So, there are a bunch of casting announcements. Michelle Yeoh is going to be playing a new doctor, Edie Falco has been cast as a new military general, and Brendan Cowell has signed on allegedly to play a marine hunting vessel captain. And of course Giovanni Ribisi and Stephen Lang (somehow) will be returning.

This sounds an awful lot like more skypeople are gonna come like a rain that never ends even after the Avatars, Na'vi, Trudy and wildlife of Pandora stopped them.

I'm always assumed that with the timejump from the first movie to the sequels, that the RDA would just now be returning. After all, six years to return to earth and six years to return to Pandora. But with these casting choices (particularly the marine hunting vessel? How and why would that even be on Pandora?), I'm worried they're going to retcon the ending of Avatar so that the RDA either never actually left, or just turned right back around and immediately set up shop somewhere else on Pandora without so much as a slight lull.

At the end of Avatar, Jake proclaimed that the aliens went back to their dying world? To quote Mo'at: "Is this true?"

How on earth is Lang returning... As if I wasn't already worried enough about the sequels.

Years ago on Naviblue.com we discussed how Quarritch would return and I said that I thought Avatar 2 should start immediately after the end of the first movie, in a military outpost on Pandora, where a completely scar free Quarritch (3 tours Nigeria, not a scratch) is regrouping and gathering intel on Jake and "that blue bitch who killed my avatar". Before developing avatars of human DNA mixed with Na'vi DNA, they would have had to perfect creating and operating purely human avatars, right? It makes sense that the RDA would send their head of security's avatar into the dangers of Pandora, not the actual Quarritch. Which also explains how Quarritch has no fear when jumping out of a crashing airship in his AMP suit and numerous other life threatening situations. This also explains how Wainfleet could be brought back from the dead as well. I also assumed that at the end of the first film, that the humans and Selfridge took the shuttle to the orbiting space station and then called earth for help or further instructions, and never actually returned home. Really, do you think that a big corporation like the RDA would let Selfridge just give up and go home? Once the ship is in orbit, the Na'vi can't see it any more and think it has gone home. Earth/RDA has way too much invested on Pandora to just "go home and forget it".
But since Avatar 2 is happening 8 years later, that's enough time for a new transport full of reinforcements (and new toys!) to have been sent to Pandora from Earth. The humans in the orbiting station could go into cryo until the ship from Earth arrives.
But we'll only really know what James has up his sleeve once the next movie comes out, which will probably be so much more ingenious than anything we could have thought of.

i totally agree that Colonel Coffeecup was an avatar body driven remotely from either a station in orbit, or another facility on one of the moons of the Polyphemus system. the RDA has been on Pandora for 25-30 years in the story, but may have been in the system for much longer prior to landing on Pandora. also, there may be other mining bases on the moons of Polyphemus, or even in a nearby neighboring system. we really have no idea of the space-faring history of the RDA.

I'm a big Parker Selfridge fan so I'm glad to see he's making an appearance in the sequel.