Who’s Kiri’s dad in Avatar: Approach of Water? There’s proof for Eywa

James Cameron’s elastic world-building creates limitless potentialities for a way his sequel Avatar: The Approach of Water brings viewers again to the alien world of Pandora and prepares them for a journey that may span Avatar 3, 4, and possibly 5. A part of the drive for Cameron was working with actors he liked; although the characters performed by Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang each “died” (we’ll get to that) within the 2009 Avatar, they each return within 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 way forward for Pandora. Parentage questions are typically enjoyable preoccupations for franchise storytelling — take into account Star Wars’ obsession with Luke Skywalker’s or Rey’s dad and mom, or Recreation of Thrones’ limitless teasing about Jon Snow’s mom. And the Avatar collection is not any totally different, with Avatar 2 elevating the burning query: Who’s Kiri’s father? The movie’s context clues and Weaver’s personal commentary make clear what is 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 Approach of Water sees Jake Sully and Neytiri fortunately bonded and caring for a blended household. Together with their three organic kids (two sons, Neteyam and Lo’ak, and a younger woman, Tuk), they now take care of 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 baby whereas floating in an avatar holding chamber is, uh, a tricky world-building nut to crack. And Cameron doesn’t actually crack it! As an alternative, Kiri’s conception and roots blossom into The Approach of Water’s weirdest plotline.

In case you don’t recall the ending of the now-13-year-old Avatar: Grace is mortally wounded throughout the ultimate battle in opposition to human invader Col. Quaritch (Lang) and the human navy, and to avoid wasting her life, Jake and Neytiri try to switch her consciousness to her avatar physique utilizing the ability of the Tree of Souls. Besides it doesn’t really work. However earlier than Grace crosses over, she tells Jake, “I’m along with her” — referring to Eywa, Pandora’s deity, whom the Na’vi consider connects all residing issues. The final word bummer: Whereas Quaritch’s persona was preserved for later cloning, both nobody on the human aspect cared sufficient concerning the scientists to provide them a full consciousness obtain or the scrappy human faction on Pandora wasn’t outfitted to assist her, so there’s no Grace Mind filling an Avatar clone in The Approach of Water. Oh properly.

Picture: twentieth Century Studios

Based mostly on what the viewers and Kiri witness in The Approach of Water, it’s cheap to conclude that Grace’s spirit missed the avatar boat and as a substitute zipped via the neural community of Pandora. Partway via the film, Kiri — who isn’t solely an enormous nerd who loves nature, however appears to own a supernatural connection to the ecological methods 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 many movie’s extra stunning moments: When Kiri is zapped again to her corporeal physique, she suffers a near-death seizure.

However how did Grace’s avatar develop 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 children do within the movie! — is likely to be the unsuitable query. Not like 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, may simply have been despatched again into Grace’s avatar type.

Kiri’s untapped energy comes into focus late within the movie, when Clone Quaritch and the tulkun hunters chase the Sully children via 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 may have a look at the sand all day! Extraordinarily relatable to us Seashore Children who may spend eight hours standing within the ocean, however then Cameron ups the stakes: Throughout 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 unending warfare in opposition to the Sky Folks.

That is all to say that one of many film’s burning questions might by no means yield a secret-character reply like in Star Wars or Recreation 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 via 5 promise to someway be even weirder and wilder than The Approach of Water.