Rewatching the first movie is a whole new experience after watching the second, and I ended up having approximately 11 billion feels about that scene where Yondu threatens to kill Peter after the Ravagers pick him out of space. There’s SO much nuance to it, so many things I didn’t notice the first time around.
The thing is, it’s not an empty threat. Being capable of loving someone doesn’t automatically make you a good person, and they are space pirates, after all. Peter genuinely did double-cross him and rip off the Ravagers. The crew already thinks he’s soft on Peter, and he told them to their faces that he was going to kill Peter when he caught him. And we’ve seen in the second movie that he has genuine reason to worry about how the crew might react if he doesn’t. We saw what his crew did the minute they caught a hint of weakness. This is the problem with leading a bunch of mad-dog killers.
From Yondu’s point of view, the little shit hasn’t left him much of a choice.
LOOK AT HIS FACE, THOUGH.
There’s a recent interview with James Gunn in which he says that the Peter-Yondu relationship in the second movie is set up in the first movie (people ask him if he introduced it in the second movie, and he says no, it’s all there in the first movie if you look for it) and this scene is one of the scenes where it really shows. I had to gif Yondu’s expressions in detail because there’s just so much there.
The way he turns his back so he doesn’t have to watch, because he can’t kill Peter while he’s looking at him.
Clenching his jaw and bracing himself and that thousand-yard stare in the first gif as he prepares to whistle Peter’s death.
(the way he tells himself he’ll get over it but he knows he won’t)
And then his reaction when Peter makes a last-minute deal: that initial flash of a smile, that instant when he visibly starts to crumple in relief.
Getting himself under control, folding back the real smile under his game-face pirate grin before he turns around.
No way he wasn’t praying to gods he doesn’t believe in that the little (beloved) trickster smartass was going to give him an opening Yondu could wedge a deal into.
No way he wasn’t trusting, on some level, that Peter was going to find a way out of this, like he always does. Give me an out here, Quill.
It’s a 2-second scene with a whole world of character development in it.
Just like the way Peter calls Yondu to come get him, knowing Yondu might kill him, but also knowing (trusting) that Yondu is going to drop everything and jump to his coordinates. Trusting that the 30 seconds he has to live from the time he jumps out of his pod into deep space will be enough time for Yondu to get there and save him. And what comes after that might be brutal, but he jumps out of that pod trusting, on some level, that Yondu’s going to catch him.
