Avatar: Fire and Ash — Everything We Know and How It Sets Up Avatar 4

Spoiler alert for Avatar: Fire and Ash. James Cameron dives back into Pandora with a third chapter that is, unsurprisingly, beautiful to look at and, more surprisingly, messy in ways that feel intentional. The movie moves Jake Sully and his family into their most perilous stretch yet, brings in a volatile Na'vi clan that loves fire more than harmony, and leaves a trail of big, chewy questions that are clearly bait for Avatar 4. Let’s talk through the stuff the film answers, the stuff it absolutely doesn’t, and the wild threads it’s now dangling.

Quick hit: Avatar: Fire and Ash runs 3h 17m, is directed by James Cameron, stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore (plus David Thewlis joining the fray), opened December 19, 2025, and is sitting at 68% on Rotten Tomatoes as of now.

The Wind Traders: cool concept, murky purpose

We meet a new Na'vi people early on: the Tlalim, aka the Wind Traders. They live in the sky on massive airships buoyed by medusas and windrays, and their whole vibe is movement, bartering, and staying out of everyone else’s wars. David Thewlis plays their leader, Peylak, who is polite but allergic to taking sides.

Jake and family hop aboard with the Tlalim to ferry Spider toward the Omatikaya base. That detour sets up the movie’s first major set-piece when the Ash People (the Mangkwan) swoop in and raid the convoy. It’s a slick way to split the main characters into smaller groups, but it barely tells us who the Wind Traders really are or why the Mangkwan target them. Later, the Tlalim pop up at Metkayina Island, helpfully, but again with light characterization and fuzzy motives.

Their neutrality is framed as a survival strategy. Peylak even balks at traveling with Jake because sheltering the Toruk Makto is, in his words, taking a side. Which… raises the obvious question: taking a side against whom? Among the Na'vi, Toruk Makto is about as bipartisan as it gets. The only clan openly hostile to him is the Mangkwan. That leaves an uncomfortable inference: maybe the Wind Traders keep a quiet detente with the RDA to be left alone. The film never confirms it, but the way it skirts the question makes it feel like a seed for the sequels.

Quaritch recruits the Ash People: ideology meets opportunity

Once the Ash People show up, Quaritch clocks them as useful. He courts Varang, their leader, because their goals line up: control through fear, and revenge through fire. The Mangkwan see burning and killing as cleansing acts. Quaritch loves a scorched-earth plan. Match made in hell.

Still, on paper, he has RDA guns, aircraft, and soldiers. So why outsource to raiders? The practical answer: the Mangkwan know Pandora’s terrain, the Na'vi’s tactics, and the cultural pressure points the RDA keeps misreading. There’s also a telling moment where Varang doses Quaritch with a hallucinogen to pry at his real motives; he doesn’t spill personal secrets so much as default to crisp, colonel-brain justifications about why the alliance helps him win. The movie stops short of spelling out the full arrangement, which all but guarantees we’ll get the fine print next time.

Why the Ash People turned their backs on Eywa

The Mangkwan weren’t born arsonists. Varang lays out the wound that made them: as a child, she watched a volcano erase her people’s forest. They prayed to Eywa. Nothing came. In their eyes, the Great Mother abandoned them. Their faith broke, and they rebuilt themselves around the only force that answered back: fire. Varang leaned into that, seeking mercy from the mountain, learning to live and fight by flame, and eventually reshaping her clan into ruthless raiders who strike Eywa’s faithful without hesitation.

That backstory pokes a stick at the franchise’s theology. Neytiri once said Eywa doesn’t pick sides, just keeps balance. Fine, except Eywa keeps, well, picking sides in the big battles — unleashing Pandora’s creatures to bail out our heroes across all three films. Varang even says Eywa rejected the Mangkwan outright. Those two ideas don’t cleanly coexist, which suggests Cameron’s not done using Eywa as a mystery box.

Kiri vs. Eywa: connection denied

Kiri — Grace’s avatar-born daughter — remains Pandora’s most uncanny presence. Fire and Ash pushes her powers forward and slams a door in her face at the same time. Every time she tries to bond with Eywa, she gets shoved away, hard enough to trigger seizures. Norm and Max (now working alongside the Omatikaya) warn that forcing it could be fatal. Epilepsy was flagged in The Way of Water, but Eywa actively resisting Kiri is new — and alarming.

Kiri is tuned into the planet like no one else. She can feel the planetary heartbeat, ride the neural network like a current, and she repeatedly saves people with it — the Sully family from drowning in the last film, and Spider from Pandora’s toxic air here. So why would Eywa refuse her? The movie never says. Only near the end, with Spider and Tuk steadied at her side, does the connection finally hold. The why of that suffering — and what Eywa wants from Kiri — is clearly being held back for the next chapter.

General Ardmore: dead, missing, or something stranger?

Edie Falco’s General Frances Ardmore steps up from puppet master to field commander, leading an RDA strike on the Metkayina from her flagship, the Dragonfly. She warns the bridge to steer clear of the island’s nasty magnetic field, but the fight drags them right over a chasm that turns her battleship into confetti. She orders an evacuation. Then, right before the ship is shredded, the movie cuts to a fleeting shot of someone in a uniform like hers still aboard.

After that: nothing. The Dragonfly is destroyed. If Ardmore rode it down, she’d need a working mask to breathe — and if the magnetic field cooks anything with a chip, that’s another problem. Odds say she’s dead. Story logic says: probably not. She’s too valuable as the RDA’s top villain for an off-screen exit, and the ambiguity feels planted. Would it be shocking to see her return in a recombinant Na'vi body, a la Quaritch? Not even a little.

So where does Avatar 4 go from here?

Fire and Ash resolves a few arcs from the first two films and then leaves a buffet of dangling threads. If you’re trying to guess what the fourth movie picks up, here’s what the ending points toward:

• The Wind Traders matter: Peylak and the Tlalim feel positioned for a bigger role, likely clarifying their neutrality — including whether they’ve quietly cut a live-and-let-live deal with the RDA.
• Varang and Quaritch both survive: their alliance, their clash of agendas, or both will keep the fire burning. Whether Quaritch stays hitched to the Mangkwan or goes full lone-wolf vendetta against Jake is the open question.
• Spider is now a living cheat code: after Kiri’s intervention, he can breathe Pandora’s air despite being human. The RDA immediately tries to grab and study him to speed up colonization; he slips away, but Jake makes it clear that won’t be the last attempt.
• Kiri and Eywa’s stalemate is only paused: she finally connects with help from Spider and Tuk, but Eywa’s earlier rejection — and what it means about Kiri’s origin and purpose — is unresolved.
• Ardmore’s fate is a Schrödinger box: the movie gives just enough evidence to argue she’s dead and just enough deniability to bring her back. Expect that card to be played.

One more thing: remember how the Ash People despise Eywa and see cleansing fire as salvation? Pair that belief system with RDA tech and Quaritch’s obsession and you’ve got a trilogy’s worth of conflict brewing, not a one-and-done.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is now playing in theaters worldwide.