How long after James Cameron's first movie is Avatar: The Way of Water set in the Avatar timeline? Cameron began work on a sequel almost immediately after Avatar premiered to unprecedented box office success, and Fox couldn't green-light more Pandora pandemonium quick enough, but Avatar 2 had suffered one delay after another as the scope of Cameron's vision broadened. Not only did the script take longer to nail down than originally planned, but Avatar 2 lives up to its title by incorporating cutting-edge underwater filming technology.
Finally, Avatar: Way of the Water premiered in theaters on December 16, 2022. The wait was more than warranted. The sequel made over $2.2 billion at the box office (via The Numbers) and has an audience score of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. The story saw Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) living happily on Pandora, now proud parents to four young children, but war breaks out when human colonists arrive back on Pandora and have forced Jake & Neytiri's family from their usual forest dwelling to the unfamiliar coast where the Metkayina clan reside.
How Much Time Passed After The First Avatar?
Some time has passed between the Avatar timeline and that of the sequel as Avatar: The Way of Water starts more than a decade after the first film's climactic battle between Na'vi warriors and the RDA soldiers led by Miles Quaritch. More specifically, Avatar 2 appears to take place 14 years later. This would explain why Neteyam - Jake & Neytiri's eldest biological child - looks like a teenager, and is played by Jamie Flatters, who was in his mid-teens when cast. Such a long Avatar timeline gap created a different dynamic for the sequel.
Whereas Jake and Neytiri were previously Pandora's controversial new couple, they're now closer to Neytiri's parents in terms of tribal seniority. Parenthood no doubt shifted their perspective also, giving the couple something precious to protect and a personal stake in Pandora's future. That 14-year gap also meant Pandora itself moved on considerably. It also gave humans a chance to recalibrate and come back in to colonize once again. These drastic off-screen changes to the Avatar timeline allow Avatar: Way of the Water to tell a bold, completely new story.
How Avatar Timeline Jump Helped The Sequel
The big Avatar timeline jump also benefits by better reflecting reality. Arriving 13 years after its predecessor, James Cameron's soggy sequel greets a very different audience and a very different world. If Avatar: Way of the Water's story took place only a few weeks after Avatar, audiences may feel as if they left the blue folk behind. Adding a time skip similar in length to the real-world gap between movies means Jake, Neytiri, and the world of Pandora have moved along with viewers, giving Avatar 2 a modern relevance it might've lacked otherwise.
Will There Be A Time Jump In Avatar 3?
Though not much is known about Avatar 3, it doesn't appear there will be a jump in the Avatar timeline. According to James Cameron, Jake Sully won't be the main character narrating the third movie as the story will move on to someone else that was introduced in Avatar: The Way of Water. Jake's oldest son Lo'ak is the new narrator, allowing them to move the story forward into the next generation of Na'vi people fighting against colonization. However, it does appear that there will be a significant time jump for Avatar 4 that will impact the planned fifth film (via IGN).
