Avatar: James Cameron Considered Reviving Michelle Rodriguez’s Trudy

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves star Michelle Rodriguez has revealed that James Cameron had considered reviving her Avatar character in a future installment.

While speaking with Vanity Fair, Rodriguez mentioned that she recently spoke with Avatar director James Cameron. The director apparently pitched Rodriguez the idea of her character, Trudy Chacon, coming back after dying in the first Avatar movie. The actress explained that her character died as a martyr, and after having many of her characters return from the dead, it would be “overkill” to revive Trudy.

“Dude, when I saw Jim [Cameron] recently, he was like, ‘I was thinking, What if Michelle came back? A lot of the other characters came back [in The Way of Water].’ I was like, ‘You can’t do that — I died as a martyr. Jim, I came back in Resident Evil, I wasn’t supposed to. I came back in Machete, I wasn’t supposed to. I came back with Letty, I wasn’t supposed to. We can’t do a fourth, that would be overkill,’” Rodriguez said. “I don’t understand, it’s so weird. I guess they don’t know what to do with the girl who doesn’t have a boyfriend. ‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Should we keep her alive, or kill her?’”

Rodriguez can currently be seen in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which was written and directed by Game Night duo Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley and is now playing in theaters.

Avatar 3 is tentatively scheduled for December 20, 2024. Further sequels also have release dates, with Avatar 4 set for December 18, 2026, and Avatar 5 on December 22, 2028.