What happens at the end of Avatar: Fire and Ash? Every death, every survival, and the threads left dangling for Avatar 4
Avatar: Fire and Ash, released on 19 December 2025, ends with the Sully family victorious, the RDA routed — and both of its villains unaccounted for. One major character dies, one leaps into a fire rather than surrender, and one walks away entirely. Here's the full tally.
Every major death
- Ronal — the film's devastating loss. The Metkayina tsahìk (Kate Winslet) is fatally wounded in the final battle and gives birth in her dying moments, with Neytiri promising to raise the newborn girl as her own.
- Quaritch — probably not, but possibly — after he and Jake pause their brutal gravity-well fight to save Spider together, Jake offers him a way out. When Neytiri arrives with the rest of the family, Quaritch throws himself backwards into the flames below instead. His body is never shown. In this franchise, that's practically a promise.
- The RDA's forces — shattered. Once Kiri finally connects with Eywa, Pandora's creatures wreck the human fleet, and the survivors are driven off. Plenty of Na'vi on both sides fall with them, including many of Varang's Ash People.
Neteyam, who died in The Way of Water, appears once more — in the spirit world, alongside Grace and Ronal, in the film's final vision.
Who survives — and how
Varang (Oona Chaplin), the fire-worshipping leader of the Mangkwan clan, is beaten when her strength fails against Kiri, and she flees the battle. Alive. At large. Unfinished business.
Spider ends the film transformed: brought back from death by Kiri earlier in the story, he can now breathe Pandora's air without a mask, and the closing scene shows him entering the spirit world with her — accepted, finally, as one of Eywa's own. Payakan the tulkun is welcomed back from exile, and the film drops one more bombshell it never resolves: Kiri has no biological father.
The threads left dangling for Avatar 4
Quaritch's fate, Varang's whereabouts, Kiri's origin, Spider's miracle lungs — which prove humans could one day colonise Pandora outright — plus a newborn Sully and the newly introduced Wind Traders, led by Peylak (David Thewlis). That's a lot of kindling. Avatar 4 is pencilled in for December 2029 and Avatar 5 for 2031, with some footage for the fourth film already shot; James Cameron has said continuing depends on Fire and Ash's performance, and that he'd wrap up the remaining thread in a book if the films stopped here. The destination, at least, has been public for years. Producer Jon Landau told Gizmodo in 2022:
"There is a section of the story where we go to Earth."
That's the plan for Avatar 5 — showing Neytiri what the Sky People left behind.