I kind of think it was their way of tying up the Red Lotus arc without showing it on screen which was the easy way out. But it doesn't bug me that much.

I usually like timeskips :D (Sometimes they have annoyed me tough) and it's really interesting to just see how the characters developed and changed troughout 3 years . Plus you they can always make up mini stories of what happened in between timeskips or fanfiction :D

I don't like it at all. Sure, I like their future designs.... kind of. However, I just feel like it is all sorts of bad writing when a writer feels the need to throw in a time skip to advance the plot. It's just.... lazy. I would have preferred to see them actually changing into adults and GROWING AS CHARACTERS, and I hate all of this "How could you do that to me 3 years ago" crap they are throwing in with Su and Kuvira. Well, maybe if we would have focused on that, we'd be getting a better picture about all of the social and political issues in the avatar-verse. I just hate this muddled clarity we get with this show. Nothing is resolved. We just keep stirring the pot, and hoping we get something good from it.

I was very surprised when I found out, but I think it's an amazing idea. As WinterAmari said, we get to see how much everything changed, and I think that's really creative.