Neytiri's arc with race- Avatar: Fire and Ash

The latest installment in the Avatar franchise makes it clear Neytiri has not let go of her prejudice to humans despite her marriage to Jake. In a way, the movie makes it hard to not sympathize with her.

Indeed, prejudice is wrong and a race cannot be generalized based on the actions of a few. We see this rendered true through Jake’s mutiny against the humans in the first movie, his full integration into Na’vi culture in the second, and Dr. Ian Garvin’s coup to save Jake after his capture by Colonel Miles Quaritch in Fire and Ash’s second act.

However, ideals often fall short in the face of reality. Neytiri and the viewer know it’s wrong to think this way, but all she witnesses is death, destruction, tragedy, and pain brought forth by these foreign colonizers. Their spears pierce and ravage her people with no regard, and she cannot hold back her hate for “pink-skins” (the derogatory term for humans used by the Na’vi); it has been the dominant emotion the world has rendered to her and the dominant emotion her ferocious eyes have witnessed. From the original Avatar to The Way of Water, 15 years have passed within the timeline. For 15 years, the fierce warrior's contempt has only grown. One can imagine many sleepless nights where she ponders her people's situation and the current politics of her home-world.

And at this stage in her life, even love cannot overcome it. Her day-to-day life is filled by her intimacy with her human husband and their half-human children, but her thoughts are dominated by resentment. So much so, that she expresses how she feels embarrassed to be the wife and mother to humans.

Jake is understandably hurt, and he reels from the effects of this revelation amid his own emotional turmoil (from the death of his son Neteyam in The Way of Water). But his surprise is well-founded, as Neytiri hints throughout the story she’s not as resentful as her speech in this moment indicates.

In spite of her words, her actions throughout the story show something different. She expresses pain for Colonel Quaritch’s human son Spider when Jake attempts to kill him, despite initially wanting him out the house. She loves and guides her half-human children in their lives as if they were full Na’vi. She treasures her human husband Jake, and stakes her life to save him, waging a solo war on the human military base.

Neytiri’s arc with race throughout the movie is indicative that our lowest moments do not define us. Yes, she feels and expresses racism and prejudice. But, it’s only a momentary feeling, it is not her essence. In a world that renders selective pain to a race, it’s only natural a recipient would want to render pain back. Perhaps even express it by behaving the way they do; by looking at the other as beneath them.

But oftentimes, our actions speak louder than our darkest thoughts. And in the case of Neytiri, her actions of care prove she’s more than her words of contempt.

Amid the turmoil of Jake’s jailbreak, the human and Mangkwan invasion, and their son Lo’ak going after Payakan, Neytiri and Jake don’t get a chance to properly reconcile these thoughts she has been having. I’m expecting it to be in the fourth or fifth installment, and it’ll be a wait that’s more than worthwhile. Extending to real life, it’ll show the audience how these biased thoughts don’t shape the way we actually live our lives or how we truly feel.

And in a movie about a non-human race on a distant planet, that’s one of the most human messages out there.