You can bet that Bendis will either kill Rich off for good, villain-ize him, say that he's really a time-displaced Jesse, say that Sam and Jesse are time-displaced alternate versions of Rich, or say that Rich died and the voice in NINO's helmet is Rich as the dominant personality of the Worldmind.  My money is on the Parallax treatment - brought back as a villain.  I don't like any of those clichés.  What you can be sure he won't do is bring Rich back to be Nova Prime as that's what the fans want and that would make too much sense.  But Bendis and Brevoort would see that as too much of a threat to NINO and above all else they'll keep pushing NINO.