Oona Chaplin Studied Zoe Saldaña’s Neytiri To Forge Avatar: Fire and Ash’s Villain — But Varang Trusts No One
Exclusive: Varang star Oona Chaplin reveals how she forged her Avatar: Fire and Ash villain, turning embers and steel into Pandora’s next unforgettable threat.
Pandora has a new problem, and it is not subtle. After The Way of Water introduced the ocean-rooted Metkayina, Avatar: Fire and Ash brings in their polar opposite: a fire-driven, fight-first Na'vi clan with a chip on their shoulder and a score to settle.
Meet the Mangkwan, aka the Ash People
The Mangkwan were nearly wiped out by a volcanic eruption that obliterated their home. That trauma pushed them to turn their backs on Eywa, which puts them at odds with the more peaceful Na'vi communities — including the one Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) settled with last time out.
Enter Varang
Leading this clan is Varang, played by Oona Chaplin, and she makes an impression before she even speaks. The headdress, the shadowed eyes, the liquid way she moves — it all screams: do not test me.
How Chaplin built Varang
- She studied Zoe Saldaña's movement as a baseline, then inverted it for Varang. Neytiri moves from the heart; Varang is someone who has closed that door after heavy trauma.
- Her costume did real biomechanical work. Chaplin describes the tight top as almost like a bondage rope around the chest that forced her center of gravity down. You can see it in the stance.
- The weapons mattered. Varang fights with buugeng, and Chaplin drilled the precision needed to make those dead objects flow — turning them into something that feels almost snake-like on screen.
"Zoe is Pandora for me... What happens when you close your heart?"
Friends off set, enemies on it
On camera, Varang and Neytiri do not play nice. The two collide more than once, and those clashes are intense. Off camera, though, Chaplin says Saldaña was exactly the person you want to meet when you are the new warrior in town: generous, encouraging, and immediately collaborative.
They clicked fast — both speak Spanish as their first language, which helped — and that trust made the physical work better. Fighting is weirdly intimate when you are inches from someone swinging steel, and it turns out they both have dance backgrounds, so the fights had a choreography-first rhythm. Chaplin calls that cast-wide trust one of the defining parts of the whole experience.
When you can see it
Avatar: Fire and Ash hits theaters on December 19.