That image set I reblogged earlier (no, I wasn’t using this heart anyway, it’s fine) made me think about how Yondu really is happy in that final scene – not that he wants to die, but he’s okay with it; he’s content – and the way it bookends his first appearance in GotG2, when he’s surrounded by people having fun and yet, he clearly isn’t happy. He doesn’t have the same kind of relatively straightforward, “I was lonely and now I have people to be with” arc that Peter and most of the others do, because he clearly does enjoy what he’s doing when he first shows up in the movies – he likes being a space pirate! he likes making money! In spite of that little voice telling him he fucked up and blew it, in spite of not really having anyone around him he can trust, he’s still a space pirate at the top of his game, with a ship of his own and a crew that he rules with an iron fist.
But I just can’t help thinking about the contrast between his first and last scenes in GotG2, and how well they bookend his entire arc in the movie. That first scene when he’s theoretically got it all and yet we see him moody and unfulfilled and isolated, lost in his own head – versus that final scene, when he’s lost everything he had at the start and knows he’s about to die, and yet he smiles at Peter and looks really, truly happy for perhaps the first time in the whole movie.
(Peter makes him smile like that at the end of the first movie, too, with the troll doll.)
gotg2 spoilers
So let’s get this straight, at the end of GOTG2 Peter has, in the space of (at most) a few days:
- met his father and put a lot of hope in him only to have him turn out to be evil
- learned his father killed his mother, the person he loved most in the world
- been physically tortured and mind-controlled by his father
- learned he once had thousands upon thousands of half-siblings, all of whom are dead
- seen his father crush his mother’s last gift to him just to spite him
- seen all his friends nearly die
- very possibly seen, via being hooked into Ego’s planet, millions of people across the galaxy being killed via Ego’s Expansion
- almost died (and was accepting of it)
- watched his adopted father, a person he loved despite their strange relationship, die painfully in the void of space to save him
how. is the poor man still walking around
A little Yondu fin theory because I can
When he loses his actual crest fin, the big prototype fin is the first one he has as a replacement. It doesn’t work perfectly and over the years its condition deteriorates. So he starts working on a replacement. It works better but it’s smaller, which he doesn’t really like, but it’s better than a defective fin. He keeps the old one in his drawer and forgets about it.
But when they escape after the mutiny, Rocket is able to not only rewire it and install it, but he actually fixes some of its previous issues and makes it better. The big fin isn’t the same as his natural crest, but it’s as close as he’s going to get. Dying with that fin is a strange but comforting honor. When they burn his body, he still wears it, and it burns with him.
But Rocket, who fixed up the arrow, managed to replicate the fin as well, and that’s what we see Kraglin wearing in the credits scene. I think eventually Krags might ask Rocket to find a way to permanently attach it to him, to honor Yondu.
Spoiler for GotG 2!
Headcanon that Kraglin and Peter actually keep up the habit of collecting little cute trinkets and arrange them on the control console for everyone to see. Whenever they dock on a planet, you can be sure that they bring back at least one new one.
The other Guardians, new and old ones, notice that, of course. A few, like Gamora and Rocket, can put two and two together and smile sadly. The others think it a bit weird, but no one dares to interrupt or ask, since both men seem so calm and peaceful when they place the trinkets there, smiling nostalgically at them.
It’s Groot who wants to add something on his own, since he feels that this is important, somehow. He finds the old Ravager badge he, uh, borrowed during the failed attempt at escaping, and places it next to the various trinkets. He doesn’t really understand why, but the crushing hug Peter gives him and the wobbly smile of Kraglin seem to indicate that they very much appreciate the gesture.
Gamora follows with a knife, the most beautiful carved one she owns. It should represent both sides of what she knows, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and it’s pretty much the most honest thing she could have given. (“I think he would have understood that”, she tells Peter later, and gets a smile for it.)
Drax still doesn’t understand what’s going on, but since everyone is in it, he doesn’t want to be left out, and adds a ring that once belonged to his late wife. This, he thinks, is a good place for it to stay. Peter assures him that this is more than he had to give, but Drax waves it away and reminds him that she would have wanted that, too.
Mantis is a bit out of her depth – there are various feelings and emotions clashing and wavering through the air here, many of which seem to be the exact opposite of each other – but she gets help from Groot. She catches a few flowers and lights the little tree produces in a glass jar and puts it on the console, feeling that she did the right thing when Peter and Kraglin both beam at it once they see it there.
Rocket’s trinket is eyed suspiciously (“This better not be a bomb again, Rocket”) but he just snarls at all of them and shushes them. He has scraped together a few bits and pieces and molten them into something that looks like a tiny arrow, music notes carved into the sides of it. (“It’s actually not a bomb? I’m impressed.” – “Will you shut it, Quill.”)
The collection grows and grows, miss-matching trinkets and little cute things added slowly. Some break over time – a space ship is not the best place for such things – but are replaced with others.
Sometimes, Peter sits cross-legged in front of the console, Zune in and music turned loud, and nobody interrupts him in his silent remembering. Sometimes, Kraglin seeks comfort there when the training with the arrow doesn’t go as planned.
Sometimes, all of them just look at it, remember, and smile.
It’s a good thing to remember a Dad by.
anybody else think it was weird to have such a long focus on the murder of the crew after the mutiny especially the very long and drawn out perspective of their lifeless bodies in space
I think it was probably to make it really hit home how horrible dying in space is, so it hurts more when it happens to Yondu too. (It worked.)
I think one of the reasons I like Yondu so much is because his redemption was done so well and I think one of the reasons it works is because he’s a character that could be redeemed. He also admits he messed up. He tells Rocket that he was ‘greedy and stupid’ when it came to delivering Ego’s children to him. Now a cold hearted asshole would have just turned Peter over and taken the money. The Ravagers had already exiled him so what more could he lose? But instead, he keeps Peter. Yondu even admits to Peter that he wasn’t the best father too.
The reason his redemption works so damn well is that he doesn’t think he deserves it and is fine with losing his life to save Peter. That makes a good character. That makes a redemption worthwhile.
Okay, but Yondu putting the space mask on Peter at the end of GotG2, all the while remembering how he’d come rushing to save Peter in the first movie, after Peter took off his mask to save Gamora and almost suffocated in space. He saved his son from dying in space once, he was damn well gonna do it again. -forlorn-kumquat
;-;
(But I wonder, if he saw Peter doing that to save a woman he barely knew and was proud, even though he couldn’t show it. If he actually learned from Peter without even realizing it.)