Since the first sequel to James Cameron's Avatar is finally on the horizon after 13 years, I figured it's worth going back and talking about the original film. I've managed to walk the line with it since its release in 2009, owning it without being a huge fan and recognizing its flaws without being a hater, but I do get curious enough to do some digging into its lore every now and then. Some of the things I find curious about it are simple details that I don't even find answers for, but today, I want to discuss something that I may have found one for: Neytiri's necklace.
It's the choker with the three green beads. She seems to wear it the entire movie, even though the rest of her wardrobe changes throughout. I've always found it to be an interesting, subtle character detail that she seems to have a favorite accessory like that, but that was all I thought the necklace was until my most recent time watching the director's cut of the movie.
That cut mentions her sister, Sylwanin.
For anyone not familiar with that version, the additional scenes explain that Neytiri and Sylwanin were both students of Dr. Grace Augustine prior the film's events. One day, Sylwanin and some of her friends destroyed a bulldozer that the humans on Pandora were using to level her clan's home forest, and the humans' military responded by chasing her to Grace's school and gunning her down right in front of Neytiri. This explains why relations between the Na'vi and Grace's research team are so strained by the start of the main plot.
The only images we see of Sylwanin in the film are old photos that Grace shows protagonist Jake Sully while talking about what happened to the school. These are the images:
We see what appears to be Neytiri, wearing her green choker necklace, posing next to another young female Na'vi. Some Avatar sources like the Wiki website identify this female Na'vi as Sylwanin, but there's one issue with that. This sister seems to be the smaller of the two, but every source states that Sylwanin was older than Neytiri.
Obviously, younger siblings can be larger than the elder ones in many cases, but the size difference here seems too extreme for that. I don't know if Sylwanin was originally younger than Neytiri and then became older in a rewrite after these images were already made, but that's where we are now. This leads me to wonder if the smaller sister in these pictures could actually be a younger Neytiri while the larger one who looks like present-day Neytiri could actually be Sylwanin.
It would be a heck of a family resemblance between the two, but that is possible. And given how close the sisters seem to be from these pictures, and how tragically Sylwanin died, it stands to reason that her death was devastating to Neytiri. Perhaps so devastating that she kept some of her late sister's jewelry, including a green choker necklace, and wears it to remember her by?
Sylwanin also appears in a few Avatar video games, and on one occasion, we see her wearing a long hair accessory that appears to be made of red and gold feathers. It's hard to tell from the game's graphics, but it seems to closely resemble the red and gold accessory in one of the pictures above -- an accessory that we see present-day Neytiri wear on occasion. This could very well be an example of Neytiri wearing her sister's things as mementos.
This theory is complicated slightly when you notice the necklace that Grace's Avatar body wears -- which resembles the necklace worn by the smaller sister in the school photos.
If that smaller sister really is Sylwanin, it would make sense for Grace to keep something of hers to remember her by. It would seem strange for Sylwanin's parents to allow it though, given the falling out their clan had with Grace's team after that tragedy, but we don't know the circumstances of how Grace came to possess it. If that smaller sister is actually a younger version of Neytiri, it could be that she gave her own necklace to Grace as a parting gift when the school closed because she intended to wear her sister's green choker from then on. Sort of a symbolic gesture to show that she was letting go of her old self and choosing to literally carry her grief with her always.
Whatever the case, it's a real testament to Avatar's rich visuals that little details like that can hint at so much backstory and character connections without a single word being said. That's actually why I'm curious about the upcoming sequel; the first movie feels like it contains a much bigger world and way more stories than even a three-hour epic could flesh out. Maybe I'll become a full-fledged Avatar fan once it grows into a series, or maybe I'll remain a casual viewer who just rewatches it every few years. Either way, I'll be keeping my eyes on the smaller things when I go to see The Ways of Water this December.
