As the evil Colonel Miles Quaritch, Stephen Lang was easily one of the stand-out performers in 2009’s Avatar. After seemingly succumbing to several arrows in the chest from Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) just when he was on the cusp of defeating Jake (Sam Worthington) at the end of Avatar it was assumed that we wouldn’t get to see the villain again, though.
James Cameron previously confirmed that wasn’t the case, revealing that Stephen Lang would be reprising his role in the upcoming Avatar sequels. Rather than being a miniscule part, though, Cameron has now revealed that Lang’s Colonel Miles Quaritch will actually be the main villain in all four of the follow-ups.
“The interesting conceit of the Avatar sequels is it’s pretty much the same characters,” James Cameron recently told Empire. “There are new characters and a lot of new settings and creatures, so I’m taking characters you know and putting them in unfamiliar places and moving them on this greater journey. But it’s not a whole bunch of new characters every time.”
“There’s not a new villain every time, which is interesting. Same guy. Same motherf-cker through all four movies. He is so good and he just gets better. I know Stephen Lang is gonna knock this out of the park.”
This isn’t the first time that we’ve learned that a previously killed Avatar character will be returning from the dead in the sequels. As well as Stephen Lang’s Colonel Miles Quaritch, it has already been confirmed that Sigourney Weaver’s Dr. Grace Augustine and Matt Gerald’s Corporal Lyle Wainfleet will reprise their roles. All of which suggests that Pandora, its neural network and the Na’vi’s healing powers are much more advanced than the original showed us. Or that Neytiri’s arrows were so sub-par that even when three of them were fired straight into Quaritch’s chest they could only severely injure, rather than actually kill, him.
Expect numerous theories to appear over the next few years, as James Cameron hasn’t even started shooting the Avatar sequels yet, which are due out on December 18, 2020, December 17, 2021, December 20, 2024, and December 19, 2025, respectively.
