Field of Heather

I have the impression that Jake's reaction, the monologue he begins with, comes directly after his confrontation with Ronal and Tonowari. He is the only one who truly understands that the Na'vi stand no chance against human weapons. His decision to stockpile weapons and prepare for a possible attack is reasonable; he wants to be ready, he still wants to protect his family and his people. At that moment, however, nobody understands him. The Metkayina do not realize, as Jake points out, that they were simply lucky. Ronal harshly criticizes him, having rejected him from the very beginning and opposed taking his family in because of him. During that conversation, you can see the looks Neytiri gives Jake, she is clearly unhappy with his attitude, something she later brings up when they are alone.

Then, right after that confrontation, Jake shows Neytiri the arrow he modified for her. He wants to help prepare her for a future battle. He loves her deeply and shows respect by adapting modern technology to fit her traditional weapon. Yet Neytiri rejects the gesture. In a sense, she rejects who he is – she rejects his human side. Her hostility is aimed most openly at Spider, but she does not realize that she is also hurting Jake because she does not fully accept him. Until to the scene where Neytiri saves him, and later when Jake attempts to kill Spider – that moment is also a moment of reflection for Neytiri, where she witnesses her husband surrendering a part of himself and, in a way, admitting that she was right. If you watch the scene again, there is a great deal of emotion on both sides, even before the guys disappear into the forest.

Then comes the confrontation between husband and wife. After being rejected by Neytiri, Jake finally lets out some of his anger, hurt, and frustration and this is the only moment in which he truly opens up. He tells her how powerless he feels, how there is nothing he can do, and when he criticizes Eywa, he is not really attacking Neytiri's faith or expressing a loss of faith himself. Rather, he is lashing out against the judgment and criticism Ronal directed at him earlier that day in front of everyone: "Eywa will provide" (not your experience, Jake).

Neytiri then responds, but she shows little understanding for her husband. Instead, she unloads her own resentment, blaming him for their situation and for the fact that she had to leave her home because of his decisions – she says the same thing explicitly during their second confrontation in the mauri, following the tulkun council. Jake is often criticized in this scene, but very few people criticize Neytiri. Even the Metkayina support her in her grief, while Jake receives no such support.

Because of this, I wonder whether his later words to Lo'ak are partly a consequence of everything that happened here. It feels like another eruption of the grief and frustration Jake has been carrying for a long time. We empathize with the suffering of the other characters, but rarely with Jake's suffering, which I find strange. He should never have said those things to his son, but his bitterness finally overflowed, and Lo'ak became the target of it. That is another major topic worth discussing later.

To me, the mauri scene symbolizes Neytiri's rejection of part of Jake's identity. She openly hates the "sky people" and directs that hatred toward Spider, but indirectly toward Jake as well. Jake supports his wife throughout the film, whereas Neytiri spends much of it criticizing him. She even sarcastically says: "Toruk Makto knows best".

On top of all that, there is also the issue of her shame regarding their mixed-race children....

That attitude changes after Lo'ak repairs her father's bow. In that moment, she recognizes strength in Lo'ak, the child who resembles Jake the most. Only then does she begin to truly accept Jake again. Later, she goes to the human city to save him, and by the end she accepts Spider as well, which can also be interpreted as her final acceptance of Jake's human nature.

That is my interpretation.

When the RDA first came to Pandora, we see via the comics that Neytiri (still a child at the time) was curious and inquisitive, eager to learn and participate in Grace's school. For ten years, Grace was generally loved and respected by her students (to the point that they honorifically called her "mother"), who all seem to be enjoying themselves in Grace's photographs. I think it's reasonable to assume that Neytiri did not hate humans during this time (although she may have steadily grown more wary of the RDA as a whole as she grew older and was able to develop more of an understanding of what they were actually doing on Pandora).

...and then, of course, the schoolhouse incident happened. This - her older sister being shot and killed right in front of her - would've been Neytiri's first direct, personal trauma at the hands of humans, and her opinion shifted accordingly. Although the incident was not Grace's fault, the schoolhouse and everything surrounding it has become soured, and it's shut down. The aliens are not to be trusted. Betrayed and grieving, any good will Neytiri once held towards the "sky people" is shattered, to the point that even two years later she was ready to kill Jake's avatar on sight before Eywa intervened.

But then she meets Jake and is assigned as his teacher, and while she's initially irritated and exasperated by him, over time she starts to thaw: ok, maybe some sky people can learn to See after all. In fact, this one is taking so well and earnestly to her teachings that she starts to fall in love with him.

Buuuut then it turns out that even Jake was a traitor, initially joining the clan only to spy for Quaritch, and while he's had a change of heart, this still comes as a shock to Neytiri's system and she once again feels hurt and betrayed. Even more so when the intel Jake gathered allows Quartich to destroy Hometree, killing her father in the process. This is the second family member humans have taken from her, and as far as she's currently concerned, the man she thought she loved is a liar and a traitor too.

But THEN Jake returns as Toruk Makto, proving that he has the favor of Eywa and by extension that whatever mistakes he's made before, his change of heart is genuine and he's solidly on the side of the People now. What an emotional whirlwind for poor Neytiri. Have I mentioned that she's still only 18 at this point? Man. But anyways, with this ringing endorsement from Eywa she decides she can trust Jake again and ultimately still loves him, the big battle happens, Neytiri kills Quaritch and saves human!Jake from suffocation. Neytiri may still have conflicting feeling about humans in general, but in this moment she knows without a doubt that she loves this one wholeheartedly.

