Who is Kiri’s dad in Avatar: Way of Water? There’s evidence for Eywa

James Cameron’s elastic world-building creates limitless potentialities for how his sequel Avatar: The Way of Water brings viewers again to the alien world of Pandora and prepares them for a journey that can span Avatar 3, 4, and perhaps 5. Part of the drive for Cameron was working with actors he beloved; regardless that the characters performed by Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang each “died” (we’ll get to that) in the 2009 Avatar, they each return in the sequel in new varieties.

Weaver’s new character, Kiri — Jake Sully’s teen Na’vi daughter — turns into the central thriller to the previous, current, and future of Pandora. Parentage questions are usually enjoyable preoccupations for franchise storytelling — contemplate Star Wars’ obsession with Luke Skywalker’s or Rey’s dad and mom, or Game of Thrones’ limitless teasing about Jon Snow’s mom. And the Avatar collection is no totally different, with Avatar 2 elevating the burning query: Who is Kiri’s father? The movie’s context clues and Weaver’s personal commentary make clear what’s going to seemingly be a key query in Avatar 3 and past.

[Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for Avatar: The Way of Water.]

Years after the occasions of Avatar, The Way of Water sees Jake Sully and Neytiri fortunately bonded and caring for a blended household. Along with their three organic kids (two sons, Neteyam and Lo’ak, and a younger woman, Tuk), they now care for a surrogate human son, Spider, and Kiri, born from the avatar of Dr. Grace Augustine (Weaver) whereas she’s in suspended animation. The notion that Grace’s comatose Na’vi physique conceived and birthed a toddler whereas floating in an avatar holding chamber is, uh, a troublesome world-building nut to crack. And Cameron doesn’t actually crack it! Instead, Kiri’s conception and roots blossom into The Way of Water’s weirdest plotline.

In case you don’t recall the ending of the now-13-year-old Avatar: Grace is mortally wounded in the course of the last battle towards human invader Col. Quaritch (Lang) and the human navy, and to save lots of her life, Jake and Neytiri try to switch her consciousness to her avatar physique utilizing the ability of the Tree of Souls. Except it doesn’t truly work. But earlier than Grace crosses over, she tells Jake, “I’m with her” — referring to Eywa, Pandora’s deity, whom the Na’vi imagine connects all residing issues. The final bummer: While Quaritch’s persona was preserved for later cloning, both nobody on the human facet cared sufficient concerning the scientists to provide them a full consciousness obtain or the scrappy human faction on Pandora wasn’t geared up to assist her, so there’s no Grace Brain filling an Avatar clone in The Way of Water. Oh properly.

Image: twentieth Century Studios

Based on what the viewers and Kiri witness in The Way of Water, it’s cheap to conclude that Grace’s spirit missed the avatar boat and as a substitute zipped by way of the neural community of Pandora. Partway by way of the film, Kiri — who is not solely an enormous nerd who loves nature, however appears to own a supernatural connection to the ecological programs of Pandora — bonds with the underwater equal of the Tree of Souls and “meets” her mom (Weaver once more, sans CGI) for the primary time. The face-to-face connection ends in one of the movie’s extra stunning moments: When Kiri is zapped again to her corporeal physique, she suffers a near-death seizure.

But how did Grace’s avatar turn into pregnant? The ending of Avatar, now shaded by Weaver’s human-self cameo, means that asking who Kiri’s father is — because the Na’vi youngsters do in the movie! — is likely to be the improper query. Unlike the Christian notion of Jesus’ immaculate conception, Kiri appears much less just like the embodied youngster of the god and nearer to the Greek god Gaea, a strolling incarnation of the world itself. If Grace’s “soul” was funneled into the synapses of Pandora, then Eywa, extra of a ghost contained in the machine than the machine itself, might simply have been despatched again into Grace’s avatar kind.

Kiri’s untapped energy comes into focus late in the movie, when Clone Quaritch and the tulkun hunters chase the Sully youngsters by way of Pandora’s oceans. Up till this level, Cameron has illustrated Kiri’s connection to Eywa with a fragile contact — she simply loves crops, and generally she steers animals round a little bit bit! She might take a look at the sand all day! Extremely relatable to us Beach Kids who might spend eight hours standing in the ocean, however then Cameron ups the stakes: During the motion sequence, Kiri begins to wield the crops and ocean life like weapons. Kiri is an X-Man (X’vi?), and we are able to solely think about what meaning for Jake Sully’s endless battle towards the Sky People.

This is all to say that one of the film’s burning questions might by no means yield a secret-character reply like in Star Wars or Game of Thrones. The Sully bros can rib Kiri all they need over a possible Grace/Dr. Norm Spellman mysterious parentage, however Eywa’s energy goes past the everyday birds and bees. (Or tulkun and ikran, in Pandora’s case.) The thriller speaks to Cameron’s actual imaginative and prescient for Avatar: Spirituality, biology, and expertise are all intertwined, and blurred by the residing moon of Pandora. Kiri lives, Eywa walks, and Avatar 3 by way of 5 promise to by some means be even weirder and wilder than The Way of Water.