It’s pretty safe to say that the words “The Legendary Star-Lord will Return” were not only a shock to the audience, but also Chris Pratt, who has been very vocal in the past few months about the fact his time in the MCU may be running short. Similar to what seemingly happened to Chris Hemsworth with Thor, it looks like the MCU isn’t quite done with them, even when they thought their time was up. But it raises a really important question, considering Star-Lord is now back on Earth for the first time since he was 8, of how exactly will he return? There are a few theories starting to run around, so let’s talk about it.

The very first idea, and maybe the most simple, is that when the next ragtag team of Avengers forms, Peter will be right there to join it. He battled next to Peter Parker and Dr. Strange in space, both of which will be likely involved with a new Avengers team or at least around it. In fact, I wouldn’t put it against Strange to have already realized Peter is on Earth. On top of this, Peter fought with most of the other Avengers during the final battle against Thanos, so we can’t say there aren’t connections there as well. Either way, trading a space team for the Earth team doesn’t seem that far out of Peter’s wheelhouse. And I really don’t believe Peter is ready to hang up his world-saving times just to acclimate to Earth and become a regular day-to-day citizen.

Going the complete other way, maybe Star-Lord will get his own spinoff and get the fairytale ending he couldn’t get with Gamora. A small thing that not everyone may have picked up on is that they didn’t just refer to him as Star-Lord, but instead as the Legendary Star-Lord, which could be a nod to a comic series in which he is the main character. He even develops a relationship with Kitty Pryde, an X-Men and who has intercepting storylines with Secret Wars. It’s possible they are instead opening a door for Star-Lord to finish telling whatever story he needs, just now on Earth and maybe with a new love interest if they would like.

The only other way I could see Peter returning would be in whatever is next for the new Guardians of the Galaxy, although this is the most unlikely answer. While a cameo wouldn’t be shocking, Peter’s storyline with the Guardians is over. He went back to Earth and brought his time in space, at least for now, to a close. Bringing him back in the next team-up film would just undo everything that happened in this one, although it’s not like we haven’t seen character development absolutely slaughtered before (*cough* Thor and Cap *cough*). Jokes aside though, it really does seem unlikely that Peter would play any sort of heavy-lifting role in another Guardians project, but it’s always good to include the possibility.

In the end, we have a few good options for where Star-Lord can go now that he’s moving away from the Guardians of the Galaxy team. For now, I genuinely wouldn’t be shocked to see him join the Avengers just to have a place during Kang Dynasty and Secret Wars, but we will have to see where his story goes from here.