The plot for season 3 of lok very easily could’ve been “Red Lotus Society was actually secretly backed by the White Lotus so that Korra’s parents would finally agree to raising her in the compound and basically giving the White Lotus complete control over a new avatar they can mold to be perfectly obedient to their goals and part of the Red Lotus’ motivation in season 3 is also getting back at the people who they discovered were both their mysterious benefactors who set them up for failure” with practically no change to the plot
however that would probably necessitate dealing with the White Lotus being at least a B plot in season 4 (or even replacing the Kuvira storyline), which is already a pretty packed season, and I don’t know if that would make season 4 better or worse. To not mess with Korra’s recovery storyline too much (best part of season 4 imo) Korra would probably have to find out about this sometime after her recovery. Maybe at the very end of the season (before the wedding epilogue) but this is the kind of thing that needs to be dealt with with subtly and patience and Korra and Asami would definitely have time for their spirit world vacation before planning their next steps. Then season 5/the comics could’ve been dealing with the White Lotus (I haven’t read the comics but from what I heard this has the potential to be better than the storyline they actually went with). Maybe it could be revealed that the White Lotus society murdered Sokka once he started voicing concerns over the amount of control they have over Korra (the others were all too busy with their own things to realize just how tight the iron grip the White Lotus had on Korra was)
It pretty much is canon to me that the White Lotus jumped on the opportunity to have complete control over the Avatar and used the Red Lotus’ attempted kidnapping as a convenient excuse. This would just be taking things one step further (The White Lotus of Yangchen’s era definitely would’ve been more than willing to orchestrate a harmless, fake kidnapping if that meant furthering their interests “for the greater good”) and im lowkey vibing with the ‘Sokka was murdered by White Lotus’ headcanon that I literally just thought of for this post
