Summary
Jake has now become Toru Mato and implores the Na'vi people from the Omaticaya to help him rally the other Na'vi tribes to help. We see them assembling the other tribes.
Meanwhile, the RDA military men strategize about how to overpower the Na'vi. They track that the Na'vi are assembling and will soon number around 20,000, and Quaritch suggests that they ought to attack before the Na'vi gain too much power. He suggests that they bring the spaceship, with a gigantic bomb, to the Tree of Souls and drop it at 6 AM the following day.
In the mobile lab, Jake, Norm, and Trudy learn from Max that the military are coming for them. Trudy and Norm are worried, but Jake is sure they can take on Quaritch's troops. Back in his avatar's body, Jake bonds with the Tree of Souls, and searches for Grace's memories through the power of Eywa. As Neytiri approaches him, he tells her that humans killed their original planet Earth. Neytiri tells Jake that Eywa cannot take a side: "She protects only the balance of life."
As the military bomber approaches the Tree of Souls, Jake leads the Na'vi from both land and sky to attack the vehicles. A great battle ensues, in which many lives are lost. The ikrans are able to take hold of the ships and smash them together. At one point, Quaritch, in a Dragonfly ship, chases down Jake. The chase is heated, until Trudy comes to Jake's aid and shoots at Quaritch's ship. When Quaritch shoots back, Trudy goes down with her ship and perishes.
Neytiri's ikran is shot down and dies, while Norm's avatar gets wounded, which sends him back to his human body. Tsu'tey dies trying to attack the main spaceship carrying the bomb, while Neytiri watches from the ground. Jake discovers that both Trudy and Tsu'tey are dead when he tries to contact them both to no avail.
As the spaceship gets closer to the Tree of Souls, Jake warns Neytiri to stay away and stop fighting. Just as all hope seems lost, a large group of titanotheres begin charging and killing military men on the ground. A number of other creatures also approach in order to help. It seems that Eywa has come to their aid after all, which inspires Neytiri to join in the fight once again. She climbs atop an uncharacteristically receptive thanator and flies into the sky.
On a toruk, Jake drops a grenade onto the bombship, which crashes and explodes far from the Tree of Souls. Then, he drops grenades onto the command ship, which begins to crash, but Quaritch is able to jump off of it before it explodes on the ground. Quaritch lands near the temporary lamp that the scientists set up, and goes to unlink Jake from his avatar and kill him.
Before Quaritch can do so, Neytiri's thanator goes after him. After a struggle, Quaritch kills the thanator, which pins Neytiri to the ground. Just as Quaritch goes to kill Neytiri, Jake's avatar arrives, with only a piece of pipe to protect himself. When Jake destroys the colonel's suit, Quaritch manages to put on an air mask and continues to fight, accusing Jake of betraying his race. Quaritch manages to get into the lab and looks for Jake's linking pod, as Neytiri begins to break free from under the dead thanator. Just as it seems that Quaritch is about to slit Jake's throat, Neytiri shoots him with two arrows, which bring him to the ground.
The only problem remaining is the fact that Quaritch has broken the barrier between the lab and the outside world, and human Jake is slowly suffocating in Pandora's atmosphere. Neytiri comes to his aid yet again and puts an air mask over his face. "I See you," they say to one another.
The scene shifts to the base at Hell's Gate, with many humans leaving Pandora for good. Norm and Max stay, and Jake does a video diary in which he states that he will be living on Pandora for good and permanently transferring his consciousness to his avatar. He goes to the Tree of Souls, where he is laid down to connect with the roots, just like when Mo'at tried to revive Grace. With Eywa's help, he successfully transfers his consciousness into his Na'vi avatar, and is united with Neytiri.
Analysis
With Jake fully on the side of the Na'vi, the final section of the film tracks the definitive battle between the military and the Na'vi, the colonizers and the colonized. While much of the conflict has concerned Jake's belonging in the Na'vi tribe and his ability to make amends for the fact that he betrayed them, he has now earned their trust and is willing to fight on their side. An epic battle that threatens the future prosperity of Pandora ensues.
Even though Grace dies from the wound inflicted by Quaritch's gun, she is not entirely absent from the mission. With Jake's belonging with the Na'vi people comes a conviction that Eywa and the spiritual underpinnings of the Na'vi culture can help them defeat the military. He wants to use the data that is stored in the spiritual and biological makeup of Pandora to access Grace's memories. In this way, Grace's body is lost to the Na'vi, but her mind and her spirit continue to live on.
Neytiri initially doubts Jake's pleas to Eywa, suggesting that the mother goddess who protects their planet does not take sides in the affairs of the living. However, her initial assessment is challenged when the animals begin to fight on the side of the Na'vi in the fight to protect the Tree of Souls. When it seems that all hope is lost, a flood of titanotheres begin to help in the battle, fighting back to protect the home they share with the Na'vi. In effect, the natural world conspires against the man-made world to thwart mankind's destructive actions.
Thus, the film depicts the triumph of indigenous and natural forces over military-industrial forces, an allegory for man's destruction of the environment and indigenous life. Many have read the film as a metaphor for the struggle to fight climate change, and other efforts to put environmental and ecological concerns ahead of profit-mongering and the accumulation of capital. Part of this struggle in our contemporary world is indeed connected to the struggle for indigenous rights, efforts to decolonize political processes, and protect sacred land. Parallels between the issues faced today and the issues faced by the Na'vi on Pandora are numerous.
Avatar is a high-budget film with epic battle sequences and expensive production value that also wrestles with complex themes. It tells the story of a planet that must defend itself against industrial exploitation, as well as a story about a disabled man who chooses to leave his human body behind in favor of becoming an avatar. Quaritch frames Jake's loyalty to the Na'vi as a kind of betrayal to his own race, and the viewer is left to contemplate the racial implications of Jake's decision to "become" a Na'vi. With its large-scale archetypes and thematic arc, Avatar leaves a lot of room for a number of interpretations—at once a story about race, indigeneity, the environment, capitalism, the military-industrial complex, disability, and spirituality.
