Avatar: Fire and Ash Sidelines Kate Winslet’s Character Despite Her Record-Breaking Feat
Kate Winslet didn’t just dive into Avatar: The Way of Water—she mastered underwater performance capture as Ronal and shattered Tom Cruise’s benchmark with a 7-minute, 15-second breath hold, Variety reports.
Spoiler alert for Avatar: Fire and Ash. Kate Winslet went all-in on Avatar: The Way of Water — underwater performance capture, brutal training, the whole thing — and then Avatar: Fire and Ash turned around and took Ronal off the board. It is a bold swing, but it also feels like the franchise benched one of its best players just as she was hitting her stride.
What The Way of Water set up
Winslet plays Ronal, the Metkayina Tsahik — basically the clan's spiritual leader and healer, and a true counterpart to Tonowari. In The Way of Water, James Cameron made a point of putting Ronal in the fight while pregnant, not as a gimmick but as a statement about who she is and what she can do.
"Jim has so much admiration for women and pregnant women and what pregnant women are capable of, and how pregnant women are actually much more resilient and physically capable than I think often people give us credit for or would expect."
Winslet backed that up with the kind of behind-the-scenes flex you almost never see. She trained to act in motion capture underwater and reportedly held her breath for 7 minutes and 15 seconds — a widely cited number that topped Tom Cruise's well-publicized benchmark. All that work paid off on screen in Way of Water, and it set the table for a serious arc going forward.
What Fire and Ash actually gives her
And then the third film barely uses her. Ronal gets a handful of moments, delivers her baby (Pril), and later dies in battle. That is not nothing — the imagery is powerful, and the sacrifice lands — but it leaves the character feeling half-explored. Meanwhile, the movie hands the big showdowns to Neytiri and Varang, and Ronal doesn't get a share of that spotlight. For an actor like Winslet, and for a character positioned as the Metkayina's heart and compass, that stings.
Where this leaves Avatar 4
There is a path forward, even with Ronal gone. Avatar 4 is set to jump ahead in time, which means newborn Pril will be around Tuk's age when we pick back up. Cameron could bring Winslet back in a new way — playing Pril (the franchise has already done the generational re-casting trick with Sigourney Weaver as Kiri), dropping Ronal into flashbacks, or appearing through Eywa when Pril connects with the ancestors. So Winslet may not vanish entirely. But if you wanted to see her go full mortal-warrior mode? That window looks closed.
- Movie: Avatar: Fire and Ash
- Director: James Cameron
- Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore
- Rotten Tomatoes (so far): 67%
- Runtime: 3h 15m
- Release date: December 19, 2025
It is a striking creative choice. It is also a little frustrating, given how much groundwork Winslet laid to push Ronal into new territory. How did her childbirth-and-battle sequence play for you? Powerful? Rushed? Both?
Avatar: Fire and Ash is currently playing in theaters (USA).