Buzz
The plot of Avatar: The Way of Water (Avatar 2) leaves behind numerous unresolved queries. This might serve as a precursor for forthcoming installments.
Following its global box office domination in its inaugural weekend, Avatar: The Way of Water (Avatar 2) raked in approximately 434.5 million USD (as per Box Office Mojo data). While this figure falls short of industry expectations, it still marks a promising start for a cinematic endeavor that cost around 400 million USD to produce.
Avatar: The Way of Water unfolds 15 years after the events of the first film. By now, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) have found tranquility together. They've become spouses, had children, and in the blink of an eye, have become parents to 4 offspring. However, their peaceful existence is short-lived as danger once again looms, forcing them to abandon their homeland amidst the forested mountains, becoming refugees among the scattered Metkayina tribe dwelling along Pandora's coastal regions.
In this return journey, the Avatar franchise continues to captivate audiences with its breathtaking visuals and a narrative rich in depth and humanity. Alongside the film's overarching messages critiquing colonialism and human greed, advocating for environmental conservation... it also weaves a beautiful tale of enduring familial bonds. However, in this return, director James Cameron leaves many storylines open-ended, posing numerous questions that may pave the way for future installments.
Who is Kiri's (Sigourney Weaver) biological father?
Kiri emerges as one of the first hybrid children born on Pandora since Jake Sully's expedition landed. She is the daughter of the late scientist Grace (Sigourney Weaver), conceived within her avatar body. However, the mystery of how Grace's avatar could conceive or the identity of the child's father remains unknown. This stands as one of the biggest enigmas that Avatar: The Way of Water presents to its audience.
Throughout the film, Kiri wrestles with questions about her origins and her seemingly different nature. In her mind, the call of Eywa - the supreme deity connecting all living beings on Pandora - always echoes. Especially when migrating with the Sully family to a new land, this call intensifies. On forums and social media, viewers have proposed various hypotheses surrounding Kiri's origins. One suggests that Kiri is the daughter of Eywa.
Who is Spider's (Jack Champion) mother?
Miles 'Spider' Socorro is a child born on Pandora, the son of the antagonist Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang). Following the epic battle in Avatar (2009), Spider becomes stranded on Pandora with the scientists who chose to remain on the planet because he was too small to fit the rescue ship. Jake adopts Spider, and he becomes part of his extended family. Spider is close to Kiri but maintains a distance from his foster mother Neytiri.
Spider and Kiri bond partly because they are both orphaned children unaware of their biological parentage. In reality, Spider's mother's identity was revealed in the novel series Avatar: The High Ground - considered a direct prequel to Avatar: The Way of Water. In the series, Spider's mother is disclosed as Paz Socorro, a pilot for the Resources Development Administration (RDA) who perished in the RDA's attack on the Tree of Souls. However, the novels do not reveal whether Spider's father is Quaritch.
Do Earth's inhabitants still crave unobtainium?
In Avatar (2009), the RDA's ultimate mission - also the primary antagonist force in the film - is to search for and mine unobtainium. This mineral is expected to save 20 billion people on Earth from an energy crisis by 2140. However, human methods of mining unobtainium on Pandora have exacerbated tensions with the Na'vi people.
Eywa's three commandments strictly forbid the Na'vi from digging into the earth to extract resources. Yet beneath the Tree of Souls lies a vast unobtainium deposit. RDA's mining plans contradict the cultural beliefs of the Na'vi who revere the deity Eywa. By 2150, human colonial mining efforts led to war with the Na'vi.
However, by The Way of Water, nobody mentions or cares about unobtainium anymore. After 15 years, humanity's interest in this mineral has completely waned. The film doesn't deeply explain this change, but one might speculate that the decisive defeat in the final battle of Avatar (2009) left the most ambitious individuals on Earth feeling discouraged.
Putting aside plans to mine unobtainium, now the 'Sky People' are eyeing a new resource - a chemical extracted from the brains of Tulkun creatures with the ability to slow down aging. However, after unobtainium and that extract, what else will humans find useful on Pandora, and what will that exploration cost them?
How do the Omaticaya people fare after Jake and Neytiri have departed?
In Avatar: The Way of Water, the Omaticaya tribe only briefly appears in the story. Since Jake and Neytiri led their children away from the tribe to escape Quaritch's vengeance, audiences have heard little about the community of Na'vi living in the forest. However, the Sully family's departure doesn't mean the Omaticaya community is safe as they are directly opposed to the human military. Moreover, harboring Jake Sully in the past puts them at risk of being tortured by Quaritch for information.
In the climax of the second act, after Kiri suffers a seizure and loses consciousness, Jake had to seek help from the scientists residing within the territory of the Omaticaya tribe. Thanks to the visit of this group, we can tentatively speculate that the Omaticaya people are still safe. However, it's evidently not enough, as viewers have been attached to this tribe since the first Avatar film and have known them as the only Na'vi throughout the subsequent 13 years. Therefore, the most ideal scenario would be for the inhabitants of the Omaticaya and Metkayina tribes to form an alliance in the next installment.
