New Avatar: Fire And Ash Footage Raises Questions About James Cameron's Sci-Fi Sequel

In Jim Cameron we trust. This December's highly-anticipated release of "Avatar: Fire and Ash" isn't actually the only dispatch from Pandora that we're getting in 2025. To further drum up hype for the incoming threequel and celebrate the technical achievement that was "The Way of Water," a two-part documentary titled "Fire and Water: Making the Avatar Films" dropped straight onto Disney+ streaming. Directed by Thomas C. Grane and written by Richard Brehm, the behind-the-scenes look at the 2022 sequel is filled to the gills with exclusive interviews, footage taken during filming of the mammoth undertaking, concept art from the early stages of development, and a whole lot more.

But that's not all! Because all is as Eywa wills it, Cameron couldn't let one last opportunity go by without giving starving audiences a little more to chew on. Only months removed from the theatrical rerelease of "The Way of Water" and the bonus clips teasing what's to come in the next film (depending on which screening you attended, you saw one of three different scenes introducing us to various characters or locations), we now have another full-length scene to obsess over and pick apart endlessly as we count the weeks left before "Fire and Ash."

This time, the footage revolves around Jake Sully's (Sam Worthington) kids, the mysterious teenager Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), and her human best bud Spider (Sam Champion) ... and it directly addresses one of our most pressing questions from the last trailer. Spider, who previously had to wear a facial mask in order to breathe the toxic air of Pandora, has apparently undergone some sort of transformation. The Ash clan Na'vi led by Oona Chaplin's Varang are awfully put off by this, but the ramifications could be dire. Here's what it might all mean moving forward.

Those Sully kids just can't stop getting into trouble, can they? Only one film removed from when they constantly found themselves captured by the enemy and placed directly in harm's way, it appears they're up to their usual antics once more. The post-credits scene after the second episode of the documentary (because only James Cameron could get away with including a post-credits scene in a documentary) begins with Spider emotionally reuniting with Kiri and the Sully kids in the middle of the jungle — right before a barrage of fiery arrows soar through the foliage and land among them, that is. This doesn't appear to be the film's first attack by the Ash clan, but the water Na'vi are clearly no match for the antagonistic warriors led by Varang. Once captured, it doesn't take long for the chieftain (along with Sully, who, unbeknownst to her, is currently a captive of Stephen Lang's villainous Quaritch) to notice that the human Spider is conspicuously missing his breathing mask.

"Is not our air poison to Sky People?" Varang asks rhetorically. When she demands to know how he's still alive, the incorrigible Kiri chimes in, "Because it is the will of Eywa," hinting at some sort of supernatural intervention ... and mightily setting off Varang in the process. This lines up with previously released trailer footage, where we glimpse Spider laying unconscious at the base of the giant Tree of Souls and its glowing roots covering his face in some sort of ritual. Later in the trailer, we see even more instances of Spider's bizarre abilities. For now, however, the Na'vi are mostly just panicked about Spider and his downright strange ability to be more like the Na'vi than should be humanly possible.

While it remains unclear exactly how these characters got into this current predicament in the first place, especially with the development that sees Sully becoming Quaritch's captive, the stakes obviously couldn't be higher. The Ash people aren't messing around whatsoever, harboring a deep resentment for both the ocean-based Na'vi and their goddess Eywa — who, as Varang spitefully responds, "has no dominion here." Battle lines have already been drawn between the two very different natives of Pandora, as evidenced by their (seemingly) unprovoked attack on the kids. And in the middle of all this is whatever's going on with Spider.

It's easy to understand why Varang, Quaritch, and Sully are all weirded out by this. A human who's able to breathe their air and, as we glimpsed in the last trailer, actually physically connect to the creatures of Pandora through his hair? All without assistance from the actual Avatar bodies that Sully and Quaritch have been using? That can only spell trouble. Although not included in this clip, we've previously seen Sully express dismay at the potential that Spider inexplicably represents. "What if every human being on Earth could live here without a mask?" he asks while standing in a medical lab. The implication, of course, is that the invading humans would have yet another advantage in their efforts to colonize Pandora and enact genocide on the indigenous population.

This wrinkle has been puzzling us ever since that last trailer dropped, and this clip from the making-of doc only adds to the riddle. Is Spider being set up as some chosen one figure? Will his new abilities put a greater target on himself? Find out when "Avatar: Fire and Ash" hits theaters December 19, 2025.