I was just grumping about it on Twitter, so

I have various issues w/ Noatak and Tarrlok's end, but one that I've been thinking about lately is ... uh, does anyone actually know they're dead?

I mean, they blew themselves up. (Okay, Tarrlok blew them up and Noatak went along with it. Anyway.) Not to be morbid, but it doesn't seem probable that they left recognizable corpses behind. As far as anyone else knows, they just up and left, and apparently that's fine.

IDK, it seems like everyone is pretty relaxed about a world-class bloodbender remaining at large as long as he's out of Republic City specifically. And they couldn't even know that Tarrlok left with him voluntarily. They had more immediate problems to deal with, sure. But on the extremely rare occasions when Noatak is mentioned after, it's vaguely as a problem that's been dealt with, even though he's presumably out there and nobody except maybe Korra would be able to recognize him.

Ultimately, it seems like the purpose of the murder-suicide was to resolve their arcs and write them out of the show (by contrast to the major ramifications set off by Unalaq's, Zaheer's, and Kuvira's actions), but in-world, it doesn't really matter whether they lived or died. :\