So then we come to the 15 peaceful years without the RDA. I don't think that Neytiri hated humans during this period of her life - but long gone were the innocently inquisitive days of her childhood in Grace's classroom. Her encounters will the sky people had brought some joy, sure - her teacher, her husband (and through him, her children) - but they had also brought her great pain and suffering - the loss of her sister, her father, her village, her ikran. She was aware that the humans who'd been allowed to remain on Pandora were the "good guys", the ones who'd allied with and respected the Na'vi.

But, after the traumas she suffered, she can't quite help the thin, ever-present layer of mistrust simmering in the back of her mind. She's not outright hostile, but she's wary. Cautious. She doesn't go out of her way to prevent Spider from playing with her kids, but she doesn't like it (and being Quartich's son is certainly doing the poor kid no favors in her eyes). She'd rather keep him (and most other humans) at arm's length.

This general wariness is sustained as her primary opinion towards humans throughout most of the second movie....until we hit perhaps the most significant turning point.

Neteyam.

The RDA kills her child. Her firstborn son.

This is the most grievous wound they've yet inflicted, one so primal, so jagged, that reaches so deep that it scrapes up against the old scars too. She is blinded by a seething rage that burns out into a throbbing heartache as the battle subsides. The humans have taken her sister, her father, her home (twice, since she had to flee to the reef), her ikran, and now worst of all, her baby boy.

Lost in mourning, the heat within her is turned up and the mistrust that has been quietly simmering begins to boil over into real hatred. This is where she has her "I hate them, Jake" breakdown, after stewing for days if not weeks in grief, heartbreak, confusion, anger, loss. This is the point in her journey where her dislike of humans hits its frenzied peak.

I've walked us down this road one step at a time because yes, Neytiri does have this tirade about hating humans, but I don't think that she's ALWAYS felt that way. Not to that extreme.

And when Jake starts to question her tirade, reminding her that he was born a human and will always have a human mind no matter what body he's in, you can tell that Neytiri feels uncomfortable - some will claim that this is because she ~hates his human side~, but I don't think that's quite right. These reminders make her uncomfortable not because she hates Jake, but because she loves him DESPITE hating humans. She's experiencing cognitive dissonance here and it leaves her flustered and confused on top of the frustration and heartache she was already feeling. Premise A is "I hate humans", premise B is "I love Jake", premise C is "Jake is human" but wait, those three things are not compatible! Something is awry!

And regarding the "shame" which this post has been building up to...I don't think it's the "gotcha" that Neytiri haters may claim it to be. It most certainly does not mean that she "hates her kids" - she doesn't. She loves her kids. But, because she has such complex feelings about humans, she also naturally has some complex feelings about the fact that her kids have some human heritage, and some small part of her wishes they didn't, because things would be easier that way.

And I hate to say it - recognizing this is not endorsing it - but...this idea that Jake brings up of "when they do something wrong, it's because of the human in them"...well, look at Neteyam and Lo'ak. Neteyam is the golden boy, the prodigy...who happens to look like a normal Na'vi. Lo'ak is the difficult child, prone to trouble...who happens to look more like an avatar. Like a human.

Obviously the fact that Lo'ak happened to inherit the more human appearance has no real bearing on his propensity for trouble: it's sheer coincidence.

But, to someone who already has these complex feelings about humans simmering under the surface....you can see how that might cause some subconscious confirmation bias, y'know?

And yes, I do think it was subconscious. We've never seen any actions that suggest that Neytiri treated Lo'ak and Kiri differently from Neteyam and Tuk, or that she loved them less by any means whatsoever. And even now, look what an extreme circumstance it took to bring this idea to the surface at all!

AND, you can tell that she's very uncomfortable confronting the thought. She doesn't want to feel that way about her babies!! She knows it's not right because she loves them and she hates having this conflict bubble to the surface and feels so guilty about it that she straight-up walks out of the marui in tears!

As said before, this is her lowest point, the deepest depth she breeches in the trench of hatred.

But lucky for her, the trench is deep, but not inescapable. I think her breakdown here is, perhaps a bit ironically, the first thing that paves the path to healing. She's had the chance to let it all out, her frustration, her pent-up rage, the complexities and confusion boiling beneath the surface. She's been forced to face it directly, and now that it's all out in the open, she can reflect on it more honestly...which is not some miracle cure by any means, but it's the first step on the path. It helps to eek open the gate that allows her to have her bigger turning point later, when she decides to protect Spider.

There's something I think is significant about Neytiri's change of heart with Spider, and I'm surprised I haven't seen more people talk about it: go back to the beginning of this post, detailing Neytiri's history with humans. The reason that she detests them so much is that, time and time again, they have taken loved ones away from her. Sylwanin. Eytukan. Seze. Neteyam.

But this time...this time, a human brought one of her loved ones back to her. Without Spider, Jake may not have made it out of Bridgehead.

It's even her feeble protest when Jake belatedly agrees that they might have to kill Spider for Pandora's sake after all: "Jake, he saved your life".

Washing off the Mangkuan warpaint and shakily seeing the symbolic blood on her hands, this is the scene where she is at last ready to accept the idea that it is one's heart and values that matter, and that those things are not tied to whether one is human or Na'vi.

It took her time to get there, yes - and that is completely understandable, given what she's been through - but she did get there in the end.

As of the end of Fire and Ash, I don't think Neytiri hates humans anymore. The RDA, sure. But "humans" generally, no. She has come to accept that just like there are good and bad Na'vi, there are also good and bad humans. Good humans like Spider. Like Jake. Like Grace.