Here’s A Wild ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Fan Theory: Is Tom Cruise Dead The Whole Time?

Top Gun: Maverick is now available to purchase on digital platforms like Amazon Prime, Vudu, and more, which means Top Gun superfans can watch, rewatch, pause, and rewind this long-awaited sequel to their hearts’ content. And with the ability to overanalyze movies comes the inevitable: fan theories!

Critics agree that one reason the new Top Gun movie works—and perhaps one reason why the film hit record pre-pandemic box office numbers—is that it’s a simple story that honors the emotional narrative of the first film. Tom Cruise’s character, Maverick, is sent back to the Top Gun school after 36 years, in order to train a group of new Navy pilot recruits for a dangerous mission. Pretty straightforward… right?

Maybe not. The Bulwark editor (and occasional Decider contributor) Sonny Bunch posited a theory in his Top Gun: Maverick review that would make the movie a lot less simple, and a lot more spiritual. (Spoiler warning from here forward!) It goes like this: In the film’s opening sequence, Maverick takes it upon himself to prove that man can beat machine. The Navy is threatening to shut down Maverick’s prototype jet in favor of funding drones, so Maverick goes rogue, pushes his plane to Mach-10 speed, and demonstrates that he’s faster than any robot plane. Put that in your Pentagon budget!

But Maverick doesn’t stop at Mach-10. Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, he pushes his plane faster, faster, faster—and the jet overheats and malfunctions. We see the plane explode in a long shot, and in the next scene, we see Maverick scorched and bruised, stumbling into a small town diner. Phew! He survived! Or did he?

According to this theory, Maverick did not, in fact, survive that crash when he pushed his plane beyond Mach-10. Everything that happens in the next hour and 45 minutes of the movie is an afterlife experience, in which Maverick makes peace with the greatest trauma of his life, aka losing his best friend Goose during a training exercise in the first Top Gun movie.

While I doubt this theory is what screenwriters Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and Christopher McQuarrie had in mind when they wrote the film, it is a more creative explanation for why Top Gun: Maverick hits on many of the same emotional beats as Top Gun. (As opposed to the movie merely following in the footsteps of the hybrid remake-reboot-sequel Hollywood trend set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens.) This is Maverick reliving his life, in a way, or maybe taking a quick trip to the Danger Purgatory Zone. He rekindles an old romance (albeit a new one to audiences, played by Jennifer Connelly), says goodbye to an old friend (Iceman, who gets one scene that incorporates Val Kilmer’s real-life illness), and, of course, returns to the Top Gun school where he finally overcomes his guilt over Goose’s death.

This happens via the relationship between Maverick and Goose’s son, Rooster (played by Miles Teller), who still blames Maverick for his dead dad. But maybe, if this theory is correct, Rooster doesn’t blame Maverick at all. Maybe it’s all self-blame; all in Maverick’s head.

Again, it’s highly unlikely this is what the filmmakers intended. But hey, it’s interesting to think about!