Why Spider and Neytiri should get along so well in the future:

With Jake, it’s confusing. A son for a son. He just loves Spider? Just like that? What changed? And Jake, when he tries to explain it, says he’s always loved Spider, always cared for him, just couldn’t show it. This doesn’t make sense to Spider. This is because I don’t think Jake fully understands why he wasn’t close with Spider before. I think he saw Spider as a reminder of who he was. Every other human on Pandora is more like Tommy. They are scientific, single minded, focused on everything around them and what makes it tick. Spider is little Jake almost as much as Lo’ak is, all heart and impulse and impatience and a longing for family and connection. He’s just so so human. He’s as fragile on this planet as Jake felt on Earth without his legs. It’s too hard to confront and I don’t think Jake knows why. I think Spider can tell that Jake isn’t being fully honest when he tries to explain, when Jake can’t even tell. 

Neytiri knows why she couldn’t accept Spider, and she is clear and direct. “I hated you because I couldn’t See past your humanity and your father. Now I See you.” I feel like it’s very simple. It takes a while before they are fully comfortable, and every once and while something takes them back to wariness, but that honestly and ability to See connects them. And honestly, Spider understands why. He always understood why Neytiri hated him. Neytiri was always clear, from day one with where he stood and she is now. Jake was always confusing, still is, and in some ways that’s worse. I think they figure it out eventually but that’s my biggest reason why I think Spider is a mama’s boy. Their communication styles just work. 

Additionally, they both have grown up with trauma in a way that none of the other Sully’s have (besides Jake, but his was on an entire different planet and sometimes it makes me sad to think about how lonely that must be sometimes, I hope he has talks with Norm a lot). Spider is a war orphan, and he grew up with that pain and neglect, that reality. Neytiri lost her sister very young, and her father fairly young as well to the same war. I think, even though Spider is a child and she treats him as such, she understands and respects that he also has this trauma and is used to dealing with it in a way her the other kids aren’t. He wasn’t sheltered like her kids were until the humans returned. They both are used to growing up in war, and living in its shadow. I feel like she’s the first one he talks to when he’s ready to share something bad from his childhood or his time with the RDA, because he knows she can take it and now that she Sees him, she will understand whatever he had to do to get through it. Kiri might cry if he told her about the brain scanning machine, but Neytiri will be quiet so it’s easier to share. Lo’ak might not understand at first why he had to show the Recoms the ikran roost, but Neytiri understands it kept them distracted from looking for camp and might’ve gotten them killed in the process. She can trade her own stories in return.