Stan Lee’s Marvel movie cameos started out as a joke with a role as a hot dog vendor in 2000's X-Men.  Since then, fans have come to expect that he’ll appear in each movie, and the legendary comic book creator has portrayed all sorts of characters, including wedding-crashers, bystanders, and even characters who kick off the plot. His role in The Incredible Hulk, for example, served to reveal Bruce Banner’s whereabouts. But how many characters has he actually played?

Some fans theorize that Lee is either Uatu the Watcher or someone even more powerful. Interestingly, Kevin Feige agrees with these theories. Check it out, but expect some spoilers!

Obviously, Stan Lee’s most recent cameo is in Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2. In the first of his two scenes, he tells three Watchers about his past experiences, including his role as a FedEx agent in Captain America: Civil War. In the second, he’s with the same Watchers, but it appears that they’ve heard enough stories and they’re leaving.

Feige confirmed that he and James Gunn have thought about the possibility that Lee is playing the same character in different disguises:

Yes, we always thought it would be fun. Stan Lee clearly exists, you know, above and apart from the reality of all the films. So the notion that he could be sitting there on a cosmic pit stop during the jump gate sequence in Guardians was something very fun. James had that idea and we shot that cameo and loved it so much, you know, you see it a couple of times in the movie. It wasn't in for a long time, and we put it back in toward the end of the process where he references that time he was a Federal Express agent. We thought it would be fun to put that in there, because that really says, so wait a minute, he's this same character who's popped up in all these films (via Screen Rant).

But is Lee really a Watcher in the MCU? He’s credited as The Watchers' Informant in Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2. This makes more sense, since he doesn't physically resemble the Watchers. So we have a new theory that says that Lee’s character may be bigger and far more important than the Watchers.

And Feige said that Stan Lee is above the reality of all of the films.

So what do you think? Which one is it?