Recombinant

Recombinant
Species Information
Habitat	Pandora
Physical Information
Skin color	Blue
Hair color	Brown / Black
Eye color	Yellow
Behind the Scenes
First seen	Avatar: The Way of Water
Last seen	Avatar: Fire and Ash

I know you're all asking yourselves the same question: Why so blue?

Miles Quaritch briefing his Recom unit.

A Recombinant, or Recom, is a fully sentient human / Na'vi hybrid soldier embedded with the recorded memories and personality traits of an individual human, and thus does not need to be remotely driven from a link unit like an avatar.

The 1st Recom Unit acted as the the primary "muscle" of the RDA and special operations forces group. They took orders directly from the highest ranks of the organization and assisted in any extraordinary circumstances. Miles Quaritch acted as the leader of the squad alongside Wainfleet as second in command. They were tasked by the RDA to hunt down and eliminate Jake Sully, the leader of the Resistance. During their mission, several of the Recoms in the unit were killed but they managed to track down Jake and his family after the latter had fled to the Metkayina Clan. However, the squad was ultimately defeated, leaving only Quaritch and Wainfleet alive.

History

Creation

The Recom Program, known as "Project Phoenix", was launched immediately after the RDA's defeat and expulsion from Pandora in 2154, in preparation for a second invasion to re-establish the resource mining/colonizing operations on the exo-moon. The first operational cohort of Recombinants are those implanted with the backup memories of Sec-Ops private military contractors who were killed in action during the Assault on the Tree of Souls. Most of them were battle-hardened marine veterans on Earth who signed up to be contractors due to economic hardships.

Colonel Miles Quaritch, the Recom commander, was formerly the chief of security at the RDA mining base Hell's Gate, who had his memories backed up at the insistence of Parker Selfridge merely hours before his human body was killed during the brutal fight with Jake Sully and Neytiri. After waking for his second life as a Recom, he had gladly accepted the mission to hunt down the Sully family and devoted himself to vengeance against Jake and Neytiri. Corporal Lyle Wainfleet serves as the Recom team leader under Quaritch, and was formerly a Sec-Ops AMP team leader who was killed by a hammerhead titanothere stampede during the ground assault on the Tree of Souls.

Second Pandoran War (2169 - 2170)

One year after the RDA's return to Pandora and the construction of Bridgehead, Quaritch, Wainfleet, and several other Recombinants arrived on Pandora where they were tasked by Frances Ardmore to help battle an insurgency waged by the Omatikaya clan, which hindered the efforts for the RDA's colonization of Pandora. As the Recombinants were better for infiltration, Ardmore tasked them with killing Jake Sully.

The Recom Squad eventually reached the battlefield, where Quaritch discovered the remains of his human body after his fight with Jake and the circumstances of his death by Neytiri. The squad also found and subdued the Sully children and Miles Socorro, an orphaned human boy who happened to be Quaritch's biological son. By nightfall, the Sully children were saved by Jake and Neytiri, who managed to kill several Recombinants, although Spider was taken to Bridgehead by Quaritch and the remaining Recombinants for interrogation.

Later, due to fighting against the Sully family, and against the Metkayina clan in the Skirmish at the Three Brothers, most of the squad died, except for Quaritch and Wainfleet and, possibly, Mansk.

Description

Recoms being decanted.

Recombinants are roughly identical to regular avatars, possessing both Na'vi- and human-like physical traits. The key differences is that Recoms are not psionically driven by a human, but instead have backup memories and identities of human candidates directly uploaded into their consciousness through the use of a special link device known as a Soul Drive. This makes them fully autonomous beings and essentially genetically modified clones of their former human selves, inheriting the memories (up to the time of the backup), skills and personalities developed during that human's prior lifetime.

Recom soldiers are known as "Recombinant warriors" or simply "Recom warriors". Thanks to their Na'vi physiology, Recom warriors are able to move about Pandora largely without being detected as a foreign threat to Eywa, and can avoid triggering its "immune response" in which Eywa sends her wildlife after them. They also possess queues, which allows them to access the moon's neural network and even tame Pandoran animals (such as banshees and direhorses) via Tsaheylu, thus eliminating the need for vehicular deployment and making them even better infiltrators.

Recoms must take sips of CO2 to breathe in human buildings using this device.

Like the Na'vi and avatars, Recoms are able to operate within human-air facilities; however, due to the lower carbon dioxide levels compared to that of the Pandoran atmosphere, Recoms must take "sips" of supplementary carbon dioxide every minute or two from the AAS-RO2 Atmos Adaptation System.

