He remained cautious two years later, telling The Graham Norton Show that revisiting the role would be “risky” because the story had ended on such a high note.
Evans nevertheless agreed to return as Steve Rogers in Avengers: Doomsday. He said he had rejected several proposals before co-director Joe Russo presented one that finally worked, helped considerably by Robert Downey Jr.’s own return to Marvel.
“All of a sudden it felt right,” Evans said. “It was like, ‘This is it.’”
Anthony Mackie may now carry the shield, but Marvel has rarely treated succession as an obstacle to bringing back a familiar face.
Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig wanted proper endings
Few screen departures looked more definitive than Hugh Jackman’s in Logan. The 2017 film killed Wolverine after giving the ageing mutant a bruising, emotional final mission, and Jackman repeatedly said the performance would be his last.
“I’m out,” he told Fandango shortly after the film’s release. “So this is it.”
Jackman said he meant it. The complication arrived when he watched the first Deadpool film and immediately saw the appeal of putting Wolverine opposite Ryan Reynolds’ relentlessly talkative antihero.
That idea eventually became Deadpool & Wolverine, released after Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox allowed the X-Men character to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The film preserved Logan by using a different version of Wolverine — a narrative distinction that cinematic universes find remarkably useful.
Jackman has since become more guarded about declaring the role finished again.
Daniel Craig’s break with James Bond sounded even less ambiguous. Asked in 2015 whether he could imagine making another film after Spectre, Craig told Time Out: “Now? I’d rather break this glass and slash my wrists. No, not at the moment. Not at all.”
He added that if he returned, it would be “only for the money.”
Craig did return for 2021’s No Time to Die, although he later said the decision was driven by unfinished creative business rather than simply a payday. Spectre, he felt, had not provided the conclusion his version of Bond needed.
“If I’d left it at Spectre, something at the back of my head would have been going, ‘I wish I’d done one more,’” he told Empire.
No Time to Die resolved that concern with considerable force, killing Craig’s Bond and leaving the franchise to search for his successor.
Harrison Ford and Michael Keaton returned decades later
Harrison Ford had been trying to say goodbye to Han Solo since the original Star Wars trilogy.
He believed the character should die in Return of the Jedi and said during the film’s promotional tour that three instalments were enough. “I was glad to see that costume for the last time,” Ford said.
It was not the last time.
Ford returned more than three decades later in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where Han was killed by his son, Kylo Ren. Even death failed to settle matters completely: Ford appeared once more in 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, in a scene between Han and Kylo.
“When J.J. [Abrams] asked me to do it, I said, ‘Are you kidding? I’m dead!’” Ford later told USA Today. Abrams’ persuasiveness and the opportunity to work again with Adam Driver changed his mind.
Michael Keaton’s return to Batman required a similarly long wait. After starring in Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns, Keaton rejected a third film when the franchise moved to director Joel Schumacher.
The two disagreed over Bruce Wayne’s darkness. Keaton recalled Schumacher asking why the character had to be so sad, prompting the actor to wonder whether the director understood how Batman came to exist in the first place.
“I just can’t do it,” Keaton remembered deciding.
Val Kilmer took over for 1995’s Batman Forever, but Keaton eventually put the cape back on for 2023’s The Flash. He said curiosity helped persuade him, provided the new material was worthwhile.
“I just jumped in and had fun,” he later said. After nearly 30 years, that was probably the more practical response.
Pirates, mutants and one awkward promise
Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley both considered their Pirates of the Caribbean stories complete after 2007’s At World’s End.
Bloom told MTV that the films had been “a really great, fun ride” but said he wanted new challenges and believed the trilogy had given Will Turner closure. A source later told Digital Spy that he repeatedly declined a role in the fourth film, On Stranger Tides.
Knightley was equally direct in 2014. “My time has definitely passed,” she said on BBC Radio 2. “I loved it, it was an amazing experience but I won’t be going back.”
Both appeared in 2017’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Bloom returned as Will, while Knightley made a brief appearance as Elizabeth Swann. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer said test audiences had specifically asked where Elizabeth was, leading the filmmakers to add her to the ending.
Jennifer Lawrence’s return as Mystique involved less studio manoeuvring and more an inconvenient promise to a colleague.
Before 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse, Lawrence said she expected it to be her final film as the blue-skinned mutant. Her contract was ending, and she had become increasingly concerned about the extensive body paint and what she described as its “fumes and toxins.”
She returned three years later for Dark Phoenix after encouraging Simon Kinberg to direct and agreeing that she would participate if he did.
“I kind of f—ed myself,” Lawrence told Entertainment Weekly. When Kinberg accepted the job and the offer arrived, she realised her enthusiastic promise had become rather more binding than intended.
Lawrence also cited the franchise’s fans as a reason for returning.
Television departures proved just as reversible
Steve Carell resisted calls to bring Michael Scott back for the final season of The Office. He believed the character’s seven-season journey had already reached an appropriate conclusion and compared returning to a graduate sleeping on the floor of his former college dormitory.
Carell changed his mind for the 2013 finale, appearing at Dwight and Angela’s wedding as Dwight’s surprise best man. According to co-stars Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, he agreed because Michael’s presence at the ceremony made sense for the character.
The cameo was kept secret, allowing the former regional manager to return without taking the finale away from the employees who had remained at Dunder Mifflin.
Christopher Meloni’s absence from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit lasted considerably longer. He left after 12 seasons as Detective Elliot Stabler when contract negotiations broke down.
Asked about a possible return in 2014, Meloni said: “I think the ship has sailed. I think that part of my life is done.”
Seven years later, the ship came back with its own television series. Meloni returned to SVU in a crossover story that launched Law & Order: Organized Crime, placing Stabler at the centre of another five-season run.
Joseph Morgan also rejected the prospect of revisiting Klaus Mikaelson after The Originals. The character’s story, which began on The Vampire Diaries, had ended after five seasons of the spin-off.
“No, never, never. You’re never going to see it,” Morgan told TV Guide in 2020 when asked whether Klaus could appear in Legacies, a later series built partly around Klaus’s daughter, Hope.
Morgan argued that returning as a ghost or in a flashback would undermine a complete story. He nevertheless appeared as Klaus in one episode of Legacies during its final season, giving Hope a last message from her father.
Sylvester Stallone’s final Rocky film became four more
Sylvester Stallone delivered perhaps the most dramatically inaccurate retirement announcement of the group.
After Rocky IV in 1985, Stallone told Interview magazine that he could see nowhere else for the boxer to go after defeating Ivan Drago.
“This is it for Rocky,” he said. “Everything subsequent is anticlimactic. And I don’t think I can do any better.”
He subsequently played Rocky Balboa four more times: in Rocky V, Rocky Balboa, Creed and Creed II.
The returns were not merely nostalgic. Creed repositioned Rocky as an ageing mentor to Adonis Creed and earned Stallone an Academy Award nomination for supporting actor, nearly 40 years after he was nominated for playing the same character in the original film.
These reversals do not necessarily mean the actors were being disingenuous when they announced their departures. Craig wanted a stronger ending. Jackman encountered a pairing he could not resist. Carell found a cameo that respected Michael Scott’s completed arc, while Stallone discovered that Rocky’s life outside the ring still contained a story.
In franchise entertainment, “never” usually describes how an actor feels about the script currently on the table. The next script is where the trouble begins.
