While Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is ??? ??????? ???? ???? ???? ??? ???? ????? ??????undoubtedly the main antagonist of Avatar: The Way of Water, one character completely eclipses his villainy. That would be poacher Mick Scoresby (Brendan Cowell), the captain of a Pandoran whaling ship.

In just a few scenes, Scoresby cements his place as the most detestable man on Pandora. He gloats, he murders, and he delivers extremely villainous (and on-the-nose) dialogue until we're praying for his downfall. And boy oh boy, do we get it. We just have to wait until the finale.

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The third act of The Way of Waterseesthe Sully family and the Metkayina Na'vi face off against Quaritch, Scoresby, and the RDA (Resources Development Administration). Joining our heroes is Payakan, a whale-like tulkun who has befriended Jake's son Lo'ak (Britain Dalton).

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Seeing that the Sully children have been captured by Quaritch, Payakan leaps from the ocean and smashes down on the humans' ship. Scoresby tries to take Payakan out with a harpoon gun, but our whale-y friend is having none of that. Instead, the space whale wraps the cord of the harpoon around the whaling ship and cuts it in half. Tactical legend!

As Payakan enacts his sweet, sweet vengeance, Scoresby's arm gets trapped in the harpoon cord. We watch it squeeze tighter and tighter until — snap! — Scoresby flies off into the ocean, his chopped-off arm briefly silhouetted against the sky. Cue the cheers and applause from the audience.

In my theater, this moment got the biggest reaction, and it's easy to see why. Cameron gives us a character to root like hell against, and to see him go out in such a brutal, merciless way is the ideal conclusion to his character arc. It's arguably the most satisfying moment of the film, and that's mainly because of two factors: how Cameron and Cowell establish Scoresby's villainy, and who gets to deliver the final blow.

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Who is Mick Scoresby, and why is he the worst?

Get every whaler off of Pandora NOW. Credit: Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Scoresby is a whaler for the RDA on Pandora, tasked with hunting down majestic tulkun for the anti-aging goo in their brain known as amrita. Being a whaler is already bad enough, especiallyon a moon humans are attempting to colonize. However, Scoresby takes it one step further with his reprehensible demeanor. His approach to hunting tulkun is one of demented joy. He hoots and hollers as he hunts down a mother tulkun and her calf. When he's done harvesting the little amount of amrita the dead tulkun has to offer, he casts the corpse aside with little care.

Like most of the other humans on Pandora, Scoresby doesn't consider the larger ramifications of his actions, only the bottom dollar. It's right there in his dialogue, where he crows repeatedly to his crew that they're about to make tons of money or complains about meeting quotas. Does it matter that the tulkun are sentient and extremely intelligent, as well as deeply important to the Na'vi? Not to Scoresby! He's the embodiment of capitalistic greed and needless environmental destruction — its avatar, if you will.

All of this is by design. Cameron wants to highlight how irredeemable the RDA is, and what better way to do that than with an irredeemable character like Scoresby? Cowell perfectly understands the assignment, imbuing Scoresby with brashness, violence, and a killer mean streak that all scream villainous grunt. After just a few minutes with him, we're ready to watch Scoresby eat it. We may have to wait a while before he gets his comeuppance, but when we do, it's all worth it.

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Scoresby's death is Payakan's revenge.

Payakan deserves the world...and his revenge. Credit: Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

If Scoresby is the absolute worst character on Pandora, then the tulkun, in all their whale-alien glory, are among the best. This sentiment extends to all the tulkun but especially Payakan, whose relationship with Lo'ak is one of the highlights of the film.

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Payakan has suffered much pain at the hands of the RDA's whalers. He lost his mother and one of his flippers to them, and when he tried to lead a charge against the whalers, he lost much of his pod too. And because he brought the tulkun into battle, the rest of his pod shunned him for going against their pacifist philosophy. None of this would have happened had whalers like Scoresby not taken everything from him. So when he gets the chance to fight back in The Way of Water's finale, he takes it. 

Seeing the whalers meet their match in Payakan is the most cathartic scene in The Way of Water, with Scoresby's death the most satisfying of them all. Not only is this sequence a wild way to finish a character off, it also brings Payakan's story full circle. He lost a flipper to the whalers. Now, one of the lead whalers loses his arm to a tulkun. Talk about a killer revenge story.

So as much as I hate Scoresby, I also have to give him some reluctant kudos. Thank you for being unapologetically, cartoonishly evil. Thank you for gifting us with such a satisfying character death. And thank you for donating your arm to cinema. I will truly never, ever forget watching it waving off into the sunset.

Avatar: The Way of Water is now in theaters.

Topics Film