Stephen Lang's Quaritch made a lasting impact as Avatar's lead villain, and he'd eventually get what he deserved after being shot through the chest with an arrow by Zoe Saldana's Neytiri. As deaths go, it was a pretty definitive one, but the RDA baddie is somehow set to make his return in Avatar: The Way of Water later this month.
We've known that to be the case for a while, of course, with it later confirmed that the actor would reprise his role from the record-breaking 2009 blockbuster.
After months of speculation about how Quaritch could possibly return, we finally have an answer courtesy of Lang himself. "He's a genetically-engineered autonomous avatar," the actor tells Empire Online. "He has been downloaded with the mind, the emotions, and even more interestingly, possibly the spirit of Quaritch."
"Now, that's all pretty esoteric stuff. He comes with a full memory bank up until the time he actually undergoes the DNA transfer. So there are certain things that he doesn't have any memory of at all. He has no memory of his death."
It appears Quaritch will be among the sequel's resurrected soldiers known as the Recombinants, with Quaritch seemingly set to lead a squad of them against the peaceful Na'vi.
Of course, with no memory of his death - and possibly everything we saw from him in Avatar - could this version of the character have a slightly less sinister view of Pandora? We're not banking on it, and we'd bet he's out for revenge against those he probably knows put an end to his time as a human.
Set more than a decade after the events of the first film, the sequel begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.
Avatar: The Way of Water splashes down in theaters worldwide on December 16.