Gosling joins Star Wars Starfighter Obey your thirst. Discover how the Gosling-Levy pairing might reshape the genre of space opera when it arrives in 2027.
There is a strange buzz that fills the air when Ryan Gosling appears on set. It’s not the orchestrated buzz of a marketing strategy, it’s the quiet assurance of a performer who knows that film is as much about what you don’t say as what you do. When Gosling was officially announced to be joining Star Wars Starfighter with Shawn Levy at Star Wars Celebration Tokyo in April 2025, the news was more than a simple casting win for Lucasfilm. It was something far more fragile: a possible course correction for a franchise that’s been failing for focus for the better part of a decade.
The Rise of Skywalker ended the Skywalker Saga, and since then, Star Wars has felt less like one shared universe and the galaxy has become multiple tossed captains in the ship. But “The Mandalorian and Grogu” restored faith and The Book Boba Fett got things all mixed up, Andor demonstrated maturity and seriousness in Star Wars storytelling, and The Acolyte explained how far off that can fly.
Through it all, one question looms over Kathleen Kennedy’s leadership: what the hell is Star Wars Starfighter in 2027?
Now, enter the Gosling–Levy pair — not so much a studio double feature as two filmmakers connected by the same childhood dreams and creative vision, returning with something that actually feels personal once again.
Here we’re getting into speculation, Star Wars Starfighter focuses on Gosling as not a smuggler, not a Jedi, but a very real trader in an uncle outraged into protecting his Force-sensitive nephew from dark side hunters in a galaxy still recovering from Palpatine’s final death, in which Amy Adams is said to be the boy’s mother, and possibly a Jedi herself who gives her brother (Gosling) the son’s protection as she goes to meet the galactic threats elsewhere.
If this is the case and screenwriter Jonathan Tropper has been as characteristically tight-lipped as always then this setup is genius in its simplicity. For four decades, Star Wars has weighed fathers and sons, masters and apprentices, the burden of blood and destiny. An uncle-nephew relationship allows for a genuinely horizontal dynamic: chosen responsibility as opposed to inherited burden. Gosling wouldn’t be wrestling with the sins of his father—he’d be leaping into danger for love of his sister and her child.
This turns the whole hero’s journey on its head. Luke Skywalker became a legend because of who his father was. Gosling’s character, let’s call him Kael for the sake of our theory, would be a hero for who he chooses to be. That has a very modern ring to it, in a time when a found family often trumps blood ties.
There’s another theory made that mentioned by CBR that’s worthy of your attention, one which links Star Wars Starfighter to the wider weave of today’s Star Wars narrative.
Baylan Skoll references the Bokken Jedi in Ahsoka, Force users who trained outside of the Now I’m watching Ahsoka. They are survivors, self-made warriors who cobbled together knowledge from legends, ancient holocrons, and fragments of lore rather than being expert practitioners. Crude, authentic, and defined by loss rather than tradition.
But what if Baylan is one of them? A former student of Luke Skywalker’s temple who escaped Ben Solo’s massacre — someone who saw friends die, chose survival over heroism, and vanished rather than standing and fighting. That kind of background would explain everything about who he is now. Five years Post-Exegol, the galaxy doesn’t need another chosen one. It needs a broken man who relearns how “to be whole” by protecting someone else.
That would explain the “Star Wars Starfighter” titles even better than a simple aesthetic reason. He is flying a starfighter, literally, because he is on the run. Now action sequences become character beats — every evasive dive through an asteroid field isn’t just spectacle, it’s a man dodging his past until he can no longer. The ship becomes a metaphor: run-down, cobbled together, but still capable of amazing things when properly captained.
Shawn Levy, the director of the new Star Wars movie is really important to this equation. Levy is not a visionary auteur in the conventional sense. He’s not Denis Villeneuve drawing with shadows and silence, or Christopher Nolan stretching time like taffy.
Levy’s talent is subtler, and perhaps more challenging: He makes tentpole movies feel intimate. Free Guy shouldn’t have worked as a comedy about an NPC gaining self-awareness in a video game that sounds like algorithmic nightmare fuel. And yet Levy injected it with such happy earnestness that even Ryan Reynolds’ blue-shirted everyman seemed worth rooting for.
