Avatar 3: Along Came a Spider

Written 57-H08 [2026-02-09], Edited 57-H08 [2026-02-09]

This article contains spoilers for Avatar: Fire and Ash

Image credit: Walt Disney Company

I better write down my thoughts about Avatar: Fire and Ash before the whole world forgets this movie, am I right?

Now that the most predictable joke is out of the way, I’ll address the predictions I made when the last Avatar movie was released, then make some points about Fire and Ash on its own terms.

Predictions

The predictions are described in this earlier article:

Every upcoming Avatar movie, except the series finale, will explore a new biome with new wildlife.

Every upcoming Avatar movie, except the series finale, will introduce a new Na’vi tribe with new steeds, a new style of gathering food, and a new tribal chief.

Every upcoming Avatar movie, except the series finale, will introduce a new precious resource, to be looted by humans using new machinery.

In the Avatar series finale, humans will attempt to deliberately destroy every biome of Pandora in order to terraform the planet.

The Ash people (known as the Mangkwan to all you Na'vi readers out there) and the Wind Traders (aka. Tlalim) collectively fulfill the requirements of predictions 1 & 2. You didn’t even need to see the movie to know that - the trailer made it clear.

I consider prediction 3 to be incorrect. If I had to defend these predictions with my life, the Ash People themselves could be considered a “resource”, but no new machinery was used to “loot” them. Of course, that is an obvious stretch. When I wrote “resource” I meant an inanimate substance like the “unobtanium” and “amrita” from previous Avatar movies. Fire & Ash continued to focus on amrita, which of course meant that the final battle had to focus on the biome, tribe, and machinery introduced in the previous movie.

Fire and Ash is probably not the series finale, so prediction 4 is not applicable. However in Fire and Ash, the CEO guy (whose name I totally forgot, it’s Parker Selfridge) brought up the same concerns I had which led to prediction 4. How is Pandora going to be a new home for humanity if humans can’t breathe the air?

I was pretty surprised by the answer - in fact it was the most surprising event in the entire franchise. One last warning here, the next section will include the real heavy spoilers.

Spider

Leaving aside the “Xeno GF” stuff, this movie is focused on Spider to a degree that I would have never predicted. A good chunk of the first act is focused on relocating Spider, making sure his mask is charged, Quaritch looking for Spider, Jake Sully looking for Spider…

And that’s before Eywa and Kiri pull their magic trick and give Spider the ability to breathe the air of Pandora!

If that was the final scene, it would be considered a deus ex machina. But to the film’s credit, this unexpected event happens relatively early and leads to many of the later conflicts. There is a conflict between Jake and Neytiri about whether or not to kill Spider, and a similar conflict between the CEO guy and the general (another forgettable name, General Frances Ardmore) about whether shooting Jake is worth it if Spider might get killed.

In the case of Jake and Neytiri, it was heartbreaking to see the preparations for ritual murder. And honestly? For a moment I actually thought Jake Sully was going the to kill the kid. It would have been a more interesting story that way, giving Jake something to feel guilty about and leading to conflict with his children if they ever found out.

But on the other hand… a father killing his adopted son in a family movie? And these are supposed to be the protagonists? There was no way the writers would take such grim turn in James Cameron’s Avatar.

Will future movies continue the plotline of the human (to be specific, RDA) forces hunting down Spider and trying to study him? Or will they eventually settle on attempting to terraform the planet as per my prediction? I’m sure we’ll find out in the finale of this series, if it actually reaches a satisfying ending.

On the topic of endings, in my previous article I could not imagine what a satisfying ending to this series would look like, but Spider’s transformation provides a hint. He actually grows one of the hair-thingies (“queue”/“kuru”) that the Na'vi use to communicate with animals, with Eywa and with their mates during sex (the Avatar fandom wiki insists that “The linking of queues is an essential part of mating due to intensifying feelings of arousal, although it should not be confused as being the sexual act itself.”). Therefore if all humans went through this process, all humans would be able to commune with Eywa.

As evidenced by the Ash People, it will still be possible for some humans to be seperate from Eywa after such a transformation. There will still be a degree of individuality. The messy ethical implications of collective consciousness seen in other works of science fiction could be entirely skipped.

Bringing things back to Spider, Quaritch still considers Spider to be his son, even though he is now biologically a Na'vi.

Identity

When Jake Sully is imprisoned, he has a strange conversation with Quaritch, claiming that Quaritch’s memories of human life are the memories of a dead man, and that the current Quaritch could take a different path in life.

I have been linking to the Avatar fandom wiki extensively in this article, and they actually have seperate pages for the two incarnations of Quaritch. “Miles Quaritch” is the human general from the first movie, and “Recombinant Miles Quaritch” is the version of Quaritch in a Na'vi body seen in the recent sequels.

The idea of treating Quaritch as two characters runs into the philosophical problem of personal identity - essentially, what are you? What if your body was broken down atom by atom, and then the same arrangement of atoms were assembled elsewhere - would that be you? What if your memories were uploaded to a computer - would that be you?

Alas, Avatar: Fire and Ash was not able to delve deep into this conundrum in its 197 minutes of run time. The film was only able to scratch the surface. Recombinant Miles Quaritch does things that the human Miles Quaritch would be unable or perhaps unwilling to do. Firstly romancing Varang - which was memed as a “Xeno GF” plot even though genetically, Recombinant Miles Quaritch was a “xeno” himself. He also starts hanging out with the Ash People and wearing their face paint towards the end of the film.

Recombinant Miles Quaritch chooses to end his own life instead of trying to reconcile with Jake Sully. Which makes some sense, because in my opinion, there was no way Neytiri would be able to tolerate Quaritch in any form.

But it would have added a lot of depth to his character if he went “full native”, even if only to join the antagonistic Ash People.

Additionally, we don’t know what’s binding Quaritch to the RDA forces other than his memories. Does he have people back on Earth who benefits from the RDA’s work? Or maybe loyalty to the other marines? Did the RDA implant an explosive into his brain?

If they’re paying him - paying him in what!? He can’t go back to Earth in a Na'vi body, so are they going to give him a plot of land, a mansion and a car when Pandora is settled? Or is he spending his paycheck on Doritos Locos Tacos, which would probably taste different to a Na'vi anyway? His only motivations seem to be a concern for Spider and a drive for vengeance against Jake Sully. And his Xeno GF, of course.

And what does any of this memory of a dead man stuff mean for Jake Sully? He thinks of himself as a marine, even when Quaritch is not around. But is he? And what about all the “spirits” who are “with Eywa” - how are they different from the memories of a dead man in Recombinant Quaritch?

Conclusion

The movie was too long, much like this article.