Chris Pratt Admits Star-Lord Hate After Avengers: Infinity War Took a Bigger Toll Than Anyone Realized

Chris Pratt knows a lot of you still blame Star-Lord for blowing it in Avengers: Infinity War. And yeah, he just talked about how hard that backlash actually hit, which is not nothing coming from the guy who rode Guardians of the Galaxy to movie-star status and then wrangled dinos for Universal.

Quick rewind

Guardians made Pratt a headliner. Universal then handed him Jurassic World and the Owen Grady gig. He stacked on The Magnificent Seven and the very-debated sci-fi romance Passengers. Then Infinity War happened, Star-Lord lost his cool at exactly the worst time, and Thanos got away. Cue years of fans pinning the L on Peter Quill.

What Pratt actually said

On the podcast Out of Order, Pratt walked through why that moment—and the reaction—landed the way it did. He said he was a support player on the two-part Avengers event, not the lead of a Guardians movie, and that the dynamics behind the camera were different for him without James Gunn steering Star-Lord.

'On the street, they’d come up to me like, Why’d you do it, man? I’m like, I didn’t do anything! Also, if Quill hadn’t done that, the two movies would’ve been thirty minutes long. We got him. Roll credits.'

• Across Infinity War and Endgame, Pratt says he worked roughly 20 days total—'very much a supporting part' there to back up the Avengers lineup.
• He praised directors Joe and Anthony Russo for letting the cast collaborate and help shape their characters.
• This was his first time playing Peter Quill without James Gunn directing, which he felt, especially given Gunn’s tight connection to the character.
• He was surprised by how hard fans came for Quill over a 'moment of human weakness' and says people genuinely hated the character for a stretch.
• Fans confronted him in person about it, which, again, he points out is not exactly on the actor.
• He now recognizes how iconic that scene became, says he feels the weight of it on the character, and—controversial or not—he’s glad it happened because otherwise there’s no movie.

My read on it

This is one of those behind-the-scenes realities that casual viewers don’t always think about: actors show up, do the job they’re hired to do, and the larger machine decides where the story goes. Pratt didn’t write Star-Lord’s outburst; he just had to make it play. Do I get why fans were heated? Sure. Thanos was almost done. But hassling the guy in public over a scripted choice is pointless.

Where Star-Lord stands now

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 gives Quill some redemption—he grows, he stumbles, he tries again. He’s still figuring out love and who he is without the safety net. As for what’s next? Marvel hasn’t said when or how Star-Lord returns, if at all. The debate over Infinity War isn’t going anywhere, though, so maybe save the energy for the next time he actually shows up on screen.