Weeks after its release, Avatar: The Way of Water is still swimming in fresh box office returns. James Cameron’s legacy for long-tailed releases lives to embarrass his skeptics another day!
And now that Cameron’s finished conquering the aquatic world, it looks like Avatar is ready to play with fire. In a recent interview, the director revealed that, among other creatures sure to come, Avatar 3 will feature evil fire-oriented Na’vi called “Ash People.” But that’s just the tip of the volcano. Here, for your perusal, are some very real and definitely not made-up spoilers for Avatar 3.
(Heads up, however—this post does contain some actual spoilers from Avatar: The Way of Water.)
Payakan finds out that Spider saved Colonel Miles Rick Quaritch, belly flops him to death.
You heard it here first: Spider’s toast.
It’s no secret that the teen boys of Cameron’s world are really shitty. Often, they’re shitty in the most mundane ways possible. But by the end of The Way of Water, Spider finds a way to be uniquely awful and drags the almost-drowned Quaritch out of the water and onto a rock, where he leaves him to… well, I’m not sure what Spider hoped would happen next. To say he left him to die is clearly not correct, given that he just saved him. But Spider also doesn’t seem to want his biological father to live, either. At least, he doesn’t want him to thrive? Father-son relationships are so complicated.
Whatever Spider’s intentions might’ve been, Avatar 3 will make sure he realizes the error of his ways—and the audience will surely welcome the return of Payakan, your favorite misunderstood Pandoran whale-beast and mine. According to very official sources that are not this writer’s imagination, Payakan will right Way of Water’s wrongs by rolling up on the rock where Quaritch is still gasping for breath and finishing the job with a swift belly flop. He then tracks down Spider—who, coincidentally, is sitting on a rock contemplating the many mistakes he’s made during his short life—and goes in stomach-first for an encore. Long live Payakan!
Everyone lives together in harmony until the Na’vi Fire Nation attacks.
For a little while, everything’s smooth sailing at Casa Sully. By the end of Way of Water, the King and Queen of the “Reef People” (Tonowari and Ronal) have accepted the newcomers from the forest as members of their tribe. (It’s only fair, I guess; they might have brought the Sky People to the islands, but they also did a bang-up job fighting them off in the end.) The family does take Spider’s death hard—especially Kiri, who formed a bond with him as a fellow adoptee—but there’s a lot to do on the islands, and after a respectful period of mourning, things pretty much get back to normal.
Lo’ak and the princess finally hook up, and he starts to make friends with the nasty boys who once bullied him. Tuk works to perfect her tulkun riding skills, and Jake and Neytiri finally have the space to settle into a nice domestic rhythm once more. Everyone is happy, healthy, and fulfilled—that is, until the “Ash People” attack the islands by ship. Apparently, they’re on a quest to unify the Na’vi under one banner (predictably, theirs). Once more, it appears that even the idyllic Pandora cannot find peace.
Jake tells Lo’ak not to fight back, so he immediately sets out to confront the “Ash People.” Kiri and Tuk, terrified of losing another loved one, go after him.
We all knew this was coming. As we learned in Way of Water, Lo’ak simply cannot find it in him to obey an order, even (or perhaps especially) when said command comes from his parents. From the moment Jake tells his kid to stand down, you can practically see the glint of adventure in his eyes. And so, Lo’ak and Payakan set off to chase the ships back to their point of origin. When Tuk sets out after him, Kiri has no choice but to come and help.
Neytiri and Jake set out once again to rescue their children from their own mistakes.
Neytiri and Jake don’t even bother being mad that their son has done this again; at this point, they somehow saw it coming. Their reactions could best be described as “not mad, just disappointed.” After a quick shake of the head, they set out together once more to track down their good-hearted but disobedient brood.
The “Ash People” capture the kids and hold them hostage.
Tough break, kiddos! They wanted to be heroes, but, once again, these meddlesome tots have brought hell upon themselves. From the moment the kids make landfall in the land of the “Ash People,” they’re under surveillance. (Not that such a possibility ever occurs to them.)
The fire Na’vi—who look the same as the regular Na’vi, except they’re mauve instead of blue—have their fun for a little while, lurking among the sulfuric rocks as the kids hop from foot to foot and complain about the smell. After a while, however, they get bored and give up the ruse, jumping out of a lava stream (these Na’vi can swim in lava, of course!) and taking the kids to their village just outside the lip of a volcano.
Kiri connects herself spiritually to the volcano where the kids are being held, learns how to “bend” magma, and sets them all free to mess things up in another realm, on another day.
What these fire Na’vi did not count on, however, was Kiri—a spiritual savant whose abilities had just begun to surface by the end of Way of Water. Remember how she organized those fish?!
After a few days of hopeless escape attempts and complaining about the food (fire Na’vi are far more into barbecue than regular Na’vi), Kiri decides to do the unthinkable: Trapped at the edge of the volcano with Tuk and Lo’ak, she crawls in the only direction available: into the volcano. There, she discovers a scorched tree on a large plateau. Its tendrils glow red and orange and bright, and its branches are gnarled and scorched, but she does not question for a moment why (or how) it is here, or what she must do. She grabs her tail and connects with the tree, and once more she can feel the mighty heartbeat of the Great Mother, Eywa.
Just as she was able to dive into the water and hold her breath for great lengths of time in Way of Water, Kiri now understands how the “Ash People” can withstand swimming in lava—the specific kind of spiritual endurance necessary to literally swim through fire. More importantly, however, she learns a new trick: “bending” magma.
She instinctively begins drawing magma from the reservoir underneath the volcano upward and upward, forcing what appears to be an eruption. The spewing lava catches her captors by surprise, creating just enough commotion to allow Jake and Neytiri (who, as usual, have arrived just in the nick of time) to waste them all. Looks like these crazy kids will all live to fight another day in Avatar 4.
