I just noticed Yondu’s little sob/laugh of relief when the space suit covers peter. (Just after the light from the space suit lights his face up)
I was so busy focussing on Peter and his whisper of “What?” that I never thought to look at Yondu until now.
AAAAAAAA
I guess it was certain death down below, but up to that point he wasn’t 100% sure if his plan would work or if he’d just doomed them both to die together in outer space instead of blowing up along with the planet.
I wanna save Quill so I can prove I’m better than him! I can lord this over him forever… What are you laughing at me for?
… I feel like Yondu didn’t save only Peter in this movie, but also Rocket.
Everything Yondu tells Rocket here is something he himself had to learn over years, painfully, and his final lesson had been the mutiny that almost broke his spirit, had it not been for his one purpose – saving Peter.
And because he knows he probably won’t be around to do it later, because he knows this is a suicide mission, he has to speed up the lessons for Rocket and drill all of this (^^^^) into him as fast and resolutely as he can. Rocket doesn’t get years, he gets minutes, and all Yondu can do is hope that it will work and that Peter, Kraglin, Groot, all those who accepted him as well as Rocket, will later be around to help Rocket to learn and internalize these lessons.
(Aka Yondu just adopted Rocket, too. Space Dad for all.)
FUN FACT OF THE DAY: if the MCU wiki is anything to go by, exiled Ravagers are denied entrance into the Ravager afterlife as well
So when Yondu gave Peter the last spacesuit he had no idea where he was going after that, or if it would be a welcoming place, or anything at all.
I think this was actually made fairly explicit in the movie. I always got that impression from Stakar’s comments about “we’re not going to do the colors for you” – it’s not merely “we won’t have a funeral when you die”, it’s the Ravager equivalent of “you’re not getting Last Rites”. And that’s one reason why Stakar’s so broken up about it; it’s not just being severed from Yondu in life, but in eternity as well.
And so, yeah, that’s totally my takeaway from the sacrifice scene: he died with no idea what was going to happen to him after death, but in the general expectation that it wouldn’t be pleasant (if it wasn’t just oblivion). And he went into that with his eyes wide open (er, literally, I guess, at the end), knowing what was going to happen to him on all levels – he knows he’s going to die, and he knows he’s given up his chance at the Ravager afterlife – and he goes and does it anyway.
I was going to reblog this meta as it was because it’s perfect and sad!!! but it’s occurred to me how actually come to think of the acting choices make it quite clear as well, once you know what you’re looking for
Like Yondu’s expression of utter terror once he’s looking away from Peter:
And Kraglin at the end. At first I thought he was just really happy to see that the Ravagers had turned up to honour their old friend-turned enemy after all, but on my secondthirdfourth infinitith viewing I realized, that’s the look of someone who’s just realized they might be reunited with someone they loved in an afterlife after all-
