According to a recent exclusive report from Empire Magazine, Brendan Cowell’s Mick Scoresby will appear again in Avatar 3, as will Payakan — the Tulkun creature that plays a large part in The Way of Water.
In Avatar: The Way of Water, one of the main plot points in the film comes when one of Jake Sully’s sons, Lo’ak, befriends Payakan the Tulkun — the creatures that look similar to whales — and bonds with the creature. Payakan plays such a major role in the film that he even has his own nemesis of sorts — Mick Scoresby, a hunter who makes money by selling the brain fluid of the Tulkun and kills them in order to access it.
At the end of The Way of Water, Payakan and Scoresby have a showdown, with Payakan seemingly killing Scoresby by ripping his arm off and leaving him washed up and lost in the sea. Despite the seemingly lethal ending for Scoresby, producer Jon Landau has said that not only will Payakan and Lo’ak’s relationship be explored further in Avatar 3, but that Scoresby will return too.
“We view Payakan as a character, not just as a creature,” said Landau. “We will continue to explore his relationship with Lo’ak.”
While Landau didn’t explain what Scoresby role will be in the third film, he did confirm that the character would be back. Given that he lost an arm at the hands of Payakan, it’s possible he’ll be looking for his own revenge against both Payakan and the Na’vi people as a whole.
“Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, Avatar: The Way of Water begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure,” says the official synopsis.
Avatar 3 is tentatively scheduled for December 20, 2024. Further sequels also have release dates, with Avatar 4 set for December 18, 2026, and Avatar 5 on December 22, 2028.