When embryos are frozen and thawed for fertility treatment, they sometimes collapse, but does this mean they are no longer viable? This study followed 438 frozen embryo transfer cycles to understand whether collapsed embryos can recover, and whether giving them more time in the incubator before transfer makes a difference. The key finding is that what matters most is how an embryo looks at the time of transfer, not immediately after thawing. Embryos that re-expanded before being transferred had similar success rates to those that never collapsed. Only embryos that remained collapsed at transfer had significantly poorer outcomes. Importantly, for every additional hour spent in the incubator, a collapsed embryo's odds of recovering improved substantially. This means that rather than discarding a collapsed embryo, clinicians may simply need to wait, giving it time to recover could meaningfully improve the chances of a successful pregnancy. Collapsed embryos that are given longer to recover in the incubator before transfer may have the same chance of achieving a pregnancy as embryos that never collapsed.