Although Marvel probably won’t admit it, even they were surprised at the complete success of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The cast and trailers and everything else looked great, but because of how outside-the-box and just sheer wacky the idea was, it was just hard to see the movie end up anywhere near where it actually did. Truthfully, it was a phenomenon. Following its crushing, studios all over jumped on the bandwagon and wanted to create something like Guardians. “This could be their version of Guardians.”

While we were excited as all hell that the movie ended up as it did, those in and behind the film were as well, most notably Star-Lord himself Chris Pratt. Calling the role of Peter Quill his role of a lifetime over and over again, Pratt could not stop loving the situation he was in. Sure, joining a universe as big a the MCU is a thing by itself, but when everyone comes out your MCU movie talking about your performance, that’s when you really start to bask in all the glory, which is exactly what Pratt did, and continues to do.

The sequel is set for next year, with rehearing currently going on with the main cast. Director James Gunn shared some photos of those rehearsals, which showed his leading men and lady very excited to be back for the highly anticipated follow-up. But out of the bunch, Pratt seems to be feeling the most excitement to be returning to Marvel’s galaxy full of A-holes.

Got to love an actor who really loves jumping back into character, especially one such as Star-Lord. Following his role in Guardians, as well as last year’s Jurassic World, Pratt’s now one of the biggest actors on the planet. It will definitely be interesting to see how they play it with him now such a big name, but there’s no doubt it will be a hell of a lot of fun. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is set to be released on May 5th, 2017.