Equipment

Like human soldiers or marines, Recoms are equipped with military-grade gear to enhance their survival in the hostile Pandoran environment. Many Recoms, particularly those from the 1st Recom Squad, prefer to wear polarized sunglasses in keeping with habits from their previous human life as army commandos and reconnaissance marines. Compared to the average Na'vi warriors, Recoms benefit from their communication, detection and weapon technologies, as well as better training and expertise in special operations tactics inherited from their backup memories.

The Recom M69-AR, an assault rifle designed for their larger hands.

Most of the infantry weapons used by Recoms are shareable with Skel Suits, which are designed to the similar sizes and have movement speeds matching those of avatars and the Na'vi. These weapons, many of which have gunship-grade firepower, are far more effective in achieving fire superiority against the common Na'vi battle arrows.

• Electro Prod (non-lethal)
• Recom Flamethrower
• Recom Hydra Machine Gun
• Recom Knife
• Recom M69-AR
• Recom Pistol
• Recom Tranquilizer Gun (non-lethal)
• TOXOM-81 MANPADS Missile Launcher.
• Y70 Bullpup Rifle

List of Known Recombinants

Miles Quaritch ♂

(saved from drowning by Spider)

Lyle Wainfleet ♂

(thrown overboard by Jake)

Mansk ♂ ?

Zdinarsik ♀ †

Prager ♂ †

Lopez ♂ †

Ja ♂ †

Zhang ♂ †

Brown ♂ †

Walker ♀ †

Sean Fike ♂ †

Warren ♂ †

Recombinant Deaths

Old Link Shack Hostage Situation
Warren killed by Jake.	Sean Fike killed by Neytiri.	Walker killed by Neytiri.	Brown killed by Jake.	Zhang killed by Neteyam.
Assault of the SeaDragon
First Wave		Second Wave
Ja crushed by Payakan.	Lopez killed by Neytiri.	Prager killed by Jake.	Zdinarsik killed by Neytiri.	Mansk knocked unconscious; hit in head by Jake.

Trivia

Recom logo.

• Costume designer Deborah L. Scott stated about the Recoms that they were inspired by real-world military: "They're like the Special Forces." They are also reminiscent of the MACV-SOG (whose logo features a human skull as well), which conducted the same kind of unconventional operations during the Vietnam War.
• "Project Phoenix" might be a reference to the Phoenix Program, a heavily criticized effort by the CIA to identify and destroy the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, which included infiltration, capture, interrogation, torture and assassination.
  • It can also simply be a literal adoption of the symbolism of the phoenix; a mythological creature that is reborn after death from its ashes. In this case, the human Marines were killed in action and have now been reborn as recombinants.
  • The program's tagline "Deja Blu" is both a figurative and literal take on Déjà vu; the recombinants are able to recall memories from past lives their current bodies have not lived.
• The human skull on the 1st Recom logo features three scars across its head, reminiscent of the ones Miles Quaritch's human body gained during his first day on Pandora.
• The 1st Recom logo features variations associated with the Gadsden flag. The "We will tread on you" is a reverse offensive take of the defensive "Don't tread on me". The serpent, instead of being a full timber rattlesnake, has the end of its tail attached to the back of the recombinant skull, representative of a Na'vi queue.
  • The act of having living snakes attached to the head is heavily associated with the Greek mythology of a gorgon named Medusa.
• Following the events of The Way of Water and in the Recom unit page of Avatar: The Way of Water: The Visual Dictionary book, all the Recoms in the 1st Squad are now deceased except Quaritch and Wainfleet and possibly Mansk.
• Currently, Recoms are based off of and made to resemble forest dwelling Na'vi like the Omatikaya. It is unknown if there will be Recoms for other types of Na'vi such as the reef dwelling Metkayina.
• They originally wore boots during the first half of the film, but upon getting used to Pandora's surface along with the taming of banshees, they mostly went barefoot during the second half of the film.
• Recombinants can be considered as a form of transhumanism.

Gallery

The Recom unit.

Concept art.

Concept art.

Fike, Zdinarsik, Ja (front), Brown (back) and Lopez.

Arriving on Pandora.

Quaritch leading the Recom squad.

Spider with a group of Recoms.

Stephen Lang wearing a Recom patch on set.

Recom Walker.

Recom Wainfleet.

Z-Dog.

Recom Mansk.

Appearances

Title	Format	Release date	Details
Avatar: The Way of Water	Film	December 16, 2022
Avatar: Fire and Ash	Film	December 19, 2025