Then there was Deadpool & Wolverine, and that could’ve been a cynical IP soup concoction. But Levy approached Wolverine’s mourning with sincere respect all the while delivering the R-rated mayhem fans desired. He understands that the most successful blockbusters function on two or three different frequencies simultaneously: the visual, emotional and, in the case of the sense of irreverent humor.
For Star Wars Starfighter, this approach is just right - it’s fun without feeling like a drag and you get a sense of accomplishment for each stage you complete. The sequel series always felt embarrassed to be Star Wars, constantly trying to upend expectations until there were none left to upend.
Levy is not a subversion, he is an embrace. He’ll give us the trench run homage, the cantina scene, the binary sunset moment – he’ll give us all of those things, but he’ll earn them through character work rather than nostalgia triggers.
Star Wars Starfighter movie appearance five years after The Rise of Skywalker is something that builds hope to open up interesting story possibilities while closing others.
This is a galaxy being rebuilt. The New Republic that was decapitated by the destruction of Hosnian Prime that the First Order killed is either in the process of rebuilding or has fractured into various regional powers. The First Order’s remnants haven’t simply vanished but they’ve likely sprouted as warlords, marauders, or desperate holdouts.
And the Jedi? Rey is probably off training her first students somewhere, but the Force-sensitive populace hasn’t suddenly exploded in size. If anything, parents are likely keeping their children’s talents under wraps, taking heed of how the last regime treated “Force-wielding terrorists.
As IGN mentioned, This adds poignancy to Gosling’s role as the overprotective uncle. He’s not just running from dark side hunters, he’s trying to navigate a hideous bureaucratic system in which signing up a Force-sensitive kid for school could very well be handing him or her over to a government that wants to stop another Palpatine. The film might delve into the paranoia of the post-war generation, the way its trauma reverberated through organizations even after it won.
There’s also the prospect of legacy characters turning up that don’t overwhelm the story. Daisy Ridley’s Rey makes a cameo not as a savior, but as a distant hope, a legend that Kael doesn’t believe in until she sees for herself. The Starfighter vs. the sequel trilogy, however, would be scale: Rey is not the main character in this one, She’s not in this world, She’s is in another dimension, a parallel story.
What interesting is about the path Ryan Gosling’s career has taken. He’s also one of the few actors to flex his star power between indie bona fides (The Nice Guys, Blade Runner 2049, First Man) and blockbuster draw (Barbie, La La Land) without ever really feeling like he’s slumming in either realm. He has never led a franchise this large, this culturally laden.
There’s danger here. Star Wars has chewed up bright futures before, just look at the Solo cast, or the skilled actors buried beneath sequel trilogy exposition. But there’s also an unprecedented opportunity. If Starfighter works, Gosling doesn’t just get one big movie, he gets ownership of a new corner of the galaxy.
Gosling is the right age for this at 46 as he can convey gravitas, yet be around for multiple films, and is savvy enough to know when to fight for creative input.
But more than that, he adds an element of the audience that doesn’t usually think about Star Wars. The Barbie crowd, the Drive lovers, the Oscar-season crowd who tip it to his nominations, they will come to this galaxy, enlarging the base beyond the faithful who gauge midi-chlorian counts on Reddit.
In January 2026, screenwriter Jonathan Tropper made a comment that should have attracted more attention:
“Star Wars Starfighter is truly standalone, there are no secret cameos from legacy characters. Interview In a day and age where all blockbusters are secretly backdoor pilots for ten other projects, this is radical.”
What that means is the film has to be able to stand on its own. You don’t just play John Williams’ Force Theme to make you cry, you have to earn it through new themes. It can’t just take the outline of Darth Vader to create menace — it must introduce new villains (Matt Smith and Mia Goth, according to casting rumours) that feel as iconic. This is Lucasfilm betting on storytelling over brand recognition, and that confidence is contagious.
