Multiple large-scale restoration strategies are emerging globally to counteract ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss. However, restoration often remains insufficient to offset that loss. To address this challenge, we propose to focus restoration science on the long-term (centuries to millennia) re-assembly of degraded ecosystem complexity integrating interaction network and evolutionary potential approaches. This approach provides insights into eco-evolutionary feedbacks determining the structure, functioning and stability of recovering ecosystems. Eco-evolutionary feedbacks may help to understand changes in the adaptive potential after disturbance of metacommunity hub species with core structural and functional roles for their use in restoration.