Yondu Udonta
There’s something special about franchise characters that already stand out from their brethren, and then reveal more of themselves when we least expect it. That is the case for Yondu Udonta, in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2. In 2014, he arrived in Guardians Of The Galaxy as a leader of Ravagers – a space pirate, seemingly villainous in nature. We learned that he ‘stole’ our hero – Peter Quill – from Earth when he was a child, and kept him as some kind of forced labour, raising him into a life of galactic crime.
Played by Michael Rooker, Yondu is a gruff, almost psychopathic man here, so when he reappears in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2., we expect him to cause more mayhem and destruction. But, it turns out we had him all wrong. It turns out – although the life he gave Peter was not ideal – it was better than him being found and killed by his biological father, Ego, as others were before him.
Suddenly, we have a whole new view of Yondu. Now, he’s a man wracked with guilt about having been hired by Ego to find his many children, and having delivered so many to their eventual deaths. He’s a man who’s long hidden the truth from Peter – allowing the younger man to blame him, and focus his rage in his direction, rather than reveal what a monster his real father is.
Finally, when Yondu sacrifices himself to save Peter – and comforts him while doing so by saying, “He might have been father, boy, but he wasn’t your Daddy” – the depth of Yondu’s quiet heroism is made abundantly clear. He broke Ravager rules to accept payment from Ego to find and deliver his children, and was horrified when he finally learned what he was doing to them. Then, he took action to save one – and he’d been saving him ever since.
But, Yondu is not a hero because he saved Peter Quill. He’s a hero because he made mistakes, took responsibility for them, and changed his ways accordingly.