It’s not trying to sound legendary — it’s practical, almost humble. A name that can function as a job, a vehicle, and just a way to get around, instead of a symbol burdened with the weight of mythology. It implies a movie about people at work—hazardous, urgent work rather than destiny congealing in the veins.
If Star Wars Starfighter is successful as early executive reactions indicate that it could rewrite the Star Wars rule book entirely. No more trilogies in the works before the first film debut. No more mystery boxes that go nowhere. Just filmmakers with passion projects, actors with real chemistry, and stories that just happen to take place in space.
For Ryan Gosling, success means showing that he can bear the impossible load of fan expectations and still come out on the other side as a fully realised artist. For Shawn Levy, it’s proof that his particular brand of warm-hearted blockbuster filmmaking can survive in the most closely parsed sandbox in cinema. What they really want is for the original 1977 Star Wars to feel real again — not because of twists or surprises or retcons, but because that film had heart. And it made people feel, and that’s what we haven’t had.
Speculation, set visits and Star Wars Starfighter trailer dissections over the past 18 months have been propelled by that one hope that Star Wars will discover its soul again. Release was then scheduled for May 28, 2027, for the new film. But in years now, that excitement really does feel deserved rather than manufactured. Because somewhere in a London editing suite, Ryan Gosling is learning to fly, and the galaxy is at last becoming large enough for new stories once again.
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The world of Game of Thrones is getting bigger with The Mad King prequel. Discover young Ned Stark, Harrenhal tourney and what HBO has in mind for a new show.
Since the original Game of Thrones series ended, HBO has painstakingly adapted George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice universe into a sprawling, multigenerational television empire. With House of the Dragon riding its breakout success, the highly-anticipated A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and the confirmed Aegon’s Conquest feature film, this franchise has never had more on its plate. And yet amid the dragons and the Targaryen civil wars and the hedge knights, the fandom’s heart often wanders back, nostalgically, to the ice and snow of the courtyards of Winterfell and the man who held the entire saga together, the heart of it all: Lord Eddard Ned Stark.
Today, however, the Game of Thrones world was once again ignited by news of a new prequel project titled Game of Thrones: The Mad King. Opening as a play in the summer of 2026 at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the story is racing back to the infamous Tourney at Harrenhal — a time when Ned Stark was nothing more than a young man on the cusp of a bigger, far more perilous world. With HBO allegedly considering bringing this stage production to TV, the question of the day quickly became: Who will wear the direwolf on their chest?
You need to understand the character’s colossal influence behind the excitement of Ned Stark’s comeback in the new movie of Game of Thrones. In 2011, when the series first aired, Sean Bean played an honourable lord and moral beacon of the show who is betrayed by political treachery and ethical uncertainty.
Ned Stark was the ultimate undercutting the typical fantasy protagonist. He was a good man and a decent man who’s played by the rules until he learns that in King’s Landing, playing by the rules means getting your head mounted on a spike.
Sean Bean’s portrayal was the foundation upon which the whole North was built in terms of tone and sound. At the pilot’s read-through, it was Bean who instinctively used his native Yorkshire accent. The producers loved it so much, they declared it the official dialect of the North and every actor playing a Stark — from Kit Harington to Maisie Williams, had to learn Bean’s cadence.
Ned Stark hovering its shadow in the entire show for the last season, though he was dead in the season 1 episode 9. After his death, his children’s paths were totally different and defined by their father’s teaching.
For years, fans wondered about the ghosts of his past, namely his role in Robert’s Rebellion and the question of Jon Snow’s parentage. This deep-seated fascination led to the character’s first “return” to the screen, not via resurrection, but through the mystical sight of the Three-Eyed Raven.
Game of Thrones Season 6 revealed the biggest secret of Robert’s Rebellion through Bran Stark’s power of vision which took back the audience. There, we saw a young Ned Stark returning from war, arriving at the Tower of Joy in Dorne.
Following Sean Bean’s trail was no easy task, but a little-known actor by the name of Robert Aramayo stepped into the role with rather impressive accuracy. Aramayo didn’t simply imitate Bean’s Yorkshire accent, he embodied the simmering grief, the weight of responsibility and relentless battle skill of a young lord cast into a war he never sought.
