Warning: I haven't written it yet, but this post will probably contain spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War.
You'll recall that Peter Parker (Tom Holland), Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) all died at the end of this summer's Avengers: Infinity War, their bodies transformed into swirling clouds of ash alongside half of the other living things on Earth.
If you're entirely unfamiliar with comic books, the binding nature of Hollywood contracts, or, indeed, how storytelling itself works, you may have taken the deaths of these characters at face value, and assumed they'd never again be glimpsed in a Marvel movie.
Incredibly, you'd be wrong: though we've long known that Tom Holland would be returning as Peter Parker in next year's Spider-Man: Far From Home, it now turns out that both Smulders and Jackson will also be reprising their MCU roles in Jon Watts' film.
The news comes to us via Vulture, who independently confirmed Smulders and Jackson's return. In addition to Holland, the pair will also be joining Jake Gyllenhaal, who'll be playing Spider-Man: Far From Home's Big Bad, Mysterio. How Hill and Fury factor into Far From Home's plot is anyone's guess, but we assume we'll be seeing them in a fully restored state (a narrative wrinkle likely to be ironed out by the Avengers: Infinity War sequel, which arrives two months before the Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel).
Stay tuned for more on Spider-Man: Far From Home as further updates roll in. Movie arrives on July 5th of next year.