Who Is Spider's Mother In Avatar: The Way Of Water? The Answer Lies Outside The Movie

This post contains spoilers for "Avatar: The Way of Water."

Of all the new characters introduced in "Avatar: The Way of Water," probably the most surprising is Miles "Spider" Socorro (Jack Champion), a human character who's been half-raised by the Na'vi despite being human. Although Jake (Sam Worthington) dismissively refers to him early on as a "stray cat," by the end of the film he's accepted as a member of the Sully family. Well, sort of. We're still not sure how he feels about Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) threatening to murder him.

Probably the biggest point of confusion about Spider is the circumstances of his birth. There's a lot of exposition thrown at us in the first 20 minutes of this movie, after all, and it's easy to miss a lot of it. We know that Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is his father, and we know that he was born before the final events of the first movie, where most of the invading humans were sent home. Because Spider was a tiny child at the time, he was not able to be put into cryo-sleep necessary to transport soldiers back to Earth. That meant he's spent his whole childhood being raised by the remaining human scientists, while spending a lot time hanging out with the natives of Pandora. Understandably, he's not a typical human.

There's just one big question left, one that's not actually answered in the movie itself. Whatever happened to Spider's mother? 

It turns out that Spider's mother was Paz Socorro, a helicopter pilot who died in the final battle in the last movie, where she was tragically (?) impaled by one of the Na'vi's arrows. This is all covered in "Avatar: The High Ground," a comic series published earlier this month. In the comic's narration, Jake remarks on Paz's death that he "had something to do with that," implying that he might feel at least a little bit of guilt about leading the battle that killed both of Spider's parents.

As for the manner of Paz's relationship with Quaritch, that's never made all that clear. The implication, however, is that there wasn't a whole lot of love there. It's notable that as much as Quaritch and Spider interacted throughout "The Way of Water," they never actually talked about Spider's mother, even though that seems like the sort of thing the two might want to talk about it. In both the comic and the movie, it seems like Quaritch and Paz were having a casual fling that led to an accidental pregnancy. Marriage didn't seem to be on the table any time soon. 

One thing is clear, though: Paz did love her son. In the comic panel where Paz is killed, we see she's got a picture of baby Spider that she takes with her into battle. Like Quaritch, she might be taking part in a deeply-unsympathetic military operation to take over the land of peaceful people, but she's still got a heart when it comes to her child.

It may seem like a strange choice for the Avatar series to avoid any real focus on Paz, but since Spider's character arc in "Avatar 3" is still a mystery, it doesn't seem to be a decision made lightly. If nothing else, letting Spider have zero relationship (posthumous or otherwise) with his mother makes him a clear parallel to Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), who has no relationship whatsoever with her biological father, assuming she even has one. These two characters feel like they're on two sides of the same coin, both orphans who don't quite fit in with the rest of the Na'vi.

The other reason for the lack of focus on Paz is because Spider genuinely doesn't care much about her. Spider knows that his parents were colonists trying to destroy the world of the Na'vi people he's grown up loving; although "The Way of Water" plays around with the idea that Spider might be turned to Quaritch's side of things, Spider's lack of interest in his Na'vi-killing mother is an early sign that this was never going to happen. Spider may technically have a human body, but by the time the plot starts moving he's long-since fully embraced the Na'vi ways.

Maybe Paz Socorro will get a shoutout in the third movie, but now that Spider has been adopted by the Sully family, it doesn't seem all that likely. Neytiri is Spider's mother now, and there's going to be more than enough drama in that dynamic to keep Spider busy.