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Avatar Kuruk:  Failure or Retcon?

WARNING:  Minor Spoilers for the Kyoshi Novels.  

Avatar Kuruk was the Water Tribe Avatar before Korra and is considered by many to be a failure of an Avatar.  He was brash and was more interested in personal pleasure than keeping balance.  

The recent Kyoshi novels explain that Kuruk wasn’t a failure.  Rather, he spent his life fighting dark spirits which most people were unaware of.  The Kyoshi novels suggest that he was a good avatar even though public opinion was very much against him.  

However, this new information feels like a retcon to me for one specific reason:  

Everything we know about Kuruk doesn’t come from a third party account, it comes from Kuruk himself.  

Other than the novels, our info on Kuruk comes from the season 2 “Escape from the Spirit World” game, and the episode 319.  Kuruk himself recounts that he wasn’t the best Avatar and spent most of his time goofing off.  

However, if Kuruk wanted to explain he wasn’t a complete failure, then he had apple time to do so.  Plus, as our main source of info he had full controlled how the fans viewed him.  

I do not think the dark spirits were an original part of his character.  I think it was a much later addition after dark spirits were introduced in Korra.  I believe this retcon existed because Bryke didn’t want fans to think Kuruk was a total failure.  

But a retcon is still a retcon.  

And not all Avatars did a good job.