Sylvester Stallone's Guardians of the Galaxy 2 character revealed - and he has history with Yondu

Warning: spoilers ahead for Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Ever since it was announced that Guardians of the Galaxy 2 would feature a reunion of ‘80s action stars Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell, we’ve been wondering exactly what Stallone’s role would be. Well, the question has now been definitively answered, and it aligns with a rumor we heard a few days ago.

According to the official press notes for the movie, Stallone will play Stakar, one of the cutthroat Ravagers who has a history with Yondu (Michael Rooker). “Stakar had banished Yondu many years earlier for doing something wrong,” Stallone explains. “And he finally sees him almost twenty years later at this particular establishment called the Iron Lotus where all of the Ravagers go to blow off steam. And then we have a confrontation which is pretty intense and it’s kind of a father/son type of thing and now he’s going to have to pay the piper. His karma has come back ten-fold.”

But Stakar isn’t just any old Ravager. In the comics, he’s also Starhawk, a member of the Nova Corps - the interplanetary cops who encountered the Guardians in the first movie. Starhawk has super strength, speed, stamina, the power of flight, and the ability to transfer his consciousness into his infant self, effectively making him a time traveler who’s lived his life multiple times over. So is Stallone playing a good guy or a bad guy? We’ll have to wait to see the movie before that mystery is settled.

We know from a previous statement from writer/director James Gunn that Stakar/Starhawk is an important character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him pop up again in another Guardians movie a few years from now...or maybe he’ll even be called on to help take down Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War. After all, some major heroes are probably going to die in that movie, so they’ll need all the help they can get.

Directed by James Gunn and starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, and Dave Bautista, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 hits theaters on May 5, 2017.

Images: Lionsgate/Marvel