James Gunn’s lucky charm Michael Rooker has a habit of trolling Marvel Cinematic Universe fans, after he repeatedly posted images of himself on social media wearing Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame merchandise, despite the fact Yondu had been killed off in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
It’s a testament to how invested audiences are in both the Guardians series and the MCU as a whole that people were wiping away tears when Peter Quill’s surrogate father met his demise at the end of the movie, even though he was a grumpy blue alien with a penchant for whistling that had compared himself to Mary Poppins.
The good news for those experiencing Yondu withdrawals is that Rooker plays a sizeable role in today’s episode of Marvel’s What If…?, which substitutes Quill for Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa and imagines how the would-be king of Wakanda fares as the leader of his own intergalactic band of misfits.
What If…? has already been confirmed for a second season, and given that the premise is multiversal in nature the next batch of adventures could realistically rope in anyone from the MCU’s vast back catalogue, with Rooker revealing in a new interview that he wants an entire installment focused on Yondu.
“Well, I certainly hope it does. That would be a great ‘what if’. I would jump on that bandwagon right away. It is a wonderful little niche in the armor to open it up and see what happened, what could happen. What if we told more of Yondu’s story and the Ravagers? I bloody think the fans would go crazy over it. I think it’d be a blast for fans to get to experience that because you gave them a beautiful story and a window and now it can kind of be whatever you want it to be. We’ve got our fingers crossed. We want more!”
Rooker also said he’s down for a live-action Disney Plus prequel series, which isn’t surprising when the guy loves to work, as evidenced by the fact he’s got almost 130 credits to his name. Whether it happens or not, we’ll just have to wait and see, but Gunn has long since confirmed that there’s no resurrection for Yondu in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 so as not to lessen the emotional impact of his death.
