Avatar 2: The Way of Water Ending, Explained – The long-gestating sequel to James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster, the most popular film of all time, takes audiences back to the planet Pandora, which is home to incredibly bizarre extraterrestrial species and, of course, enormously dangerous man-made threats.
This time, we follow former human turned Na’vi Jake (Sam Worthington), his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaa), their children Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and Tuktirey (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), as well as their adopted children Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) and human child Spider (Jack Champion).
This contented family is uprooted when the evil organization RDA, together with Recombinants—resurrected copies of the wicked troops from the first film, this time in Avatar form, led by Quaritch—return to the planet (Stephen Lang).
Jake runs to the water and begs the reef tribe, commanded by Tonowari (Cliff Curtis) and Ronal, for protection so he can save his family (and the rest of Pandora) (Kate Winslet). Naturally, the conflict always finds them. Here’s everything you need to know about the ending.
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‘Avatar 2: The Way of Water’ Ending
The news that recombinant Quaritch and his army, the sky people, have returned to Pandora with a twofold objective signals the movie’s start. On the one hand, they wish to create the moon, a new home for mankind because the Earth is dying, but to do that, they must first find and assassinate Jake Sully, the insurgent Na’vi leader.
The human infant Spider, who Quaritch and his men capture during an early skirmish with the Omatikaya clan—of which Jake is now the leader—and starts destroying large portions of the forest they call home, unknowing to Quaritch at the time.
Jake and Neytiri decide that the Sullys should flee their home country and seek refuge in the far-off atolls of Pandora when they realize that he is the target. As a result, they make the difficult journey to the Metkayina clan’s house, where they are welcomed despite initially being treated suspiciously.
Here, they are instructed in “the way of the water,” a set of rituals and practices that include knowledge of the clan’s spiritual ties to the tulkun, a type of sentient whale-like creatures that may reach lengths of 300 feet.
Due to their similar status as outcasts—Lo’ak considers Payakan to be just misunderstood while Payakan believes he is a murderer—one of Jake and Neytiri’s children, Lo’ak, develops an exceptionally strong friendship with tulkun named Payakan.
The Metkayina clan takes the Sully children to the Spirit Tree, where Kiri can have a brief talk with her mother while they are being taught the way of the water. But when she asks who her father is, something extraordinary occurs, and she appears to be having a seizure. Medical professionals attribute this to epilepsy, but it seems to be something more significant.
Anyhow, Quaritch has persisted in his pursuit of Jake and paired up with a captain named Mick Scoresby, chasing the tulkun to obtain a precious substance that supposedly prevents human aging. Scoresby is hunting the tulkun. To persuade Jake to come to their aid and reveal their location, they collaborate to terrorize a neighboring island and kill the clan’s tulkun.
Ronal learns that her tulkun has been slain as Quaritch gets closer to Jake’s location; nevertheless, the Metkayina clan is unwilling to accept the Sullys’ advise to move their own tulkuns as far away as possible to save them.
After arguing with each other and coming under attack from Quaritch and his troops, Lo’ak and his siblings leave to alert Payakan of the approaching danger. The kids are then captured after a lengthy underwater chase, which ultimately inspires Jake to pursue them and take on his adversary, setting off yet another fierce battle.
In the midst of all of this, Quaritch kidnaps Kiri and Tuk, the youngest Sully child, while the other kids band together to save Spider, tragically losing Neteyam in the process.
When Jake and Spider arrive to rescue the kidnapped children from Mick’s ship, there is a significant altercation during which Neytiri, driven by her rage about losing her son, exhibits particularly ruthless behaviour and kills several of Quaritch’s men.
As Jake approaches, Quaritch tries to intimidate Kiri with a knife, but Neytiri responds by stabbing Spider. Quaritch argues he doesn’t care because Spider is “not even the same species” as his kid.
However, after Neytiri stabs Spider in the chest, Jake and Quaritch engage in a hand-to-hand battle after Quaritch initially appears to back down. Neytiri and Kiri pursue Tuk as she is carried away by a current on the now-flooding ship amid the subsequent chaos.
By the end of the fight, Quaritch appears to be drowning and Jake is also trying to survive; nevertheless, both are eventually saved by the assistance of their respective sons, Spider and Lo’ak.
After connecting to the Spirit Tree, Kiri is shown to have the extraordinary capacity to summon the spirit of the Pandoran deity Eywa, saving Neytiri and Tuk and enabling the group to swim to the surface, where they are reunited with Jake and Lo’ak. Spider also brings Quaritch to the surface, but despite saving him, Quaritch rejects him and returns to the Sullys instead of staying with him.
The Metkayina clan and the Sullys arrange a ceremony for Neteyam at the end of the movie, during which Jake and Neytiri are informed: “Your son lays among our ancestors, you are one of us now.”
“We are sea people now; this is our home,” Jake continues. They go to the Spirit Tree in hopes of having a brief reunion with their dead kid.
What does this mean for the next sequel? While Quaritch is still at large and doesn’t seem inclined to give up on his anti-Na’vi proclivities anytime soon, there is undoubtedly much more to learn about the mysteries of Kiri.
Expect both of these elements to play a significant role in the upcoming movie, and it also seems likely that we’ll see other Na’vi clans and locations in Pandora.
How Does the Dr. Grace (Sigourney Weaver) Come Back in Avatar 2?
Fans of the Avatar series will recall how Dr. Grace Augustine, played by Sigourney Weaver, met a tragic end in the first movie when Colonel Quaritch’s men shot her as they attempted to flee.
Therefore, when it was announced that she would return for the new movie, eyebrows were raised. However, it was soon made apparent that Grace would not be returning from the dead and that she would actually be playing a different role.
Instead, she portrays Kiri, a Na’vi teen who is revealed very early on in the movie to be Grace’s avatar’s biological daughter. Given that she was born after Grace’s passing, her conception and the identity of her father are both completely unknown. Still, she is adopted by Jake and Neytiri and grows up to be an integral part of the Sully family.
Weaver does, in fact, make a few appearances in the movie as Grace, both in a few flashback moments and in a scene where Kiri visits a Spirit Tree so she can speak with her ancestors.
How Does the Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) Come Back in Avatar 2?
The evil Colonel Miles Quaritch, played by Stephen Lang, was another character who was abruptly killed off in the first movie but made a comeback in the sequel.
But once more, this does not imply that James Cameron has chosen to rewrite history. Lang is portraying a “recombinant” version of the character in this scenario, an autonomous avatar created using his DNA and imbued with his memories but unaware of his own demise (in one scene, the new Na’vi Quaritch actually comes upon his own corpse).
Therefore, Lang is effectively portraying a Na’vi version of the same character. As he puts it, the combination of his military expertise with the power and agility of a Na’vi is “quite a potent mix.”
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