Avatar: The Way Of Water Fans Foresee An Eternal Battle With Quaritch In The Sequels
Launching to serious critical acclaim, James Cameron's "Avatar: The Way of Water" returns audiences to the wildly exotic planet Pandora, its native Na'vi people and their fight against arch-nemesis Col. Miles Quaritch, played as in the original "Avatar" by Stephen Lang. When last seen in "Avatar," Quaritch had been violently vanquished by Sam Worthington's ex-Marine-turned-Na'vi Jake Sully. Jake had joined forces with the Na'vi in a desperate and ultimately successful attempt to fend off the rapacious corporate and military forces from Earth attempting to strip-mine Pandora for its gravity-defying unobtanium deposits.
As "Avatar: The Way of Water" begins, audiences are re-introduced to Jake, now living full-time in his Na'vi form with his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) and their Na'vi offspring. But this time, the cloned-from-his-remains Col. Quaritch is dropped into his own, re-bootable Na'vi avatar. As such, he and a cadre of other Earthly soldiers are imbued with all the size, strength, and speed of the planet's feline, indigenous Na'vi occupants. On the run and seeking refuge following displacement from their destroyed forest home, Jake and the other Na'vi turn for help to Pandora's Metkayina sea people, who reluctantly take them in as a new war against the human invaders breaks out. So, after seeing the vicious struggle of Quaritch vs. the Na'vi continuing in "Avatar: The Way of Water," some fans seem to think Lang's villainous character will never end his fight against the long-suffering Pandoran natives.
Fans think Quaritch's gung-ho military nature means he'll never give up the battle
As depicted in the original "Avatar," Stephen Lang's Col. Quaritch is presented as a veteran Marine sent to Pandora to train up recruits to survive on the alien world. In that film, he tells the new arrivals that the world beyond the confines of the corporate-military base is full of alien dangers that can end their lives at any moment. He goes on to say that his main job is to keep them alive on Pandora, but that he will not succeed, and that some of them will certainly perish. Which turns out to be all too true.
As the action of "Avatar: The Way of Water" progresses, we see Quaritch, now clad in his Na'vi identity, as a soldier on a single-minded mission: to destroy Jake along with his family and the rest of his Na'vi clan. Fans were quick to zero in on Lang's performance. Posting on the r/movies subreddit discussing the film, one fan referenced a line from the film in which Quaritch's avatar is described by the Na'vi as an unkillable Demon who, if necessary, will have to be cut down "as many times as I have to!" This prompted Redditor u/kellenthehun to respond by writing, "Honestly, a good complement to another badass line, 'Nothings over while I'm breathing!'" a line spoken by Quaritch in the original "Avatar."
Fans also feel Quaritch could keep returning in future Avatar films
After his human body is cloned from Quaritch's damaged remains left over from the original film, the Na'vi avatar he assumes in "Avatar: The Way of Water" lets him continue to fight Jake and the rest of Na'vi on their own terms. This story element gave a number of fans ideas about how Quaritch's character might live on in subsequent "Avatar" installments.
On the same subreddit noted above, one fan imagined Lang's Quaritch dying only to be resurrected in upcoming "Avatar" films, writing "I actually wondered if they'd kill him only to have him reborn into a new body in the next one. Every sequel [he is just an] angrier, slightly advanced Quaritch. Lol." Redditor u/Surrideo keyed in on the cloning aspect of Quaritch as seen in the new movie, feeling that the movie had perhaps missed the opportunity to create a whole legion of Quaritches to unleash upon the Na'vi, writing, "The moment I learned they cloned him, I was like, they only cloned him once? Where's the army of clones?" Likewise, Reddit fan u/ABCairo picked up on this line of reasoning to propose a potential character arc for the Colonel, writing, "They just keep making copies of [Quaritch] to go after Jake and Neytiri and they keep getting killed. Every time he comes back he's just a little less each time. Eventually he's an empty, demented, rage filled shell of his former human self."