Warning: the following contains spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
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When Michael Rooker was cast as Yondu Udonta in Guardians of the Galaxy it felt like little more than one big in-joke. The actor’s a close friend of director James Gunn, so his involvement in the film (along with Gunn’s brother Sean as both Ravager sidekick Kraglin and Rocket's live-action body double) looked to be a way to have palatable nepotism. While the specific character choice was a deliberate nod to the comics; Yondu's a founding member of the original year 3000 Guardians in print, so him being there accounted for the more modern team makeup.
Even though Rooker definitely left an impact initially, it’s really in the sequel where he’s earned his place as part of the cosmic Marvel universe. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is conspicuous for - despite being a character-focused piece - not really having much in the way of actual character development, but the one place this isn’t true is with Yondu. We learn about the anti-hero's past, have his very foundation shook and, crucially, his arc is fatefully brought to an end when he sacrifices himself to save his adoptive son, Star-Lord.
That latter point is important as it sees Vol. 2 do that rare thing of actively ending a Marvel character’s run, making the development of Yondu in Guardians 2 is his MCU epitaph. Of course, despite his 48 years of existence, he’s not an A-List hero where a mishandling would cause the ire of fans for decades a la Batman or Spidey, but that shouldn’t get in the way of us asking the whether what they do with him works.
Retconning Yondu From The First Film
Although Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 doesn’t have an overly complex narrative, it does still do a fair bit of heavy lifting in how it reframes the original. Ostensibly this is to explain Star-Lord’s backstory, with the nature of his birth, mother’s death and departure from Earth altered, but due to Yondu’s proximity to everything he undergoes a big change too.
In the first film he’s the pirate with a heart; quick to anger, definitely someone you wouldn’t want to cross and possessing an alien outlook on eating other people, yet ultimately compassionate and understanding of Peter. From his introduction in Vol. 2 this has shifted, with a sad loneliness underpinning his antics at space brothel Contraxia, and it just goes from there. He’s not just a pirate with a heart, but one with a heart that is simultaneously made of gold and incredibly soft.
As we go on, everything he's done previously is subtly reframed. It turns out he was Ego’s patsy, used to collect the Celestial’s many children as part of his plot for galactic domination, but when it came to Peter, he’d had enough and eloped. He and Quill both cite the excuse of the half-Terran being small and thus good for thieving as the why, which reveals much of his gruffness from the original – such as stopping the Ravagers from eating Star-Lord – as an act. This is hammered home by his excommunication from the main pack by Starhawk; his history with Sylvester Stallone’s character (which we’ll look at in more detail in a bit) shows he’s an altruistic hero who’s lost his way.
There is a slight issue in that it has to rewind the development in the second half of the 2014 film – Yondu teaming up with the Guardians, being proud of Quill’s defeat of Ronan and laughing at being literally trolled out of an Infinity Stone – but it’s an interesting step all the same, one that makes him one of Vol. 2's more interesting players.
Relationships With The Guardians
However, while all this strengthens Yondu when you really break it down, it’s less well-handled in the film as presented. The script splutters its character development and leaves threads undernourished until their payoff, which is incredibly prominent with Yondu.
Being an outside Guardian, much of his development is done in reaction to core members, something that is regrettably paid off primarily in two blunt scenes. The first is the out-of-the-blue comparison to Rocket, with the pair of angry brutes discovering they’re both not that different, essentially rounding off Yondu slowly coming to terms with what he’s done and realizing he’s not beyond redemption. The second is more problematic – despite having no direct exploration of the concept previously, the climax of the finale suddenly introduces a surrogate father thread for Star-Lord. It's a nice idea and one that leaves Peter alone in the universe, but has only really been lightly touched upon up to that point and, considering how brash Yondu’s been to Peter in the past, is a rather positive framing of an abusive relationship.
When the film lets Rooker just be the character, though, things are so much better presented. “I’m Mary Poppins, y’all” is already a meme (which no doubt pleases Disney considering a belated sequel is on the way) but much of his lone moments are ones that stand out - from his introspective introduction to the incredulity at Baby Groot's inept breakout. Even his enlarged fin – a reference to the comics – serves as a subtle visual representation of him embracing his true self.
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Yondu's Death
But that handling is by-the-by when you consider it’s all groundwork for Yondu’s death. If we're talking about doing right by the character, this is the moment that needs to be done well. And... it sort of works.
As already mentioned, main character death is something incredibly rare in the MCU; the only other noteworthy case is Quicksilver in Age of Ultron, who in retrospect was only introduced so he could. This has become a sticking point for Marvel, especially given their long stream of death fake-outs (Loki alone has died and come back in the same movie twice) depleting a lot of tension. This automatically puts Guardians 2 on the backfoot as Gunn needs to work against the inbuilt cynicism about how it’ll probably be undone.
With that in mind, Yondu is the perfect person to kill in so far as you instantly buy and feel it. He’s been made an essential character in Vol. 2 yet in the scope of the MCU is rather insignificant – had he made it to Infinity War, Rooker would have barely cracked the Top 25 on the cast list. He can die in a fitting, permanent way without it hurting the status quo too much (which is why so many characters continue to live). And if you want to get pithy, it avoids too much inherent nepotism.
It is a shame that the death is delivered in such a recognizable way without comment on that fact – a character flying into space and sacrificing themselves in the vacuum to give another person life-support was already played in the first film with Star-Lord and Gamora (and involved Yondu as the savior). Yes, it’s cool to see Guardians unique space-freezing again, but there’s a tinge of familiarity that’s never fully brought full circle.
That said, where it does succeed in rounding off that rushed father figure development. In general, the arc is a bit smudged, yet in having it end so resolutely the speed of it is a bit more excusable; Yondu, like the audience, doesn't fully see what Peter means to him (and vice versa) until a planet is literally coming down around them.
Yondu's Legacy
Of course, the MCU works best on a bigger scale where inconsistencies and plot holes become insignificant, and it’s perhaps in this area where Yondu’s handling in Guardians 2 is at its best. Like how his cremation creates a symbolic rainbow arrow that fires off into the cosmos, so too will his legacy be far reaching.
For starters, he's used as a way to introduce his fellow comic founding Guardians members to the fold as part of the wider Ravager family. In the movie Stakar's arc is rather simple - he decrees no one will remember Yondu only to have heart win out and double back on his word - but it's effective given the character's screentime. His post-credit scene alongside Charlie-27, Mainframe and co. goes further, taking what could have been a very obscure reference and making it into a key piece of future setup - they're reforming in Yondu's memory. James Gunn's been keen to make clear we haven't seen the last of Stallone, so hopefully this will become its own Expendables-esque segment of the MCU. There's also a strong meta element in how Yondu could easily have been dismissed by fans only to emerge the emotional core of the sequel.
In a more direct sense, Yondu still has a presence in the Guardians through Kraglin. Sean Gunn's character is one of the few Ravagers to remain loyal throughout, so thus he inherits Yondu's arrow and, if his mid-credit scene is anything to go by, place as a member of the frickin' Guardians of the Galaxy. We'll see in Infinity War how integrated he becomes, but it was a nice surprise given how little focus has been put on Gunn in the movie's build-up.
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Like the film itself, the handling of Yondu in Guardians Vol. 2 is a little scrappy, with certain threads inferred rather than actually explored. However, when all's said and done, Michael Rooker's blue Ravager is ultimately one of the characters imbued with the most depth and provides the MCU with one of its more impactful deaths. Could it have been done better? Sure. But when you consider Rooker and Gunn made a forgotten E-list comic character from the 1960s the core of a 2017 blockbuster, let's not complain too much.