Aramayo’s sequence beyond the Tower of Joy, dueling with the legendary Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning is among the most iconic sword fights ever captured on television. Yet it was the restrained moments that solidified his performance. The scale of the destruction evident in Aramayo’s eyes as he at last comes face to face with his dying sister, Lyanna Stark, and gives the fateful pledge to hide her infant son, Jon Snow, reshaped the whole series for him emotionally.
Aramayo is currently playing a high-profile role of elf Elrond in the Lord of the RIngs: The Rings of Power after he finished his successful moment that propelled him to the top tier of fantasy television. But he never left Westeros and never will be.
Return of Ned Stark talk has been reignited by George R.R. Martin’s latest and most ambitious expansion: the stage. Game of Thrones: The Mad King will run from 20 July – 5 Sept 2026 at the historic Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. 
Written by the award-winning playwright Duncan Macmillan and directed by Dominic Cooke, the production delves into one of the greatest and most romanticised events in Westeros history — The Great Tourney at Harrenhal. The play is set some 15 years before the original TV series and has a very strong “star-crossed lovers” vibe.
Prince Rhaegar Targaryen after winning the joust, he placed a crown of blue roses in Lyanna Stark’s lap who was already promised to Robert Baratheon and ignored his own wife. That’s where the Robert’s Rebellion started the Tourney at Harrenhal.
The play promises to feature younger versions of beloved characters, including:
Eddard “Ned” Stark: The head of the Stark family and the second son. A naturally serene and reserved man, this is a man who has watched the politics of the realm for decades.
Robert Baratheon: The powerful Stormlord and warrior hailed from his strength of war hammer. He is a crude but good-natured Ned Starks’ best friend.
Jaime Lannister: A budding yet extremely talented and arrogant knight. He is loyal to his family, and soon to be Kingsguard, which path that will shape his destiny.
Varys: A wily and secretive master of spies, newly come to the court. It is also very well informed on the state of the realm, and its information it puts to good use, and frequently it knows more than it reveals.
Director Dominic Cooke has hinted that although the medium is theatre, it wouldn’t shy away from the trademark brutality of the franchise, with a “theatrical way” of showing violent fight sequences.
With HBO’s aggressive expansion plan, insiders expect The Mad King to become the backdoor pilot for a TV adaptation of Robert’s Rebellion. Just like we’ve seen Stranger Things: The First Shadow similar approach by Netflix. If HBO orders a “Robert’s Rebellion” limited series, the first hurdle will be casting.
With chatter of a possible Harrenhal or Robert’s Rebellion series spinning off, ScreenRant got the chance to talk with Robert Aramayo on the press tour for his new film. Of course, he was asked if he might wear the Stark armor again.
Could he return as Ned Stark if HBO turns The Mad King into a show?
Aramayo’s reply was one of profound respect for the franchise and a realistic view of the passage of time.
“Wow! It’s never been asked before, I can say that was my amazing part of life. I loved the character and playing it great. And I was so excited to work in Game of Thrones. Since it was one of my first roles. I have great memories of it, even though it was a long time ago.”
He did appreciate the role in his statement and mentioned the attachment to the character but he cleared the smoke by saying he’s ready for a new gig. Aramayo also admitted to how much he’s changed since he shot those Season 6 flashbacks almost ten years ago.
There is a very good logistical reason for his hesitation. In the flashbacks, Aramayo plays Ned Stark in his 20s at the end of Robert’s Rebellion. The Mad King and the Tourney at Harrenhal occur before the war starts, so the character would need to be younger, technically.
Since Aramayo is now a good few years past the time when he portrayed the younger Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, moving back even further in the timeline would be a step too far, even with Hollywood’s wonder de-aging tech.
There is a difficult time phase with the status of Aramayo in the Game of Thrones universe which is against the static timelines of George R.R. Martin’s lore.
Interestingly, this is not the first time a Ned Stark actor weighs on a potential return. Years ago,
Larry King asked Sean Bean if he would ever return to Westeros. Bean famously quipped that he would love to come back for flashbacks, joking that he could just “have a shave, make myself look a bit younger.”
