Avatar: Fire and Ash is now in theaters. The film takes fans back to Pandora for a third time, introducing a new adventure and new Na’vi tribes. The movie takes place shortly after the events of Avatar: The Way of Water. The Sully family is still living with the Metkayina Clan while mourning Neteyam, who was killed in the battle with the “Sky People” from the RDA (Resources Development Administration). Disney released a discussion with Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, and Sigourney Weaver as they give a behind-the-scenes look at their characters in the new film.

Both Jake Sully, aka Toruk Makto (Sam Worthington), and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) are coping with the loss of Neteyam in their own ways. This leads to tension. “Both characters go back to their default,” Worthington said. “Neytiri goes back to Eywa [the All-Mother of Pandora] and Jake goes back to soldiering. They’re both just trying to find a path through.”

Despite his strength, Jake now realizes “how vulnerable he is,” Worthington added. “He may not be able to protect his family or his chosen family — meaning all the Na’vi clans.”

Neytiri, meanwhile, “is in such a dark place, and she can’t control herself,” Saldaña said. “Obviously, [her grief] is impacting her relationships with her family, because she doesn’t have a will to do anything. She’s losing purpose and she’s starting to question everything.”

Saldaña continued, “Neytiri is a mirror to so many stories that we hear in our lives and throughout history. When someone experiences a great deal of loss at the hands of a community or an entity, that pain is calcified, and it turns into absolute hate and aberration… It’s almost like violence begets violence, and so does pain. If you experience pain, you unconsciously want others to experience the same pain as you, because you feel so miserable and alone in it. Neytiri is at the precipice of really falling and becoming what will eventually be Varang… If not for the love that she has with Jake, and inherently her children, I think Neytiri would’ve joined someone like Varang with the Mangkwan people.”

Playing witch Fire

Varang — a formidable, unpredictable shaman played by Oona Chaplin — is the leader of the Mangkwan Clan. After a volcanic eruption destroyed her clan’s Hometree, they transformed its charred remains into their new home, forsaking Eywa and nature itself.

“Varang comes from a place that has been devastated by natural disaster,” Chaplin said. “Her people have suffered this great trauma. She figured out a way to harness the power of that pain and grief and desperation and really turn it into her strength. So, really, her weakness is her strength, and that gives her a very interesting relationship with fear and power. Very early on, Jim [Cameron] said to me, ‘Everything that makes her afraid — anywhere she sees that there’s power — she goes right for it, and she tries to destroy it.”

She finds an unlikely ally in Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the Colonel in charge of an elite team of soldiers resurrected as recombinants, a breed of transgenic human/Na’vi hybrid warriors created by the RDA. “His relationship with the parent company, the RDA, has soured,” Lang said. “As a result, that opens him up to other possibilities. He needs a path.”

That path inevitably leads him to Jake.

“The juxtaposition of admiration and contempt that the two feel for each other is a very dynamic, volatile combination,” Lang said. “It seems to be a recipe for all kinds of drama.”

Worthington added, “They’re in perfect mirror reflections of each other… Whether they’re conscious of it or not, they recognize themselves in the other. Also, they’ve come from Earth to this planet. A lot of the characters we meet were born on Pandora. These guys, they’re immigrants… We’re seeing the power that Pandora has on these characters and how it can transform one from a dumb grunt in a wheelchair to a leader — and the other from a steadfast, solid rock of a colonel to a mercurial man who’s unsure of where his destiny lies.”

Quaritch is also grappling with the revelation that Spider (Jack Champion) — a human child who was orphaned by war raised alongside the Sully children — is his biological son. “It’s confusing to him, but at the same time, it presents possibilities for him to explore the avenue of being a father, which he’s never experienced,” Lang said. “He’s not good at it; it doesn’t come native to him at all. But it’s what’s happening. He’s flexible enough to adapt.”

The Ties That Bind

Spider, likewise, has complicated feelings about his newfound lineage. Yet, even as Neytiri ostracizes him — blaming him and the “Sky People” for Neteyam’s death — he grows closer to Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). “[The children] come up against so many challenges,” Weaver said. “The kids are separated from their parents: ‘This time dad and mom aren’t gonna come in and rescue us. We’ve got to figure it out for ourselves. We have to learn to rely on each other, trust each other, take care of each other.’ You see all the kids coming into their own in a way they haven’t before.”

Just as it’s always been, family is at heart of the Avatar films.

“This is about their growth,” Saldaña said. “This family is recovering from a great loss and reconnecting and individualizing themselves but solidifying their bond as a family. Together, they’re unbreakable. They’re inseparable. They can do anything. They can survive anything.”