“Too soon.”

Ask a fan of Joss Whedon’s Firefly how they feel about that scene, where Wash dies for no good reason, and you’re bound to get that response, no matter that it happened over 15 years ago.

When Alan Tudyk’s beloved character Hoban Washburne shuffles off his mortal coil in Serenity (2005), the movie that followed the acclaimed series Firefly, it didn’t feel right. How could a character as beloved as Wash die for seemingly no good reason?

Firefly, if you haven’t seen it, is on nearly every ‘cancelled before its time’ list you can find. Set far from Earth, far from our time, the show starred Nathan Fillion as Captain Mal Reynolds, who with his ragtag crew of outlaws, hopped around the ‘verse in his ship, the Serenity. It was a funny/scary/dramatic space western, if that makes sense, and ran for one season before being unceremoniously cancelled by short-sighted number-crunching Fox network execs.

Serenity was released after Firefly‘s cancellation and was supposed to tie up loose ends from the aborted series. In it, fan favorite Wash met an untimely death.

Now, in the latest issue of Boom! Studios Firefly (#25, out now) may have some closure for fans of Tudyk’s character.

The issue, which is set after the events of the movie Serenity, finds the crew fractured. Mal and Inara are AWOL, no reason given. Kaylee is now the captain of the Serenity, and her crew consists of River Tam, Jayne Cobb, and Leonard Chang-Benitez, who is a new character created for the comic.

After losing her husband, Zoe is obsessed with protecting her and Wash’s child, Emma. She and Simon Tam are on their own, running from their past, and Zoe is on the outs with Mal, though whether that’s because of what happened during Serenity or something that came after is unknown.

The two warring factions are forced to work together when they come under attack from bounty hunters with new technology. Kaylee’s team investigates a mysterious ring that somehow serves as a portal for ships to pass through, and Zoe discovers a job listing for someone using Wash’s name.

Zoe heads out loaded for bear and looking for whoever is borrowing Wash’s name. She gets off a shot before realizing she’s looking at Wash.

The issue offers no explanation for how Wash is back (there are hints that Zoe’s ring portal may somehow deal with alternate realities or “time-skipping”), and the moment is as shocking for Zoe as it will probably be for fans.

The man himself, Alan Tudyk, told ComicBook.com what he thought about this unexpected resurrection.

‘When people mention Wash’s death to me it’s always, ‘too soon,’ So, hearing that Wash is now returning from the dead, I say, “it’s about gorram time!’” Tudyk said.