Jake Sully: Who He Is, Who Plays Him and What Happens to Him

Jake Sully is the lead of the Avatar saga: a paralyzed former Marine who arrives on Pandora in 2154 and ends up living as one of the Na'vi. He is played by Sam Worthington, who holds the first billing in Avatar (2009), Avatar: The Way of Water and Avatar: Fire and Ash. All three films were directed by James Cameron.

The credits are not perfectly consistent about his name. He is billed as Jake Sully in the first two films and simply as Jake in Fire and Ash, so a search for either name leads to the same character.

In the first film the RDA, a company mining a valuable mineral on the moon Pandora, is at odds with the blue Na'vi people who live there. Jake begins as a human, and he joins the company's avatar program in place of his late twin brother. The program lets humans control Na'vi bodied avatars.

He is attacked by wildlife in the forest and saved by a Na'vi woman, Neytiri, who brings him to her clan, the Omaticaya. Colonel Quaritch secretly asks Jake to gather intelligence on the clan in return for a promise to restore his legs. That deal drives the first film, because Jake is spying on people he is slowly coming to respect. As he learns Na'vi ways, he begins to fall in love with Neytiri.

If you are new to the series, the avatar characters page places him beside the rest of the ensemble, and the avatar movies in order guide shows where each of his three films sits.

Jake's closest bond is with Neytiri, his wife and partner in every film, and almost every other relationship in the saga runs through the two of them. The details below reveal plot from all three films.

Jake Sully and Neytiri. Neytiri rescues him in the forest, brings him to the Omaticaya and, as Jake learns Na'vi ways, becomes the person he falls in love with. She is also the one who kills Quaritch and saves Jake at the end of the first film. By The Way of Water they are raising a family, and the death of Neteyam is the grief that hangs over Fire and Ash. In the third film Neytiri sneaks into the RDA base to reach Jake, and she is later captured in the final battle before Kiri stops Varang from killing her.

His children. In The Way of Water the Sully family is Neteyam and Lo'ak (sons), Tuk (daughter) and Kiri (adopted daughter). Kiri's mother is Grace, whom Spider meets through Kiri at the end of Fire and Ash. In the third film, Neytiri delivers her daughter Pril after Ronal dies in childbirth.

Spider. Spider is the human boy who grew up on Pandora and is close to the Sully children, though Quaritch learns he is also his son. In The Way of Water, Jake fears Spider's knowledge could expose the clan, and the later film tests that fear. In Fire and Ash, Jake tries to kill him to keep the RDA from learning from him, but cannot do it. The two later work together.

Quaritch. Colonel Miles Quaritch is Jake's opposite number. In the first film he is a human colonel who offers Jake his legs back. In the second he returns as a recombinant, a Na'vi body carrying the memories of the dead soldier. In the third, Jake and Quaritch, caught in a magnetic flux, must cooperate to save Spider. Read the quaritch profile for his side of the rivalry.

Clans. Jake belongs first to the Omaticaya, who take him in, and then to the Metkayina after Tonowari welcomes the family. For the wider political map, see the na'vi clans page.

In my opinion, Jake's best scenes are the ones where he has to choose between two sides rather than the ones with the biggest creatures. These picks are opinion, and they contain spoilers.

Confessing at Hometree. Jake sabotages a bulldozer, Selfridge orders Hometree destroyed, and Jake then confesses his role. It could be argued that this is the moment the first film earns its ending, because Jake is no longer simply a spy who has changed sides. He is a man who has to answer for what he did, and he is captured for it.

Bonding with Toruk. Rallying the clans on the back of Toruk is the large, crowd pleasing set piece of Avatar (2009), and it is also the practical turning point of the plot, because it is the reason the clans listen to an outsider. Cameron brings the same idea back in Fire and Ash, where Jake bonds with Toruk again and rallies the clans for the final battle. That being said, the repeat plays more as a callback than a surprise.

Deciding to stand and fight. At the end of The Way of Water, Tonowari takes the Sullys in as part of his clan, and Jake concludes that he must stop running. Perhaps this is the quietest scene on the list, but it reframes him from a refugee father to the man who starts the larger war the next film delivers.

Failing to kill Spider. In Fire and Ash, Jake tries to kill Spider so the RDA cannot learn from him, and he cannot go through with it. It is a bleak scene, and I would rank it as the most revealing thing the film does with him, because it shows a leader who has been pushed to a terrible conclusion and cannot act on it.

Working with Quaritch. Jake and Quaritch, caught in a magnetic flux, have to cooperate to save Spider before Quaritch throws himself off the floating rock. After two films of a straight rivalry, this is the nearest the saga comes to a truce, and it is the best use of the pairing in my view.