Avatar: Who Did Michelle Rodriguez Play & How Did Her Story End?

Because the "Avatar" franchise is filled with a colossal number of human and alien characters, it's worth looking back at some of the forgotten names who first introduced us to Pandora more than a decade ago. One of the most important "Avatar" characters that you might have forgotten is Resources Development Administration (RDA) pilot Trudy Chacón, played by "Fast and the Furious" star Michelle Rodriguez.

Trudy meets Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) near the movie's start in the Hell's Gate hangar, where he finds her loading up her Samson 16 rotorcraft with guns and ammunition. She later transports Jake, Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), and Dr. Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore) — all of whom had transferred into their Na'vi "avatars" — on an expedition into the Pandoran jungle. This mission goes awry when Jake is attacked by a native predator known as a "thanator." After his disappearance, Trudy helps search for him until nightfall.

Later in the film, Trudy is brought along for a brutal assault by the RDA in which they annihilate the Hometree, the ancestral home of the Omatikaya clan of the Na'vi. Witnessing this massacre causes Trudy to break formation and abandon the rest of the RDA in battle, leading her to switch sides and fight alongside Jake Sully and the rest of the Na'vi sympathizers.

Disillusioned by the oppressive regime that the RDA has forced onto the indigenous Na'vi people, Trudy Chacón plays a crucial role near the end of the film when she rescues Jake Sully, Norm Spellman, and Grace Augustine from their imprisonment in Hell's Gate. Trudy also used her Samson 16 to lift one of the remaining link containers (a device that allows humans to link to their avatars) away from Site 26 and into the ancestral Na'vi site known as the Tree of Souls.

Painting her ship with Na'vi warpaint and wearing that same warpaint across her eyes, Trudy Chacón participated in the Na'vi's final stand against the RDA, piloting her Samson 16 in aerial combat during the battle for the Tree of Souls. When the tyrannical Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) brought his Dragon Gunship into the fray and set his sights on Jake, Trudy fired on the Dragon in a desperate effort to save Jake's life. She ended up paying for this act of bravery with her life, as her Samson 16 simply couldn't match the Dragon, and crashed to the jungle floor in a fiery explosion.

Despite only appearing briefly throughout the first "Avatar film, Trudy Chacón played a crucial role in Jake Sully's rebellion against the RDA, and is well worth remembering for her brave sacrifice in the ending of "Avatar."