I was one of many who didn’t think the QF A380’s would return to service because the economics of the aircraft are marginal in normal operations over long routes. For the sake of the A380 crews I’m happy to be wrong.
I suspect that Qantas had to bring them back as they don’t have sufficient capacity in long range twins to fly the routes. The A350 will probably be ordered fairly soon and it will pair with the B787 doing long range, point to point routes, with the A380 being moved to medium range (9-11 hours) routes where it has much better potential to be profitable.
I think that everyone agrees that international flying and, airlines in general, will be significantly different post pandemic.