Star Trek was perfectly fine without William Shatner. In fact, it would’ve been fine without Leonard Nimoy as well, but he was there and it kind of worked, so who am I to complain. Either way, die-hard fans still found reason to moan and groan about Shatner’s absence, even though it would have been inexplicable (he died, remember?). Shatner fans, your prayers may be answered by Star Trek 2.

The West Australian reports that J.J. Abrams is considering including Shatner in the sequel to his widely loved and successful Star Trek reboot. "I would love to work with him," Abrams said at a press conference. "It was a foregone conclusion we wanted him in [Star Trek]. The problem was his character died on screen in one of his Trek films and we decided that we wanted to adhere to Trek canon.” Abrams further said that he felt they had more of an opening with the sequel to find a manner in which to reintroduce the older Captain Kirk.

In fact, Abrams and Shatner are even joining each other for a “dinner date.” This may be more serious than we thought, guys. Anyway, I have faith in Abrams being able to pull off some sort of time-machine-portal-hole-thingy that will bring old Kirk back to life. And maybe if Shatner gets the job, he’ll stop crying on YouTube about the whole thing.

You're dead Jim. No really, you're dead.