Avatar 3 Reveals Two New Na’vi Tribes

Avatar: Fire and Ash will introduce two new Na’vi tribes later this year, but the latest sneak peek will make them feel close already. In a new interview with Empire, director James Cameron gave some new details on the “Ash Clan” and the “Wind Traders,” along with some new concept art of both of their designs. He even described a new character, Varang, and her motivations as the leader of the Ash Clan. It sounds like Cameron is planning to tease this movie out little by little over the next few months before Avatar: Fire and Ash premieres on December 19th, 2025.

The third installment of Cameron’s epic space fantasy takes us to new regions on the moon Pandora, introducing us to our first big non-human antagonists, the Ash Clan. Their leader is played by Oona Chaplin — best known for playing Talisa Stark on HBO’s Game of Thrones. Cameron said that Chaplin’s performance “is so good that I didn’t quite appreciate how good her performance is until we got the Wētā animation back. She’s an enemy, an adversarial character, but [Chaplin] makes her feel so real and alive.”

“Varang is the leader of a people who have gone through an incredible hardship. She’s hardened by that,” Cameron explained. “She will do anything for them, even things that we would consider to be evil. One thing we wanted to do in this film is not be black-and-white simplistic. We’re trying to evolve beyond the ‘all humans are bad, all Na’vi are good’ paradigm.”

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Meanwhile, the Wind Traders roam Pandora with the help of massive flying creatures depicted in concept art like hot air balloons. Of them, Cameron said, “They’re nomadic traders, equivalent to the camel caravans of the Spice Road back in the Middle Ages. And you know, they’re just fun. Like all Na’vi, they live in a symbiosis with their creatures.”

“If you’ve got any nautical blood in your veins, you’ll want to be on [their] ship,” the director added excitedly. Cameron has been working on Avatar for nearly three decades now, and it’s clearly a labor of love. Fans feel the weight of those years as well, having anticipated a sequel from 2009 to 2022. Now that the series is back in motion, it looks like it will move along much more quickly.

Avatar: Fire and Ash hits theaters on December 19th, 2025. Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water are both streaming now on Disney+.