16 movie characters who refused to stay dead

Spock wasn’t supposed to come back. Leonard Nimoy wanted to go out like a legend with Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan, and he got his wish. Then The Wrath Of Khan became arguably the best theatrical Star Trek experience ever, and Nimoy decided he wouldn’t just reprise the role, but direct his own return. Of course, leaving Spock’s body on a planet already seeded with an experimental life-giving sci-fi device didn’t hurt, even if it did mean the Enterprise crew had to deal with a younger, fussier Spock in Star Trek III for a little while.

One of science fiction’s great movie heroes, Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, was seemingly gone for good at the end of Alien 3. Then came the concept of Alien: Resurrection, in which Ripley was resurrected not through some amazing means of survival, but as a clone with a certain amount of Xenomorph DNA embedded in her makeup. The change in the character allowed Weaver the chance to play an entirely different side to Ripley while keeping her survival instincts, and although the result might not be the best Alien movie, it is a compelling return performance.

Comic book fans saw this one coming. Longtime X-Men readers knew very well that Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) would eventually return as the all-powerful Phoenix, just as she had on X-Men: The Animated Series more than a decade earlier. When it finally happened in X-Men: The Last Stand, Jean’s return coincided with a number of other plot points, including the invention of a vaccine that would depower mutants. That made her resurrection a little crowded, but it was still cool to see the Phoenix unleashed on the big screen for the first time.

Geoffrey Rush might have many more acclaimed roles in his career, but he never seemed to be having more fun than when he was Barbossa. The notorious, self-interested, constantly double-crossing Pirate Lord is Rush at his scenery-chewing best in The Curse Of the Black Pearl, which may explain why the filmmaker decided to give him a surprise resurrection at the end of Dead Man’s Chest. It’s a great cliffhanger to set up At World’s End, and watching Rush’s eyes light up when he takes a bit of an apple is pure popcorn joy.

We’re so deep into the Fast & Furious movies at this point that it sort of seems like there was never a point when we could have lost Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), Dominic Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) wife and right-hand woman. Yet that’s exactly what seemingly happened in Fast & Furious, when Letty was murdered offscreen thanks to some undercover work she’d done on behalf of the FBI. Thankfully, Fast Five revealed, through a file photo, that Letty was still alive, and Fast & Furious 6 debuted an amnesiac version of the character who Dom fought to save no matter what, rekindling one of action cinema’s longest-running love stories.

We can argue about the relative success of the Star Wars prequels all we want, but it’s hard to deny just how badass Darth Maul was. The apprentice of Darth Sidious made an immediate impression when he popped up in the film’s trailer with his double-bladed lightsaber, and went on to take center stage in arguably the greatest lightsaber battle the saga has ever seen. Of course, he lost that battle, and we thought that was the end of it … until The Clone Wars. In season four of the animated series, Maul was found alive, complete with a new set of spidery metal legs to replace his lost bottom half. This kicked off a saga that ran through that series, its follow-up Star Wars Rebels, and even a cameo in Solo: A Star Wars Story, proving that you can’t keep a character that cool on the sidelines forever.

Thanks to the understated charm of Clark Gregg, Agent Phil Coulson became one of the Marvel fandom’s most beloved supporting characters in the early days of the MCU. That meant that when he died in The Avengers, fans both bought it as the driving motivation to bring the team together, and clamored for a path back from the dead. They got their wish a year later, when Coulson returned for Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D, the first MCU TV series, which ultimately turned into an even wilder ride for Coulson the character. He never returned to movie prominence again, but fans of the series know that he proved worthy of his resurrection.

Kingsman: The Secret Service had a few different strengths, but the greatest was arguably its use of Colin Firth as Galahad, a polite, well-dressed secret agent who could unleash absolute hell on just about anybody while barely wrinkling his bespoke Saville Row suit. Galahad’s death after an absolutely apocalyptic battle in a church seemed to spell the end for the character, but Firth was so good in the role, and so perfectly suited to the vibe, that he eventually made his way back (with amnesia, of course) in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, ready to kick even more ass in impeccably polished shoes.

