Avatar: Fire And Ash's Eywa Twist Was Hiding In Plain Sight All Along
by Rafael Motamayor · /FilmEywa has no dominion here ... but spoilers do. Read no further if you haven't yet watched "Avatar: Fire & Ash."
"Avatar: Fire and Ash" is a fascinating movie. This is James Cameron's first proper sequel, and it suffers because of it. As the second and third "Avatar" movies were famously once meant to be a single movie before Cameron decided to split them up, there is a lot of overlap between "The Way of Water" and this film. That being said, to just say "Fire and Ash" is a rehash of themes and plot points completely misses the point of what Cameron does in this film.
This is the most plot-heavy and thematically dense of the three movies by far, with James Cameron exploring ideas such as pacifism (in his most overt criticism of it to date), religion, identity, culture, and parenthood. Sure, some of the broad strokes are similar to "The Way of Water," but this movie introduces not one but two new and fascinating Na'vi clans that further flesh-out the world of Pandora. There's also a game-changing storyline in which Jack Champion's Spider becomes the first human being to not only breathe the Pandoran air, but to evolve to develop a kuru, perform tsaheylu, and connect to Eywa herself.
Eywa is a key figure in "Avatar: Fire and Ash," not only as a deity but also as an actual player in the story. Cameron explores themes of religion and its role in society with this movie, especially through Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the mysterious child of Grace Augustine (also Weaver), who gets seizures whenever she connects to Eywa. The big reveal of the movie — that Kiri truly has no father — has been hiding right there in the film's title all along.
What if Kiri was a literal avatar of Eywa?
The biggest reveal in "Avatar: Fire and Ash" is that Kiri doesn't have a father, but was created by Eywa as a clone of her mother Grace. Yes, Kiri is a Jesus baby, just like many members of the audience had already guessed when she was first introduced in "The Way of Water."
This reveal was actually hinted at much earlier than that, however, going all the way back to the first movie. That's because Kiri is heavily implied to be not just a child of Eywa, but a personification of Eywa herself. That would explain why Kiri struggles to communicate with the Great Mother, why she feels her heartbeat, and why she can so easily connect to and even control the wildlife of Pandora when she wants — because she is the Great Mother that connects it all. The hint is in the title of the movie: "Avatar."
The word "avatar" is a concept within Hinduism used to refer to the incarnation of a deity — an appearance by a great spirit in the material plane. The Na'vi avatars are incarnations of their human pilots in Na'vi bodies, for example. In Kiri's case, however, the fact that she was created by Eywa herself, and has such a connection to the environment (just like Eywa), seems to indicate there's more to her than just a miracle child. Instead, it is very likely she literally is an avatar of Eywa, a manifestation of the deity — like Rei Ayanami in the classic "End of Evangelion."
All that's left is for Kiri/Eywa to meet the radical atheist Varang (Oona Chaplin), who is hellbent on destroying the very image of Eywa in the eyes of the Na'vi.