Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Avatar: The Way of Water
While Avatar: The Way of Water is pretty straightforward, the sequel does everything possible to avoid setting the story’s events into a rigid timeline. As a result, we never learn how old the many children of Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) are. Fortunately, James Cameron left enough breadcrumbs behind for us to make an educated guess. So, now that The Way of Water is available on streaming, let’s break down the sequel’s teenage cast and try to figure out their age.
Who Are Jake and Neytiri’s Children?
Avatar: The Way of Water happens approximately fifteen years after the events of the 2009 movie. At the end of Avatar, Jake helps the Na’vi to defeat the human colonizers, sending them back to Earth. Jake also permanently transfers his consciousness into his avatar, becoming one of Pandora’s people forever.
Between Avatar and The Way of Water, Jake and Neytiri were busy building a family. They birthed two sons named Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton), and a daughter named Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li). The couple also adopted Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who mysteriously gestated inside the womb of Dr. Grace’s (Weaver) defunct Avatar. We don’t know who Kiri’s father is or how an Avatar without a mind could conceive a child. Still, Kiri is an official Sully in The Way of Water.
Rounding up the new young cast, there’s Spider (Jake Champion), a human child left behind in Pandora. Spider was only a baby in Avatar, and since cryogeny is dangerous for children, he’s left behind on the moon. Spider grows among the Na’vi, learning their ways and language. He also develops a close relationship with Jake and Neytiri’s children, which turns him into a sort of cousin.
How Old Are the Teenagers of ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’?
Despite The Way of Water focusing on a new generation of Pandora inhabitants, there’s not even a single line in the entire movie to tell us how old they are. To make things more complicated, we cannot say for sure how Na'vi physiology works. That means we don’t know how long a child gestates inside their mother's womb or how fast they age. On top of all that, we don’t even know how long a year lasts in Pandora. It’s almost certain that the rotation of the moon is not the same as Earth’s, so the counting of time there should be completely different from ours.
While The Way of Water doesn’t give fans a clear answer when it comes to the character's age, we can still deduce a few things. First, there’s Spider. Since he was already born when humans were driven out of Pandora, and The Way of Water takes place after a fifteen-year time jump, we can safely assume Spider is fifteen years old. Neteyam is the eldest child of Jake and Sully, and grew up with Spider. So, if Na’vi gestates for a similar period to humans, Neteyam is around fourteen years old. Lo’ak is the younger brother of Neteyam, but the two seem to be approximately the same age. That makes Lo’ak around thirteen to fourteen years old. Kiri gestated in Dr. Grace’s Avatar when Neytiri was no longer pregnant from Neteyam, so she should have been around the same age as Lo’ak.
The hardest character to figure out is Tuk. She is obviously younger than her siblings, but we can’t tell her age for sure. However, in an interview for IGN, Cameron said that in The Way of Water, Jake and Neytiri “have a family of pre-teens and teenagers.” If we assume he’s also including Tuk, and he has no reason not to, the girl is no younger than nine and no older than twelve. Judging by how different she looks from her siblings, we would say she is closer to nine.
We still don’t know much about Cameron’s alien universe, and we hope Avatar 3 will answer some of our questions. Maybe we’ll also get an official timeline to clear out the date of the main story events and the age of the characters. Meanwhile, we can still put the puzzle pieces together and form a coherent picture.
Avatar: The Way of Water is now available to watch on Disney+ and Max.
Read More About ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’
- ‘Avatar’ Term Glossary: Understanding the Language of Pandora
- ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Ending Explained: Jake Vs. Quaritch
- ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Cast and Character Guide: Who’s Returning and Who’s New in the Long-Awaited Sequel
