Is Jake Sully’s Human Body Just Rotting Away in a Pod Since the First ‘Avatar’ Film?

The Avatar films get a lot of hate, and some of it is understandable. Yes, the movie looks like James Cameron took a Yes album cover and brought it to life. And sure, the main characters look like a bunch of Dr. Seuss cosplayers converted to Rastafarianism. Also, it's hard to forget that Sigourney Weaver's character, after becoming a Na'vi, still decided to wear a Stanford University shirt.

But the movies are an original IP that Cameron envisioned himself, and they always bring in massive numbers at the box office. And while some folks argue they can't imagine anyone actually likes the films, their earnings don't lie. And fans of the flicks do have questions about major plot points. Like what happened to Jake Sully's body after the events of the first film.

Warning: Spoilers for the first Avatar movie ahead.

Avatar: Fire and Ash has already earned an incredible amount of money after debuting on Dec. 19, 2025. Early reports indicate that the film could very well be on its way to crossing the billion-dollar mark. After just two weeks of release, the third installment in the franchise has surpassed the $760 million mark globally.

Domestically, that count is at $217 million, with $542.7 million clocked from other countries outside of the U.S. It's kind of nuts to think that The Way of Water absolutely trounces this figure, however. The sequel to the technologically groundbreaking first film is the third-highest-grossing movie of all time, with a whopping $2.34 billion earned worldwide.

While the flicks feature recurring characters, Avatar's primary protagonist is Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington. His journey in the Avatar world begins with Sully in his human form before his consciousness is transferred over to a Na'vi body. Audiences meet Sully when he's confined to a wheelchair, and he doesn't have the use of his legs.

However, as a Na'vi, he's not only able to walk again, but in a much larger, more athletic frame. Sully becomes entranced with the Na'vi way of life and even falls in love with one of Pandora's native inhabitants, Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldaña. The two end up becoming a family and have three children together: Neteyan, Lo'ak, and Tuk.

In the first Avatar movie, Sully permanently leaves his human form behind to become a Na'vi, and he joins the inhabitants of Pandora to fight against the human military operation he traveled to the planet with. Knowing about the force's intent on exploiting Pandora for its resources, Sully couldn't in good conscience abandon these beings who embraced him as one of their own.

While this plot point's been made abundantly clear across the Avatar series, one question folks have is what happened to Sully's human body? Was it sent back home? Cryogenically frozen? Fed to one of the space-pterodactyl creatures the Na'vi ride in the movies?

While viewers watched Sully's withered, small-by-comparison human body as he left it for the final time in the first Avatar movie, the flick didn't exactly spell out what happened to it. However, the comic Avatar: The Next Shadow reveals that Sully's body was actually buried, akin to human end-of-life practices.

While the Na'vi Avatars are remotely controlled by human beings in the first movie, homosapiens can permanently migrate to a Na'vi frame by getting help from the beings who make an appeal to their god Eywa at the Tree of Souls.

Sigourney Weaver's character, Dr. Grace Augustine, also underwent this procedure as a means to try to save her after she was seriously injured as a human being.

However, since she was severely hurt, the transfer didn't save her life. So she ultimately passed away, but as a Na'vi. Jake Sully's permanent migration to the Na'vi way of life did work, and as a result, we've got three Avatar movies and two more on the way after that, turning it into a five-part series that'll probably make a ton of money too.