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Pre-release Theories
The two Avatars that are wearing human clothes? They might be Quaritch and Wainfleet in their Avatar forms, having been revived from the first movie.
One of the two sports the exact same shoulder tattoo as Quaritch.
- Technically confirmed with Quaritch. James Cameron did state he was still alive but how so is up in the air.
- Confirmed completely. Quaritch is now a Recom, an Avatar implanted with a brain scan of his human mind.
Colonel Quaritch had an emergency plan, in case he lost his life.
It is likely that Quaritch, just before dying, pressed a button on his combat armor that would transfer his mind to the body of an Avatar from the RDA military base. Perhaps Quaritch had a mind backup of him in case he died, so he would return from the dead via an Avatar clone of himself.- Confirmed. Quaritch is now a Recom, an Avatar implanted with a brain scan of his human mind. Although the scan was taken before he left for the mission.
Quaritch in the body of an Avatar will feel like a Karmic Transformation.
Colonel Quaritch probably will hates and dislikes being forever trapped in a Na'vi body. Now Quaritch will have to get used to his new body and this will feel like a punishment for his actions towards the Na'vi, but Quaritch will likely get used to his new body later on, even his Avatar body would make him more of a threat than when he was human.- First part Jossed, Quaritch loves his new body because it's better than a human body, he's so comfortable he even says at the end that he's not even the same species as his human son, spider.
Miles "Spider" Socorro will get an Avatar body.
While it's unclear when in the movie this would happen, there's been at least one photo of Jack Champion (who plays "Spider") in Motion Capture gear, which some people online have speculated means the character will end up with an Avatar of his own at some point.- Averted. While Spider doesn't get an Avatar in this movie, it could be possible this will happen in one of the future installments.
The connection that Kiri has with Dr. Grace Augustine will be explained.
Apparently, Kiri is the biological daughter of Grace's Avatar, and Kiri may be like the reincarnation of Grace, after she died in the first movie, her soul would become one with Eywa and Kiri would be like the reincarnation of Grace. Kiri looks a lot like Sigourney Weaver when she was young, Weaver had confirmed that she would return in the Avatar sequels and even though her Grace character died, she would return for the Avatar sequels playing a different character.- Zig-zagged. She's technically Grace's daughter (via her Avatar), but nobody knows how she was born, and Way of Water doesn't go into detail; we will presumably find out in a future sequel.
Post-release Theories
Quaritch will end up going partially native.
As with Sarah Connor before him, in order to beat his enemy, he'll have to become his enemy. He's already cut ties with his humanity; he probably won't outright side with the Na'vi, but with all that plus Spider fighting against him, he may "get lost in the woods..."The next villain will be a rogue AI
Eventually the humans will have to implement a advance AI system to help control their development and forces. As the system gets more advanced and self aware it will grow a God Complex. This in turn will make it a Evil Counterpart to Eywa as it controls the robots and the soldiers' bodies and minds.The third film will be subtitled "The Flame of Eywa"
It will focus more on Kiri's relationship to the mother spirit.The sequel will feature snowy environments as the main setting.
Given how James Cameron wanted to explore Pandora’s diverse environments like he did with the oceans in this movie. It make sense he explore the snowy regions of the world assuming there are any.- In addition, future movies could also explore other biomes currently threatened by human industry, such as savannahs and wetlands... or even go into space, like the original draft.
During this movie, the Omatikaya are being displaced.
We already saw one large city being built. Then we saw a train being derailed. If there's a train, then there's gotta be at least one other city/mining site to move goods from and to. Human settlements are multiplying and displacing the native life. Intelligent life on Pandora is a secret on Earth.
Earth has been told that there is no intelligent life on Pandora to keep positive relations with the populace. RDA knows that Native Americans and other similar Earth groups would be PISSED if they found out humanity was doing the same old stupid actions.- that doesn't match up with the first movie. Jake used to read about Pandora when he was a kid, and Grace wrote a best seller on the Navi.
Amrita, the valuable oil that is found deep in the Tulkun's brain, is purely a vanity luxury anti-aging cream back on earth
We have established in Project Phoenix that you can copy a person's mind onto a handheld device, broadcast the data back to earth and imprint it onto a cloned or recombinant body. Congratulations! You have achieved both immortality and eternal youth. Yet they are willing to risk crews to get Amrita which at $80m a kilo is twice as valuable as Unobtanium and yields vastly smaller quantites per day of operations?I think the only person who could want such a product is a vain old man (like Peter Weyland in Prometheus) who owns RDA and is squeamish about being copied into a clone and all the inheritance tax that would entail.
The tulkun are extreme pacifists because in their ancient wars for territory they almost blew up Pandora
This ties in to Jake's last lines in the film that he will make his stand with the water people. They will need a trump card big enough to counter RDA's new more ruthless methods.
Earth will use clone troops in the next movie.
