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With each passing year, it gets more insane that Leonardo DiCaprio’s first and only Oscar win for Best Actor is The Revenant. I’m not sure which part of that is more egregious, the “first”—he should’ve taken it home at least one year earlier, for The Wolf of Wall Street—or the “only,” considering that since then, he’s arguably only gotten better and the competition has only gotten thinner. The most disappointing thing about it though, is that The Revenant (a film I have not rewatched since theaters, admittedly) is probably Leo’s least dynamic role across his entire filmography. It’s a travesty that he has a statue for just looking cold, grim and sad when he can do pretty much anything and everything, with a versatility that almost gets underrated because of how easy he makes it look.

Thank God for One Battle After Another, which is currently reminding audiences of one of Leo’s most underrated bags: his comedic timing. Paul Thomas Anderson has said the film couldn’t be made until they found the perfect Willa, but as thoroughly as Chase Infiniti bodies her big-screen debut, I’d argue the whole thing might not work with any other actor except Leo, who brings a distinct, strange alchemy of paranoia, fear, sleaze, humor and heart to a role that could easily tip over into caricature with one wrong calculation. He goes particularly godbody in the second act, which for all the authoritarianism, racial tension and attempted kidnapping, is way, way funnier than it should be. Leo’s doing everything from pitch-perfect pratfalls to the most well-deployed White Boy “Homie” since Tom Cruise asked for his briefcase.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, or a revelation. Despite a resume consisting mostly of dramas and thrillers, Leo the Comedian has been right in front of our eyes in brief but memorable flashes in otherwise “serious roles.” Take it back to his first scene opposite Vera Farmiga in The Departed, where he’s tasked with being an on-edge dickhead charming enough to spark her interest (“What, you mean the showers?”) He’s so dopey in Killers of the Flower Moon that his banter with De Niro would be hilarious if it wasn’t in service of something so horrible. And think about the two most enduring sequences from both Wolf of Wall Street and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: the palpable physical comedy of that Quaalude-addled Countach Crawl, and Rick Dalton’s mid-set trailer meltdown (which he reportedly improvised.) He’s hilarious. Do you concur?

Still, One Battle is obviously his biggest comedic showcase to date. While a fair amount of laughs are divvied up between himself, Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro (all but confirmed to duel, and hopefully not cancel each other out, for Best Supporting Actor) Leo is doing very nuanced, very elite work here, on a level that may get overlooked by the casual viewer because he’s Leo—or maybe that he’s allowed to get away with and disappear into, again because he’s Leo. In any given role he takes, especially lately, he’s alternately trading on his household-name familiarity and Trojan Horsing it to do interesting things. He’s one of the Last Real Movie Stars Alive next to Tom, Denzel, Brad and the like, but he’s using that status to get deeper with his craft, challenge himself, and stack up a filmography where no two roles are truly alike. And with PTA as his sensei, he’s officially crossed into a comedy frontier that he’s only toed a line over before.

Might this be one strong step towards a full-throated comedic role in the near future? His next two projects—a Vertigo-inspired thriller with his good buddy Scorsese and, possibly Heat 2—don’t exactly sound like laugh riots in the making. But whether Ghetto Pat earns Leo his elusive, overdue second gold statue or not, let’s hope it helps signify the shape of the now-50-year-old Leo’s late-career arc. He may have even more tricks up his sleeve that we haven’t seen yet, but it will be just as satisfying and thrilling to watch if he finds a role that lets him tease his ability to wring a sturdy laugh out even more. Whatever the case though, If his script selection keeps up at this rate, alongside auteur directors guiding him into roles that only expand and heighten his versatility, that GOAT status may be more than just colloquial.