I've seen a lot of people read Neytiri bringing Jake to the Tree of Voices as her deliberately seducing him him, and I get why — it's an intimate scene, she's wearing that beautiful outfit, it's where they mate, the reading makes surface sense. But I think there's something much more interesting happening, and I can't stop thinking about it.
Neytiri is Jake's teacher. That's her role, that's her purpose in his life up to this point, and she took it seriously even when she resented having to. But by the time they reach that tree, he's also her closest friend. She's spent months with this man, taught him everything, watched him throw himself into Na'vi life with everything he has. He knows her. She knows him. The Tree of Voices isn't a romantic location she picked to set a mood — I think it's the final lesson, given by someone who genuinely loves the student she's sending forward. Tsaheylu with the tree is communion with Eywa herself. You can't do it until you're truly one of the People. She brought him there because he was ready, and she was completing what she started.
And then, immediately after, she says: you are now Omatikaya. You may choose a woman.
That reads to me as a teacher — and a friend — formally closing the lesson and setting him free. Not a seduction. A release.
And here's what wrecks me about it. Neytiri has been in a cage since her sister died. Sylwanin's death made her Tsahik in training, made her Tsu'tey's betrothed, set her entire path before she had any say in it. She understands cages intimately. So she opens Jake's — tells him he's free, tells him he can choose — knowing full well she cannot do the same. She's giving him something she doesn't have. And she does it because she loves him, as his teacher, as his friend, without expectation of anything in return.
And then watch what happens.
"I don't want Ninat."
She smiles. Can't help it. Keeps going.
"Peyral is a good hunter."
"She is a good hunter."
She looks sad. Because she's listing women who CAN choose freely, waiting for him to pick one and confirm that her door is still locked.
And he steps closer.
"I've already chosen. But this woman must also choose me."
He understood exactly what she gave him at that tree. And he gave it back. You are free to choose — so are you.
That sad look isn't jealousy. It's grief in anticipation. Someone bracing for a door to close again.
And then it doesn't.
Whether you read the tree as seduction or not, I think this is what the scene is really doing underneath — it's about two people in cages, one of them opening the other's, and the other coming back with the key. Neytiri doesn't scheme or maneuver. She loves him freely, without expectation, even knowing her own life is already spoken for. She gives her best friend the one thing she can't give herself.
That's the part that gets me every time.