AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER Star Stephen Lang Explains How His Character Returns in the Sequel
Stephen Lang’s Colonel Miles Quaritch will be back in Avatar: The Way Water regardless of the fact that he died in the first film. It was quite a surprise to learn this, but there is a story behind the villain’s return as a Na’vi Recom, and thanks to Lang, we have some new details to share with you regarding that. While talking to Empire, the actor reveals how exactly the character returns saying:
"He's a genetically-engineered autonomous avatar. He has been downloaded with the mind, the emotions, and even more interestingly, possibly the spirit of Quaritch. Now, that's all pretty esoteric stuff. He comes with a full memory bank up until the time he actually undergoes the DNA transfer. So there are certain things that he doesn't have any memory of at all. He has no memory of his death."
Lang goes on to explain things a little more, saying:
"It's fair to say (it's the same Quaritch), but I think it's incomplete. If you think about it, in the original film, Quaritch was really a function. He was a colorful function – a personality-filled function, but he really was there to provide conflict. Now, he still has that function but I also think, just because of the depths of what Jim is exploring here, he's quite a bit more than that. We're seeing parts of him that we have not seen hitherto. That only makes sense because we don't want to be massaging the same territory over and over again. We need to go to new places and indeed he does."
I loved Lang’s character in the first movie, and I’m very curious to see that character continue to be explored in the upcoming sequels. He was just such a badass villain. Lang went on to talk about Edie Falco’s character, who will seemingly be the main antagonist of the new film, playing a character called "Ardmore" who actually outranks his character. He says:
"It seems to me he is really trying his hardest to make it work with Ardmore, but we'll just have to see how that works out. Back in the day, Quaritch was the right-angle, straight line guy in a very fluid and round world. Now it's Ardmore who lives by this by-the-book doctrinaire, and sometimes you gotta throw the book out the window."
The film is set more than a decade after the events of the first film, “Avatar: The Way of Water begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.”
The movie also stars Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, and Kate Winslet.
Avatar: The Way of Water is set to arrive on December 16, 2022, with Avatar 3 set to debut two years later on December 20, 2024.