James Gunn was set to return for Guardians of the Galaxy 2 before Guardians of the Galaxy 1 even opened. But it seems his vision extends even beyond that. In a new interview he reveals he’s already been thinking about Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and has been since he was working on the first one. Hit the jump for James Gunn Guardians of the Galaxy 3 comments.

Gunn hinted at his plans for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 while chatting with The Playlist.

We open up on a Mission: Impossible scenario where all the characters die… No, to be honest, I had the basic story for number two while I was working on number one, and perhaps even beyond that. So it’s gonna answer a lot of questions that are proposed in the first one, and we’ll be able to get to know some of the characters we didn’t get to know in the first one a little bit more, and we might meet a few new characters too.

While some filmmakers have chafed under the Marvel model, Gunn seems comfortable with the balance he’s struck between his own personal style and the studio’s constraints.

I very much knew that there were certain things about Guardians that needed to stay the Marvel way, but then figuring out a way around them to do my own thing was I think part of what made me have so much fun with the movie. So there’s always those things, whether they’re budgetary or otherwise. And even on Guardians, there was a lot of budgetary constraints.

If Gunn really has plans for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 worked out in his head, and if Marvel really lets him bring them to fruition, it could make the Guardians of the Galaxy series a bit unusual for the MCU. While all the MCU movies are connected in some way, the individual franchises don’t really tell a single serialized story in the way that, say, the Hunger Games movies do. No one refers to Iron Man 1-3 as a “trilogy” even though it technically is one.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. As of now, Marvel hasn’t actually confirmed it’s making Guardians of the Galaxy 3, let alone whether Gunn will direct and write it. If Gunn has his way, though, it seems he’ll be sticking around the MCU for a while. He admitted it was “probably true” he wouldn’t return to low-budget or indie filmmaking until he was done with the Guardians universe, though he also reserves the right to change his mind.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I’m driven by ideas. […] So if I’m excited about an idea and it’s a five million dollar movie, I’ll go do it. I’ve always kind of done what I wanted to do.” He’s even open to TV. “I have commitment issues in everything, so I don’t think I could really be a showrunner, but the idea of kicking something off is appealing, or doing a 6-12 episode self-contained series,” he said, citing True Detective as “a great example of one director, one story.”

Whatever story he winds up telling, you can bet he’ll try to get the ending right. “[S]omething like the last episode of Lost was like a nightmare for me, a real living nightmare,” he said. “It made me realize that for sure I did not ever, ever want to do that to my audience.”