We have a lot of huge movies heading our way this year, but 2025 will conclude with what's likely to be by far the biggest: James Cameron's Avatar: Fire and Ash.
The threequel will once again explore new parts of Pandora as we move on from the ocean-loving Metkayina to instead focus on the considerably less friendly Ash Clan. Today, we have a first look at Oona Chaplin's Varang and the movie's "Wind Traders."
"Varang is the leader of a people who have gone through an incredible hardship. She's hardened by that," Cameron tells Empire Online (via SFFGazette.com). "She will do anything for them, even things that we would consider to be evil. One thing we wanted to do in this film is not be black-and-white simplistic. Or blue-and-pink simplistic."
"We’re trying to evolve beyond the ‘all humans are bad, all Na’vi are good’ paradigm," he later said of evolving the franchise beyond just putting the Na'vi against the RDA.
According to the filmmaker, Chaplin "is so good that I didn’t quite appreciate how good her performance is until we got the Wētā animation back. She’s an enemy, an adversarial character, but [Chaplin] makes her feel so real and alive."
It won't just be bad guys we meet in Avatar: Fire and Ash because it's also set to introduce the Wind Traders, Na'vi who travel through the clouds with the use of gigantic Pandoran creatures,
"They’re nomadic traders, equivalent to the camel caravans of the Spice Road back in the Middle Ages," Cameron explains. "And you know, they’re just fun. Like all Na’vi, they live in a symbiosis with their creatures. If you’ve got any nautical blood in your veins, you’ll want to be on [their] ship."
Avatar: Fire and Ash was shot back-to-back with 2022's Avatar: The Way of Water; while Cameron originally planned for them to be one movie, he soon realised that there was too much material and expanded the story across parts two and three (a fourth instalment is also in development).
In the threequel, Jake and Neytiri will encounter the "Ash People," a new clan of Na'vi, though that's really all we have in terms of officially released plot details right now.
Oona Chaplin (Game of Thrones) plays the leader of the Ash People, Varang. David Thewlis and Michelle Yeoh are also joining the cast alongside returning stars Sam Worthington, Zeo Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Britain Dalton, Jack Champion, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Bailey Bass, Joel David Moore, Edie Falco, and Dileep Rao.
Cameron, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver wrote Avatar: Fire and Ash and the movie remains on track to be released on December 19, 2025.