'Avatar' Sequels Cast Adds Edie Falco as Evil General, What Will Colonel Quaritch Do?

Avatar 2 may have its bad guy. 20th Century Fox announced Wednesday that Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie, The Sopranos) will join the cast of the Avatar sequels. Falco will be playing General Ardmore, commander of the RDA forces.

"Edie Falco is one of the greats," director James Cameron tweeted. "I can't wait to watch her kick some ass on the big screen."

In the Avatar future mega-corporations, often more powerful than governments, control extra-planetary resources with private armies. Falco's character, General Ardmore, is a commander for the Resources Development Administration—a gigantic corporation with the exclusive exploitation rights to the planet of Pandora. Sure, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) successfully rebelled against the RDA in the first Avatar, but you didn't think they'd give up that easily, right? Falco's Ardmore is the one sent to take it back.

Falco joins other cast members new to the Avatar series, including Oona Chaplin (Game of Thrones), David Thewlis (Naked, Wonder Woman) and Kate Winslet, who will play a Na'vi with close ties to the ocean named Ronal.

Filming has already begun on the Avatar sequels. Returning cast members include Worthington, Saldana and Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine. Many other Na'vi and human characters will also be back to flesh out the sequel cast, including CCH Pounder as Mo'at and Giovanni Ribisi and Dileep Rao.

Surprisingly, Stephen Lang will also return as Avatar villain Colonel Miles Quaritch, even though he was killed in the first movie. It seems the Tree of Souls on Pandora stores and, somehow, recreates people who have died on the planet's surface.

"I'm not going to say exactly how we're bringing him back, but it's a science fiction story, after all. His character will evolve into really unexpected places across the arc of our new three-film saga," Cameron told Deadline Hollywood in 2013.

Maybe Quaritch won't be the villain this time?

While little is known about the plot of the Avatar sequels, new performance capture technology designed for underwater filming was created for Avatar 2, suggesting that Pandora's oceans will be a big part of at least the first Avatar sequel.

While it's been a long time since the 2009 original, Cameron claims people will fall back in love with the series, telling Vanity Fair in 2017, "If you loved the first movie, you're going to love these movies, and if you hated it, you're probably going to hate these. If you loved it at the time, and you said later you hated it, you're probably going to love these."

Avatar 2 will be out in theaters December 18, 2020 and is just the first of several planned sequels, with Avatar 3 following in 2021, Avatar 4 in 2024 and Avatar 5 in 2025.