Cut out the Suyin/Kuvira ‘relationship’ and nothing really changes, she’ll still be the mustache twirling villain the show needed her to be with her robot laser destruction. It’s sad but they keep failing to develop these characters properly.

Sadly they made her a mustache twirling villain that ended up having an out of control laser canon and ended up being preached at by Korra who’s learned nothing.

ATLA was fortunate to have talented writers, LOK did not.

Pretty much, they turned him into yet another obnoxious comic relief character and added more terrible romance/couples with his character.

Exactly, were they really blinded by everything else not Mako related? Zaheer was still a problematic villain/character who was underdeveloped and the less said about Kuvira and how pathetic they made her in the end with that disappointing climax

I have no idea. I think some of them legitimately believed that Mako was the only thing wrong with LoK. And when he stopped being a major source of the problems after Book 2 a lot of them just suddenly switched to hardcore stanning the show. 

I remember when Makorra broke up at the end of Book 2 and they were all screaming despite the fact that the break up was just as forced and stupid as the relationship itself. I couldn't be happy about it cause even that was poorly written. And then when a few jokes were tossed at Mako in Book 3 they were all celebrating and it was so bad cause they tried to make Mako awkward when he was never awkward like that. 

Pretty much, he’s just 1 of many huge problems in this series and unfortunately many people tend to over look that especially in the last 2 books which were completely overrated.

machuran replied to your post:Are there ways to write Varrick as legitimately...

He could’ve been funny but unfortunately like the other comic reliefs, all they do is obnoxiously shout their dialogues and interrupt other characters and they’re easily interchangeable with each other. Sokka had restraint and character depth.

ATLA had enough time for build up, but it also had talented writers who understood the importance of character build up, there were important character arcs namely Aang/Zuko parallels. There was an actual point, there was actual development/growth.