Even if you went into Avengers: Infinity War well aware of Thanos’ comic book history, you were probably still a bit shocked when Marvel actually went through with the Snap. To make things more shocking, Marvel then simply ended the film with Thanos as the winner and the Avengers sapped of half their strength, including Winter Soldier, Spider-Man, Falcon, Black Panther, and more. Of course, we had to know they would all eventually come back, but just as they did with the deaths, Marvel planned out a particularly spectacular resurrection scene, capped off by Captain America saying an iconic line, Thor’s hammer in hand. Just thinking about it is enough to get your fist pumping.

Emperor Palpatine never really went away, thanks to constant Star Wars stories exploring the character’s life in the decades following his demise in Return Of The Jedi. Still, a full-fledged return by the original trilogy’s Big Bad wasn’t anything anyone anticipated when the trailer for The Rise Of Skywalker first dropped. As soon as that evil laugh hit, we knew we were in for something strange and creepy, and thanks to Ian McDiarmid’s fully committed reprise performance, we got it. The rest of the movie is up for debate, but McDiarmid’s Palpatine never lost a step, even in a rotting clone body.

Speaking of characters who’ve been waiting since Return Of The Jedi to make their comeback, here comes Boba Fett. The character had been resurrected before, on the page and even in a Robot Chicken special, but his return in the second season of The Mandalorian marked the first time the character had been given a canonical onscreen resurrection in the almost 40 years since his death. It worked so well that he got his own spinoff.

Sung Kang’s performance as street racer/Toretto crew member Han Lue was so good that he’s died onscreen twice and somehow kept coming back. We watched his car blow up in Tokyo Drift, then the sequels turned into prequels to that movie so Han could come back and have more adventures alongside Dom. We watched him blow up again (same car) in Fast & Furious 6, and “Justice for Han” was such a solid battle cry among fans that F9: The Fast Saga saw him return once more, complete with a story about faking his death that ensures he’ll keep fighting right up until the end of this saga.

Well, The Oracle told us at the end of The Matrix Revolutions that we might see Neo again, and while it took almost 20 years, she was (as always) correct. Written and directed by Lana Wachowski, The Matrix Resurrections reunited Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss for the first time since Revolutions. The film reimagines Neo as a frustrated, possibly hallucinating game programmer who’s having faint memories of his life as the One. Once he’s awakened to his true reality (again), Neo learns that his fate is actually part of a complex Machine scheme to solve an energy crisis by keeping him alive but suppressing his true nature. It’s all very Matrix-y, and despite the film’s mixed reception, seeing Reeves back as Neo was a dream for Millennials everywhere.

There’s a saying in comics: “No one stays dead except Uncle Ben.” It’s fitting that this is a reference to Spider-Man, who’s had pretty much every character in his life except his beloved uncle killed off and then brought back to life at some point or another. On the big screen, this most recently took the form of Spider-Man: No Way Home, a dimension-hopping adventure that used the concept of the multiverse to resurrect Spider-Man villains, namely Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe), and Electro (Jamie Foxx). That they all came back in a single movie was thrilling enough, but it was even more satisfying to watch three different Spider-Men work together to save these bad guys’ lives, while trying to make their own lives better along the way.

From the moment we met him in Avatar back in 2009, Stephen Lang’s Miles Quaritch just felt like the kind of guy you could never truly kill, a living, breathing embodiment of the military-industrial complex who would keep pursuing victory, no matter the cost. So it made sense when the character returned in Avatar: The Way Of Water, not just revived, but in a new Na’vi body. Seeing Quaritch looking like the enemy he’d spent so many years fighting was the surprising part, but given how much that guy is willing to do in order to win a fight, it makes perfect sense.

You just can’t keep anyone dead in the Fast & Furious movies, at least not if they’re a devoted member of the Toretto crew. Whether they’re riding off into the sunset forever or just playing dead for a few movies, those characters always find a way to survive. Case in point: Gisele Yashar, who followed her lover Han Lue into resurrection with a cameo at the end of Fast X, revealing that she did not in fact die in Fast & Furious 6 as we previously thought. Gisele and Han will no doubt be back together again soon, but what Gisele was up to in the intervening years remains a mystery.