More than a decade after the events of the first film, we catch up to Jake Sully having become a father and a tribe leader (albeit not a very good one). He has five kids that he treats like a military unit — including one he consistently dismisses as a disappointment, one he abandons for most of the movie without a care in the world, and one with a mysterious and powerful connection to nature and to Eywa herself.
When this film’s version of the T-1000, Colonel Miles Quaritch, returns from the dead and becomes the coolest character in the film, Jake Sully is forced to take his family and run away. Like Aang, Jake Sully and his family arrive as refugees at the home of the water tribe, known as the Metkayina clan. And just like the Southern Water Tribe in “The Last Airbender,” the Metkayina are uniquely suited to their environment, having evolved to have physical attributes that allow them to essentially bend the element of water to their needs to allow them to move better underwater.
While most of the Sully kids have a hard time adjusting because they are not as physically adapted to the water as the Metkayina, there is one exception: Kiri. The biological daughter of Sigourney Weaver’s Grace Augustine and, well, we don’t know. Kiri has a strange connection to the natural world around her. Animals and plants seem drawn to Kiri, and she says she literally feels the mighty voice of Eywa speaking to her, allowing Kiri to kind of control the energy of the animals — like the way Avatar Aang becomes able to bend the very energy of living beings.