However, Bean later told The Hollywood Reporter that returning to the role in a prequel would be tricky because—
“They’re going backwards, I’d be younger. Now, we all look a little bit older.”
| Production Era | Actor | Storyline Focus | Character Age |
| Game of Thrones (Season 1) | Sean Bean | The Hand of the King | Mid 40s |
| Game of Thrones (Season 6) | Robert Aramayo | End of Robert’s Rebellion | Early 20s |
| Game of Thrones (Season 6) | Sebastian Croft | Childhood at Winterfell | Early Teens |
| The Mad King (2026 Play) | To Be Announced | Tourney at Harrenhal | Late Teens / Early 20s |
If HBO does bring The Mad King to the series, they’ll no doubt need to cast a new actor (most likely a fresh face) as the teenage Lord of Winterfell. Aramayo has simply outgrown the time.
Also, there is the “Elrond Factor.”
Aramayo is currently committed to a multi-year deal with Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. With Season 3 recently finishing production and set to release in late 2026, and the show already being confirmed for a 5-season run, Aramayo is immensely busy.
As an immortal elf, his character is almost certainly going to survive the show, so putting together a giant, muddy medieval war show for a rival network is almost inconceivable.
If Aramayo doesn’t return, his remarks are a bittersweet nod to how sprawling the Game of Thrones TV universe has become. Fantasy television in 2026 (yes, we’re this far into the future in our timeline, dear readers) bears almost no resemblance to when Sean Bean first warned us that “Winter is Coming.”
As of now, HBO’s schedule is filled with Westerosi content:
House of the Dragon: Focusing on the House of Targaryen, especially Dance of the Dragons that brought about the end because of the politics and greed in the family.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Specifically focusing on Ser Duncan the Tall and his young squire, Egg adventures and miserable life, set in the early years.
Aegon’s Conquest: The newly announced Warner Bros. feature written by Beau Willimon, adapting the original Targaryen invasion of Westeros for the big screen in 2027.
It is still trying to find its north star as the series obsessives will tell you: a show only about Robert’s Rebellion continues to elude them. It is the connective tissue between the high-fantasy dragon battles of the past and the gritty political maneuvering of the original show.
While George R.R. Martin has commented that he thought a Robert’s Rebellion series was unnecessary as the original books and series show all of its secrets, the development of The Mad King stage play indicates a slight softening of that stance.
By staging the Tourney at Harrenhal, Martin is developing new ways to examine the lore without interfering with the established television canon. Should a television adaptation materialize, it will be the closest the timeline has come to the events of Game of Thrones Season 1.
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Robert Aramayo’s gentle but firm confirmation that he’s hung up his Westerosi cloak is a tough pill to swallow for those who were fans of his young lord. He got lucky, but he also captured lightning in a bottle as he embodied Sean Bean’s baseline performance while bringing a youthful desperation to the pivotal moments in the history of the Stark family.
With Game of Thrones: The Mad King set to debut in the UK this summer, a new actor will no doubt be stepping into the grey and white raiment of House Stark. They’re going to have to play a man who doesn’t yet know what tragedies lie waiting for him in the south.
While Aramayo is swapping the snows of the North for the golden leaves of Lindon, his place in the Game of Thrones mythology remains firmly established. The actors may grow old, the spinoffs may proliferate, and the mediums may shift from the television screen to the theatrical stage, but one truth in Westeros is unchanging: Ned Stark’s legacy is, and always will be, the beating heart of A Song of Ice and Fire.
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performance, and significance.
For years, podracing in Star Wars belonged to Anakin Skywalker. The Boonta Eve Classic. The twin-engine blur of the Phantom Menace opening act. That was the lore. Then, in 2026, Marvel Comics quietly rewrote it. Sith assassin, Darth Maul Podracer reveals but never so much as glanced at a podracer onscreen — turns out to have his own. And his own history with the sport that goes back further than anyone expected.
This is the Star Wars Darth Maul Podracer explained breakdown: what’s actually confirmed in canon, what it means for the Maul-versus-Anakin rivalry, and where the speculation about specs and performance is coming from.
