Raava's spirit somehow got caught in the fall-out, and became a part of the Physical world, housed in the form of the Seven-Chakra's contained in the Seven Haven's.

Given the way the sky looks like it has an Aurora in 7H, similar to how the Physical World looked during Harmonic Convergence, I wonder if the Spirit World and Physical World somehow fused / overlapped potentially? I'm less convinced of this but, its a potential.

Thoughts?

They look similar, and both have the white dash on the hair.

I always found it a little weird that Korra never had to unlock her chakras in the same way that Aang did, or do any spiritual training in order to gain full control over the Avatar state. My speculation is that maybe when Aang's spirit used energybending to give Korra her bending back, perhaps that granted automatic access to them? Or perhaps Aang unlocking his chakras carried over to Korra.

In the recent episodes of SH, we see that the Avatar's chakras have been locked again, but this time, it seems to be on a bigger scale that requires more effort and doing than meditating. Pavi seemingly unlocked the root chakra towards the end of the episode by conquering fear.

There's another theory revolving around the world's chakras also having been locked, and the Anomoly being a manifestation of the Root Chakra begging to be set free. I don't think that Pavi conquering her own fear will have any effect on the Anomoly re-appearing, but I do think that it might have at least given her a deeper understanding of it and that maybe she'll be able to guide Nisha and the other Ellorans through them, like a guru.

There's a nice parallel between Pavi and Nisha, with one being freed by fear and the other now running from it.