In a very interesting piece published by The Hollywood Reporter, Legend of Korra creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko share five things you didn’t know about their new show (which premiered yesterday!).

Quotage from this article:

4. We had created the character of the next Avatar after Aang in late November of 2009, but we had a hard time settling on a name for her. And this proved to be a really tough one. We already had a certain sound to the Water Tribe names, like Katara and Sokka, lots of “a” and “k” sounds, but we just couldn’t find something that we both agreed upon. Mike and I went on a landscape photography trip in February of 2010, right before we moved back into the Nickelodeon studios to begin working on the new series in earnest, and we still didn’t have a name. We arrived at the eco-lodge where we would be taking the photo workshop all week, and the owner showed us inside and introduced us to his dog, Cora. My ears perked up and I immediately said to Mike, “That’s the name!” Thankfully, Mike thought so too. It is nice and simple, has the benefit of being a “real world” name, and with a spelling tweak, Korra fits right in with our established Water Tribe culture.

5. The idea for Pro Bending developed even before we came up with the character of Korra. Between Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, we had an idea for an Avatar story that took place prior to the Hundred Year War where the best of the world’s benders of all four elements competed against each other in an arena setting. Once we got into developing the 1920s vibe of Republic City in Korra, that old idea resurfaced and evolved into Pro Bending, a boxing-like spectacle that would be the most popular sport of the era. Instead of having benders of individual elements versus each other, we thought having teams of water, earth, and fire would be a great way to illustrate that the United Republic is a melting pot compared to how divided the cultures were in Aang’s time. And the sporting aspect provided us a way to evolve and modernize the styles of bending for some fun variations on the concept in this new series.

What did you think of the two episodes that premiered yesterday? 1×03 ‘The Revelation’ airs this Saturday on Nick.