I dunno, for me they repeatedly showed their lib takes by demonising every form of remotely leftist adjacent ideology and constantly apologised for anything adjacent to the current status quo.

The characters I adored and I loved so much of the show but so much of it felt tainted by the brain rot takes of the show on any of the bad guys ideologies which I thought should have being explored and influenced korra’s growth as the avatar.

Korra is in an industrialised city/world at this point, so we get a “democratic” city where the president constantly holds onto power and leverages that power and the power of the aristocracy to continue to perpetuate inequality despite it being brought up through characters backstories and the homeless we see in the show and that’s never addressed and is considered essentially fine and acceptable despite korra highlighting it several times.

The equalists where imo a ham-fisted lib take on social justice and leftist ideas. The show demonstrated inequality legitimising the arguments of the non benders then apologised and defended that inequality through Korra and when non benders tried to push for more rights they are demonised in the show. Amon is imo a parody of any revolutionary leader and considering this came from an American company i don’t think its unfair to guess what they got their inspiration from and tried to parody. Like if they’d had Korra genuinely learn about the inequality and the failings of the current system and work to fix that I’d have enjoyed it but instead it was “revolutionaries bad” also token evil bad guy because their goals were genuinely understandable so fuck it here’s the most evil character we can think up to make sure you don’t sympathise with them. No nuance.

The “anarchist” guy (while I’m no anarchist) again got a lib treatment by them essentially unfairly parodying anarchist thought through a maniac who again wanted to address the failings of the current status quo and because that would actually be a genuinely sympathetic side in the show they again made him wacky and ludicrously evil to force the viewer to hate him and his ideology when again they could of had korra learn and understand his view points and work to fix the failings while stopping him.

Kuvira and her uprising against the earth kingdom monarchy was imo a very bad faith take on China and the ccp and again they make her a stupidly evil character to justify Korra fighting her despite the fact that kuvira trying to remove a monarchy and bring in a new age for the earth nation is a totally sympathetic goal. Again instead of Korra recognising that monarchies are bad we have the show apologise for and rehabilitate the ridiculous earth kingdom royal line while getting help from the “president” of Republic city to install a new king that is controllable and kind to the aristocracy of Republic city.

Maybe the reason none of that got explored is because as you described, they couldn’t plan ahead for the subsequent seasons (which i didnt know tbf) and we’d have seen more nuance and growth from Korra regarding the world and systems she lives in but I just feel like it was a load of Americans going “communism and leftism is stupid compared to our glorious capitalist democracy so let’s use that as inspiration for all the baddies” and it felt very low key propaganda but maybe I’ve read WAY too much into it.

It was like a marvel movie before marvel movies is I guess what I’m saying.

And all I’d been told was “omg asami and Korra get together at the end” and I was hyped to see some lgbtqi+ representation only for the last scene to be them holding hands going into a portal despite the insane amount of tease and foreshadowing that final season had towards it. Felt very gay baiting without stepping over a line and upsetting the Christians because they could do the whole “just good friends” thing and that wound me up vs say she-ra where they unapologetically had catra and adora kiss. I dunno yeah it was a “different time” but I loved the feminist takes in ATLA so it’s not like that show wasn’t scared to make a point and korra by comparison felt empty and “safe” for consumption by comparison.