Avatar: Fire and Ash has delved more into Pandora and the franchise’s mysterious but powerful deity, Eywa. Mentioned since the first Avatar as the Na’vi’s deity, Eywa has been a constant presence in the Avatar franchise. Despite Avatar often being unfairly critiqued for having “no cultural footprint,” the expression “Eywa has heard you!” is a fun viral meme for anyone in the know. In the third film of the franchise, more details about Eywa’s powers and grand plan are revealed, as well as the knowledge that not all Na’vi hold the planet’s consciousness in high regard.
Eywa is heavily inspired by the mythical figure Mother Nature, along with the Māori figure Papatuanuku and even elements of Norse mythology’s world tree, Yggdrasil. Eywa is essentially to Avatar what the Force is to Star Wars. Like the Force, Eywa might seem hard to explain at first, but the films themselves actually do a good job laying out what fans need to know and how the various tribes of Pandora relate to their goddess.
What Is Eywa?
In Avatar, Norm (Joel David Moore) sums up Eywa to Jake (Sam Worthington) as “Only their deity! Their goddess, maker of all living things. Everything they know!”
Eywa, also known as the Great Mother or All-Mother, is the singular deity the Na’vi worship and is said to be responsible for all sights and sounds on the planet. The Na’vi worship Eywa as the creator of all life on the planet, and that everything that dies returns its energy to Eywa. The comic series, Avatar: The High Ground, establishes the Three Laws of Eywa.
- You shall not set stone upon stone – This forbids building structures out of non-organic material or elements naturally occurring to the planet that also will decay and be replaced, as opposed to stone structures, which are meant to last. This explains why the Na’vi have no traditional buildings but instead build their homes in naturally occurring elements, like the Home Tree.
- Neither shall you use the turning wheel – The Na’vi don’t have the wheel. They use manual labor or animals to transport material, and they themselves are attuned to nature to swim, fly, or move through Pandora’s jungles.
- Nor use the metals of the ground – The Na’vi are not supposed to take or use metals from the Earth. This one is partially expanded upon in Avatar: Fire and Ash, where Jake’s use of guns is meant to symbolically “poison” the heart. This is why only Jake, his sons, and later Quaritch and the Ash Na’vi, who are shut off from Eywa, use machine weapons.
To the Na’vi, Eywa is in all living things, and they themselves live in Eywa, made literal by Pandora. Yet Eywa is not a mythical figure, but an actual being with Pandora serving as the deity’s body. Because Eywa is a real figure connected to the planet, the Na’vi and all living things native to the planet can connect via neural link. Eywa can also store memories, ones that the Na’vi can revisit and use to store records of history, culture, and even loved ones.
Pandora’s trees have roots that engage in electrochemical communication with each other, similar to the synapses between neurons, with Pandora having even more than the human brain. The bioluminescent network of Pandora could be likened to neural pathways. This indicates that Pandora’s entire biosphere possesses at least an “awareness,” being capable of cognitive reactions, which are made literal when the planet’s wildlife fights back against invaders
The Na’vi often view higher actions, both great and tragic, as the will of Eywa. When Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) first met Jake, she was initially going to shoot him, but when a wood spirit (seed of the sacred tree) landed on her bow, she stopped. Then, when the spirits surrounded him, she took that as a sign from Eywa to bring him back to her people, inevitably kicking off a string of events that would define the franchise and lead to Pandora’s future being secured from the Sky People. Every event in the Avatar films can be traced back to this one moment that Eywa constructed.
WARNING: SPOILERS for ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ below!
How Eywa Factors Into ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’
Eywa plays a substantial role in Avatar: Fire and Ash. The film reveals that Kiri’s (Sigourney Weaver) character is an exact genetic match to Grace Augustine’s (Weaver’s character from the first Avatar) Na’vi Avatar. She was born with no mother, and instead was planted by Eywa when Grace and her Avatar body were hooked up to Home Tree in the first film. Kiri was “a seed” that Eywa planted.
Kiri’s purpose is later shown in Avatar, as it is her connection to the Great Mother that allows her to give Spider (Jack Champion) the ability to breathe on Pandora. Kiri links Spider to Pandora, covering his body in mycelium that rewrites his nervous system, one that can’t be removed without killing him or the system. Spider, in many ways, is an extension of Eywa and Pandora, made possibly by Kiri, who herself is Pandora’s “daughter.”
Yet it is also in Avatar: Fire and Ash that the film establishes that not all Na’vi believe in Eywa. The Mangkwan Clan, also known as the Ash people, doesn’t believe in Pandora’s goddess, as immortalized in the iconic trailer line “your goddess has no dominion here.” The Ash People believe Eywa did nothing to save their village and loved ones from being burned by fire. They now look to master the fire and, in some respects, kill Eywa by consuming the planet with fire.
In the climax of Avatar: Fire and Ash, Kiri, Spider, and Tuk (Trinity Bliss) are able to connect to Eywa through the underwater spirit tree at the Cave of Elders. They glimpse the face of Eywa, seen as a giant Na’vi face that the audience only ever gets to see the side profile of. Kiri says she “calls upon the warrior mother,” a sign that Eywa (and Pandora) need to fight back the same way they did in the first Avatar film. Eywa and Kiri are then able to communicate with Pandora’s wildlife once again to repel the Sky People and the Mangkwan Clans’ forces.
In the film’s final moments, Spider connects with the spirit world and meets with all the deceased ancestors, and is officially welcomed into the Na’vi people as a true child of Pandora. The camera pans out to show Pandora and the wide central network glowing from space, showcasing how Eywa connects the entire planet. It seems like more of Eywa, and the planet’s connection to Kiri and Spider will be explored in future Avatar sequels.
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