The Recombinants show that Quaritch can send his backup data back to earth at light speed. This means experienced soldiers can be sent as data at light speed and imprint onto cloned bodies, like needlecasting in Altered Carbon. This means the native Pandorans will face overwhelming numbers of human and Recombinant troops unless they have a way of interrupting this process.- Not quite, Quaritch's brain was shipped back to Earth on a Data Crystal the size of a large flash drive, and the avatars were grown during the years-long trip to Pandora.
Quaritch will have a mental meeting with Grace in Eywa's network.
It's apparent that Grace's consciousness - or at least, a version of it - resides within Eywa now. Quaritch, with a Na'vi body, is capable of making tsaheylu with that network. What better way for these old foes, each Back from the Dead in their own way, to have one final confrontation with each other? Of course, as opposed to their earlier clashes in the physical world, this time Grace will have all the power. (The only question, of course, is what could prompt Quaritch to make communion with Eywa in the first place.) Eywa, inspired by the Avatar Project, created Kiri to be her Avatar.
Jake's communions with Eywa over the years, and Grace's absorption into the Hive Mind, could have introduced a number of new concepts to her repository of knowledge and memories. An Avatar is an artificial body, controlled by an outside mind so that said mind can better interact and communicate with an alien world and people. Perhaps the entity that is Eywa saw the potential value in such an "ambassador" body, and decided to induce Grace's Avatar body to make one of her own. The sequel’s conflict will focus on the RDA trying to terraform Pandora.
The RDA will try to terraform Pandora to be more hospitable for humans since they can’t breathe the natural atmospheric air. But doing so comes at the cost of killing all native life on the world including Eywa. The RDA has no intention of saving (most) of humanity with their Pandoran colony; they simply mean to make the mother of all Company Towns.
Leaving aside the difficult matter of neutralizing Pandora's wildlife and native resistance, a mass evacuation of humanity to this new world has some massive logistical difficulties, which the RDA's executives are probably entirely aware of.First is simply getting there: each ISV can carry maybe a few hundred people in cryo-sleep, and the round trip takes some fourteen years. The size of the fleet needed to carry even a fraction of humanity's billions in a somewhat timely manner would be staggering. Also, let's not forget that infants cannot be put into cryo, which would automatically exclude a whole lot of families.
Even overcoming the above, there's also Pandora's atmosphere to contend with. Short of somehow scrubbing an entire atmosphere's worth of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, humanity will always have to live in sealed habitats or wear masks on Pandora - and if such terraforming tech existed, surely it would already have been used to cleanse Earth's atmosphere, instead.
It therefore seems likely that the RDA's actual interest stems from the power they can derive from their monopoly over it. Unlike in the Solar System, where they presumably have governments and competing Mega Corps to deal with, the RDA is the sole authority on this supposed new home for humanity, and that means money. The happy few who obtain tickets for the crossing - no doubt paying a premium for the privilege - will fly to Pandora on RDA ships, live in RDA-built compounds, wear RDA-manufactured masks outside, eat RDA-produced human-safe food, and be protected (and policed) by the RDA's SEC-OPS. And all the while, the corporation gets to look good for guiding humanity away from their doomed home and towards this lush new world.
- The RDA might not even be that generous - like several other corporate dystopias, Bridgehead could be a bolthole for the executive officers as they flee to Pandora and leave Earth (and the rest of their less-privileged employees) to die. Obviously the base personnel can pick a few extra loved ones to come along, otherwise they'd mutiny.
As a nod towards the whole mix-up with Avatar: The Last Airbender, there will be sequels involving the theme of Earth and Fire.
Air and Water have been covered so far in a sense, so there may be interquels, sequels, side stories, etc. that cover Earth and Fire in a sense.- Possibly confirmed in interviews. James Cameron has joked that since Part 2 was "water," Part 3 should logically be "fire," and hinted at an "Ash People" tribe.
- Producer Jon Landau has said the fourth movie will focus on Earth instead of Pandora. Sooo....
Quaritch is going to go rogue in the next movie.
The good colonel just got a lot of very profitable assets and all his recombinants (save Lyle) killed AND radicalized a whole archipelago of locals who would have otherwise remained neutral on his little vendetta. He needs to face consequences since Ardmore doesn't look the type to let him walk over her like Selfridge, such as stripping him of command or confining him to Bridgehead. Quaritch won't take it laying down however, and his own mutiny against the RDA will drive the human side of the plot.- Additionally, Quaritch being stuck as a Recom Na'vi would eventually subject him to racism from his own human comrades. Eventually, Quaritch would begin to wonder what his fate would be after he completes his mission of killing Sully. Would he be awarded for his services to humanity? Or would the RDA dispose of him after his usefulness has come to end, seeing him as a literal tool rather than human being?
Scoresby's coming back along with Garvin.
And he's going to be sporting a spiffy robot arm. Then he'll go full Captain Ahab on Payakan. The next films will throw out the "Humanity is dependent on Pandora" angle
Earth may be dying, but humanity isn't. With the resources and ability to send antimatter powered spaceships to another solar system, humanity will be revealed to have also taken the easier route and expand their civilization to Earth's orbit and the solar system, with the RDA just pushing the frontier. We'll see more good humans in the sequels.
