Breaking Down the Ending of ‘Avatar: Fire & Ash’

While it's pretty easy to follow who the heroes and villains are in James Cameron's Avatar movies, they're a lot. Walk with me through the ending of Avatar: Fire and Ash, the essential takeaways, and what it means for the future of the franchise.

It's kind of difficult to pinpoint where the "ending" starts in a 3+ hour long movie. I will do my best! All of the Avatar films thus far have been about the conflict between the United States military and the indigenous population of a moon named Pandora, right? In the third film, two of Jake Sully and Neytiri's adopted children change the game. Kiri, the young Na'vi clone of Sigourney Weaver's character, connects her tail to the ground and calls upon the wildlife to save her human adopted brother Spider from asphyxiation. He gains the full ability to breathe on Pandora without a mask. The military learns about this and kidnaps Spider and Jake Sully. They also link up with a Na'vi clan that would rather burn the planet than worship it lead by Oona Chaplin's new character, Varang.

How do Jake and Spider escape captivity?

They get an assist from Neytiri and a space-whale loving scientist played by Jemaine Clement who disappears. Did he die? Unclear. (The second movie introduced space whales, who the military wants to hunt and use to make anti-aging products.) The three of them return to the seaside village where they've been living and warn everyone that the military is planning to attack the space whales during a mating ceremony. Jake's son Lo'ak, who bonded with a whale named Payakan, convinces the whales to help them fight back.

The Sully family unites all of the clans, except for the fire clan, and a big epic battle ensues. Jake even gets his dragon buddy to fly again. My apologies for not using all of the proper Na'vi names for these creatures, by the way. I find it a little easier to explain what happened by saying "space whale" and "space dragon" rather than "tulkun" and "toruk," ya know? There are also space otters, and judgmental space squids in this movie!

The big battle sequence takes place on land, sea, and air. Spider tries to surrender to save his family, but that ain't happening. (Huge, TBH, because at one point both Jake and Neytiri considered killing him themselves to get the military to leave them alone.) It culminates in a duel between Spider's two dads: his adopted father Jake Sully, and the resurrected avatar of his birth father, Quaritch, a.k.a. the original protagonist and antagonist of Avatar.

Did anyone die?

Yes. The final battle resulted in a lot of casualties. Tsireya's brother Rotxo was one. Their pregnant mother Ronal, Kate Winslet's character, gets wounded and dies after giving birth as well. (Are you happy now, people who think that Rose should have died instead of Jack in Titanic? Is this what you wanted?)

As for the villains, the guy who was most enthuastiatic about hunting whales named "Scoresby" got dragged underwater to his demise by one of the majestic creatures he so coveted. Edie Falco's character, a cold-hearted military commander, also died in the water battle. Finally, when the Sully family comes to rescue their patriarch during the afore-mentioned duel, Quaritch is outnumbered and jumps from one of the floating rocks into the fire. He presumably perishes. Can't the Army just reprint his Avatar, though? Maybe...

Is anyone else going to come for Spider?

Probably? That was definitely a loose end. If any other humans found out that there's now a way for them to breathe on Pandora, you best believe they're going to want to kidnap and experiment on Spider too. The Na'vi, united with their whale friends and dragon friends, definitely won this battle. They destroyed the Resources Development Administration, a.k.a. the evil military introduced in Avatar, that was stationed on Pandora. But Giovanni Ribisi's villainous character lived. It doesn't seem like the war is necessarily over.

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What were they doing underground at the end?

At the end of the film, Kiri helps Spider connect his newly-formed tail to the spirit trees. This takes them to the realm where the whole tribe can commune with their ancestors. There, he meets some crucial members of his extended Na'vi family and is finally accepted as one of them. Didn't know that Spider was the main character, but happy for him regardless!

Is this the end for Avatar?

Cameron has been kind of, like, soft launching the idea that Fire & Ash is the last Avatar movie lately. At one point, he said that there were going to be five total movies, so ending the franchise here would be a backpedal of sorts. On one hand, that's a bummer. There's still story to be told between Lo'ak and Tsireya, whose fledgling romance got benched in this movie. Just tossing this out here, but I would watch an entire trilogy about Varang. She's hot, literally and literally, and her nihilist philosophy is fascinating. But on the other hand, these movies take a long time to make and a long time for me to watch. I'd be interested in something new from the director and the cast if they're up for it.