In James Cameron’s 2022 film “Avatar: The Way of Water,” Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and their Na’vi family liked to tool around with a human kid named Spider (Jack Champion), who was happy to leap around the woods with his outsized alien buddies. Spider sported dreadlocks and dressed like his Na’vi friends, having been born on their native planet of Pandora. Because humans can’t breathe the air on Pandora, Spider required a face mask at all times. It would eventually be revealed that Spider was the son of the evil military commander Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), and he ended the film choosing to go with his human father — even though his human father was now occupying the body of a Na’vi. Spider will also play a central role in Cameron’s 2025 follow-up, “Avatar: Fire and Ash.”
It seems that Cameron filmed “The Way of Water,” “Fire and Ash,” and even portions of a fourth “Avatar” film all at once, specifically so the young Champion wouldn’t age out of the role.
Jack Champion, 21, began auditioning for high-profile movies when he was about eight. He secured a few extra roles in huge studio films like “Kid on a Bicycle” in “Avengers: Endgame” and “Abnegation Child” in “Insurgent.” His biggest role to date has been playing the co-lead character in a supernatural horror film called “The Night Sitter,” wherein he and Elyse Dufour fought off a trio of accidentally summoned witches.
After “The Way of Water,” Champion starred in two additional high-profile studio films. He played Liam Neeson’s son in the 2023 thriller “Retribution,” but more impressively, Champion turned up in Matt Bettinelli-Olpin’s and Tyler Gillett’s slasher sequel “Scream VI.” He played one of the killers.
Jack Champion was one of the Ghostface killers in Scream VI
“Scream VI” involves the fates of the characters introduced in the previous film (which was, confusingly, called merely “Scream”). Sam Carpenter (Melissa Barrera) is still trying to cope with the fact that she is the daughter of Billy Loomis (the killer from the original 1996 “Scream” movie) and is overprotective of her little sister, Tara (Jenna Ortega). Tara is dating a handsome young bloke named Chad (Mason Gooding), who also survived the murders from the previous film. Tara and Chad are attending college in New York City, and Chad is rooming with Ethan, the character played by Jack Champion. The other returning character was Chad’s twin sister, Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown). There are many other characters besides, and because of the whodunnit nature of the “Scream” movies, any one of them could be the Ghostface killer who reappears to dole out mayhem.
It was eventually revealed that there was not one, not two, but three Ghostface killers in “Scream VI,” following the pattern of the series. Each “Scream” movie features a different character under the mask, and the killers tend to work in groups. Ethan, in the long history of the “Scream” franchise, was Ghostface number 11 to come along. Because “Scream VI” is all about lingering iconography and the legacy of killers from previous movies, Jack Champion’s character was dispatched in a creative fashion, with a blunt object used to kill a previous Ghostface also used to kill him.
Sadly, that means Champion will not be around for the forthcoming “Scream VII.” He will, however, star in the 2026 film “Don’t Say Good Luck” with Melanie Lynskey, Steve Buscemi, and Bebe Neuwirth.