To add a little more variety into the morality of the series.- Specifically reinforcements for the scientist side growing out of other disillusioned scientists and civilian workers being shipped in. The front RDA presents will crumble as more people become aware of their atrocities.
- And we'll see the opposite. More Na'vi displaying bigotry toward Jake's kids as time goes on due to the pressure RDA places. The films will end up highlighting that neither side is entirely morally bankrupt or morally pure.
This would lead to a Human Civil War that spans the fourth and fifth films (the "two part finale"), where the good humans team up with the Na'vi to fight the RDA.
The influence of Grace means Eywa doesn't actually have a problem with humanity. Just the RDA.
Eywa is a planet sized brain with multiple examples of different humans to draw from who've taken the form of her children. Their perspective and positive traits as well as the recognition that Earth lacks an equivalent to itself will prompt a reevaluation of the situation. Pandora won't blanket reject humans as a result, just those who can't or won't treat her and her children with respect. Future films will see conflict between Jake's family and the other Na'vi over what to do with human civilians.
Jake already showed mercy by exiling the RDA personnel back to Earth the first time around despite them being largely military forces and administrators. Now with a permanent colony being established the matter of human civilians, families of staff, workers, and colonists unaware of the atrocities RDA is committing. The Na'vi at large won't draw distinctions between these relative innocents and the soldiers burning their homes where as Jake will. Kiri will pull a Heroic Sacrifice at some point and come back in some form.
So the Christ parallels go to their logical conclusion. The Ash People will be a Mayincatec tribe of Na'vi
Because, let's face it, what better than to show off their antagonistic side? Native North Americans served as inspiration for the Omaticaya, and Polynesians for the Metkayina, now it's Mesoamerican cultures' turn. Spider will pull a full Face–Heel Turn
Once it's revealed he saved Quaritch Neytiri will insist that he be expelled from the family, and he'll have no one to turn to but Quaritch. Cameron will go full GRRM
The pattern is established: protagonist deaths are required in every movie (Grace in #1 and Neteyam in #2. So Jake will die in #3, Lo'ak will take over the family leadership but he and Neytiri will die in #4 (Neytiri will come back from the grave as a vengeance-seeking monster), the younger kids will be scattered, Kiri will become Pandora's Three Eyed Raven, Tuk will become an assassin. Spider will become Reek. This is why Cameron introduced so many kids in #2, so he could kill some of them off for dramatic impact.- It is likely that Sam Worthington will act Jake in ALL FIVE MOVIES, if Cameron directs them all.
When the Na'vi move to take Bridgehead City, a key part of the assault will be from the water.
Bridgehead's array of turrets and massive surrounding killzone make an assault by air or land flat-out suicidal. Short of somehow disabling and/or sabotaging those defenses, the best approach would be through the harbor, below the cover of the water's surface. What with their armored hide, cavernous maws, surprising speed and extreme intelligence, a pod of (properly-convinced) Tulkun might even be able to serve as living "landing craft" for an amphibious assault.- Using submarine landing craft to breach a fortified harbor? If James Cameron wants to fully copy The Last Airbender, might as well.
The RDA doesn't intend to colonize Pandora with humans, but with Avatars.
As pointed out in other WMGs above, shifting Earth's population to Pandora with cryo-vaults would have massive logistical issues: Pandora's toxic atmosphere would require full-scale terraforming to become properly habitable, and with humanity numbering in the billions, an evacuation fleet would have to be gigantic. What if, instead, the ultimate idea was to make a Na'vi recombinant for every evacuee? A cryovault of recombinant embryos and the data storage for human brain scans would presumably take up far less mass on an ISV than an equivalent number of cryo-pods for full-grown humans. Both the Avatar Project and the creation of Quaritch's squad may well have served as test runs for this very concept. (Admittedly, recombinant production would have to be heavily refined to prevent the costs from being prohibitive, but that's not outside the realm of imagination.)- Recombinant colonists might be required to work off the cost of their new bodies, reviving Indentured Servitude, and potentially creating a disaffected underclass who might join Jake's resistance movement.
On a meta note, this approach would also prevent "Avatar" from becoming an Artifact Title in later films.
Scoresby and his crew totally sing sea shanties.
A scene of them singing "The Wellerman" or Futurama's "Whalers on the Moon" was cut because it caused test audiences to immediately start rooting for the whalers.There will be a new type of recombiant that is mildly part cyborg and whose activation is shown booting up like The Terminator.
The recombiant is very normal, but has had computer components implanted into their systems to become like a Killer Robot infiltrator. In contrast to Jake Sully and Miles Quaritch waking up with contrasting emotions, the infiltrator boots up like a machine and sits up, scanning their surroundings and answering questions from their handlers running diagnostics on their systems. They have programming to try and blend in with Na'vi culture and can learn new cultures at a rapid rate thanks to their learning computer augmentation, but they have enough flaws and defects that Jake Sully and other Na'vi will detect something off about their mysterious visitor.