Spoilers for The Way of Water ahead.
If Avatar: The Way of Water taught us anything, it’s that humans are greedy — for eternal life, for revenge, for tulkun brain juice, and for more Avatar movies. After the success of James Cameron’s blockbuster follow-up to his 2009 Best Picture nominee, audiences are clamoring for more of that sweet, sweet Jake Sully voice-over. Thirteen years after the first film, with its by-the-numbers storytelling, The Way of Water has expanded the franchise’s universe and sparked numerous ideas about what future sequels will look like. Below, everything we know so far about Avatar 3, including its subtitle, release date, and new Na’vi characters.
It’s not called Avatar 3
Get used to saying, “My favorite movie is Avatar: Fire and Ash.”
It comes out on December 19, 2025
Would you believe it’s been delayed nine times? Would you believe it was originally supposed to come out in 2015?
It takes place not long after The Way of Water
No more decade-plus time jumps. Cameron has confirmed that the third film will focus again on Sully, Neytiri, and their kids, who won’t have totally aged out of their roles thanks to Cameron filming Avatar: The Way of Water and its sequel simultaneously, beginning in 2017. He also said that Miles Quaritch will continue to be the antagonist. In 2021, Cameron told Variety that he had completed filming with the young actors and had completed all of the motion-capture filming. At the time, he still had to shoot “a little bit on some of the adult characters” in live action. Producer Jon Landau told Collider in 2022 that they had shot “95% of Avatar 3” … as well as the entire first act of Avatar 4.
Avatar 3 will be wetter and better
Director of photography Russell Carpenter told Polygon that “there was more underwater work done for the other movie.”
… But also higher and drier
Cameron told the French news program 20 Minutes that the third film will introduce the audience to “cultures different from those I have already shown,” including the fire-based Ash clan. “I want to reveal the Na’vis from another angle because I’ve only shown their good sides so far. In the early films, there are very negative human examples and very positive Na’vis examples. In Avatar 3, we’ll do the opposite. We’ll also explore new universes while continuing the story of the main characters.” The trailer shows a Pandoran volcano and the barren land of the Ash clan, and the pissed-off cracked-skin Na’vi who live there. Unlike the peace-loving Na’vi of the first two films, these ones have chosen violence; the trailer shows them battling the good guys and also the human paramilitary. Quaritch seems to have embedded himself with them at one point, as he’s shown in their red war-paint. Na’vi are not a monolith!
It also briefly shows the Windtraders, a clan of Na’vi who fly in air ships. Notably, one of the gift shops in Disney World’s Pandora is called Windtraders, and that opened back in 2017, so the concept of a merchant air-ship class on Pandora has been established in the lore for years.
There will be more Kate Winslet
Winslet’s character, Ronal, had a minor role in the second film, but she didn’t break Tom Cruise’s underwater-breath-holding record for nothing: That famous picture of her waving a big cape in a mo-cap suit in a pool was for a scene in the third film.
Kate Winslet broke Tom Cruise’s underwater filming record from Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) of six minutes with a record of seven minutes and 14 seconds. #Avatar pic.twitter.com/R2Wh22RcqP
— Sinefesto EN (@sinefesto_en) January 2, 2023
Plus new characters, too
David Thewlis plays one of the windtraders, a Na’vi named Peylak who will also appear in the fourth and fifth films. Oona Chaplin plays Varang, the leader of the Ash clan. “Varang is the leader of a people who have gone through an incredible hardship. She’s hardened by that. She will do anything for them, even things that we would consider to be evil,” Cameron told Empire in January. In the trailer, she says “Your goddess has no dominion here.” Also, Vin Diesel may be involved somehow?
Our friends the Tulkun will return
VFX supervisor and Avatar EP Richard Baneham confirmed earlier this year that Payakan will be back, and that he has a girlfriend now, named Ta’nok. “The reaction emboldened us to go forward and play Payakan at the very highest level,” he said.
Wasn’t this one going to be called The Seed Bearer?
The rumors were not true. In 2018, the BBC leaked potential titles for the upcoming sequels, with the front-runner being The Seed Bearer. The other leaked titles in the series are Avatar: The Tulkun Rider and Avatar: The Quest for Eywa. Although the rumored Seed Bearer subtitle didn’t come to pass, it clarifies an important concept to the overarching story of the Avatar films. In the first sequel, we learn that Dr. Grace Augustine’s dormant avatar (Sigourney Weaver) gave birth to a daughter, Kiri (also Sigourney Weaver). The pregnancy and the impregnator are a mystery to the other characters. If this is the allegorical virgin birth, Pandora edition, then Kiri’s other parent would be Pandora’s version of God: Eywa, whom the Na’vi generally engage with in the form of a tree, or flora (seed bearer — get it?). We’ve already seen Kiri demonstrate abnormal powers and a strong connection to Eywa. (In the film, the human scientists believe she has epilepsy; many scholars theorize that certain prophets in various religions were, in fact, epileptic.) The franchise’s writers have said, “I don’t think we ever spoke about her specifically as a Na’vi Jesus,” but they also said she’s not not that. Even though the title changed, we can expect the third film to dive into the mysteries of Kiri, Intergalactic Girl-Jesus.
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