At the end of Avatar: The Way of Water, Jake Sully was faced with the death of his son. Now, in Avatar: Fire & Ash, he'll be taking that trauma with him as he fights against new and old foes to keep the Na'vi safe.
Speaking to Empire, Sam Worthington teased how Jake and Neytiri's journey will continue in the third Avatar outing. "Because of Neteyam's death, there is now a division in that relationship," Worthington said. "That's a great design by Jim — how do you split apart the perfect love story? Jake and Neytiri share this painful wound, but they can't seem to heal each other. So they kind of split, not because they want to, but because they're just trying to survive within themselves. Jake heads back to battle and Neytiri kind of closes down."
"Everybody in this movie is reacting from a place of trauma," said James Cameron, the film's director. "Everybody. Jake's processing the death of his son. [Jake and Neytiri's other son] Lo'ak is processing the death of his brother and his own guilt around that. The peacemaker that Jake was in 2 has changed, because he's grieving. He doesn't know how to go forward, and so he goes back to the world that he knows, which is soldiering. To attack, to go to war, that's a comforting place for Jake."
We'll have to see how things end up for Jake Sully in Avatar: Fire & Ash when it releases on the 19th of December.