Yes, but not in any movie or show. One question must pop up in your mind right now, Did Darth Maul have a podracer in Star Wars media before 2026? No, the character had zero on-screen podracing presence across The Phantom Menace, The Clone Wars, Rebels, or Solo.
Star Wars: Shadow of Maul #4, from writer Benjamin Percy with art by Madibek Musabekov and Luis Guerrero, sends Maul to the planet Janix to compete in a brutal underground race called the Star Gauntlet. That’s the official, on-the-page introduction of Maul as a podracer and it’s the first time the character’s racing background has been treated as canon rather than trivia.
See Full Detail: Why Star Wars Needed an Ahsoka Tano Replacement Season 2
This isn’t a brand-new idea but came from a 27-year-old Easter egg getting promoted to canon. Back in 1999, the tie-in video game Star Wars Episode I: Racer included Maul as a secret unlockable racer — a bonus character buried in a kids’ racing game, never explained, never referenced again.
For over two decades, that detail sat in Star Wars trivia threads as a curiosity nobody expected to matter. Shadow of Maul #4 changes that. It takes the joke and makes it lore. The Darth Maul Podracer’s new Star Wars reveal isn’t introducing a new concept — it’s canonizing an old one, the same way Star Wars has done with other Legends-era games and EU details over the past several years.
On the design itself, here’s what’s actually been shown on the page:
That’s the complete list of confirmed visual and narrative details as of this writing. No top speed has been published. No engine class, manufacturer, or technical readout has been released. Comics rarely come with spec sheets and nothing here is an exception.
It is not confirmed by Marvel or Lucasfilm, just speculation circulating on the internet. Once the single-engine black design went public, fans immediately started reverse-engineering what it might mean mechanically, drawing on patterns from existing podracer lore:
The comparison practically writes itself, and it’s the most useful manner for understanding why this reveal landed the way it did.
| Detail | Anakin Skywalker’s Podracer | Darth Maul’s Podracer |
| Engine configuration | Twin-engine | Single-engine |
| Design language | Custom-built, scrappy, Tatooine junkyard aesthetic | Sleek, black, modeled on the Sith Infiltrator |
| Canon source | Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (film, 1999) | Star Wars: Shadow of Maul #4 (comic, 2026) |
| Narrative role | Proof of destiny — sets up his future as a pilot and Jedi | Background flex — a secondary venture, not his main story |
| Confirmed specs | Established in supplementary guidebooks over the years | None published yet |
The thematic contrast matters more than the technical one. Anakin’s podracing was destiny — the Boonta Eve win foreshadowed the pilot he’d become. Maul’s podracing is something else entirely: a side venture for a character who treats most things, including a deadly race, as beneath his real ambitions. Same sport, almost opposite narrative function.
See Full Detail: Star Wars ‘Maul: Shadow Lord’ Timeline: Where Do These Episodes Fit in the Star Wars Canon?
Podracing has been creeping back into the mainstream Star Wars conversation for a different reason: Star Wars: Galactic Racer, a new podracing video game from developer Fuse Games and publisher Secret Mode, had its first reveal earlier in 2026, set in the Outer Rim. A comic canonizing Maul’s racing past lands right as the franchise is clearly trying to rebuild interest in podracing as a format — not just nostalgia, an active push.
This has nothing to do with the unrelated Disney+ animated series Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, which premiered in April 2026. Same character, completely different project, different medium, different story. Conflating the two is a common mistake in early coverage of this reveal, and it’s worth avoiding if you’re trying to actually understand the timeline.
If you came here to understand Star Wars Darth Maul Podracer Reveal for technical readout — top speed, engine class, manufacturer specs that don’t exist yet, and anyone claiming otherwise is filling gaps Marvel hasn’t filled. What does exist is a genuinely clever piece of lore work: an old video game joke turned into real canon, a new visual identity tying Maul’s ship to his most iconic vehicle, and a fresh angle on a rivalry that’s been dormant since 1999. Whether Lucasfilm expands this with actual specs in a future guidebook is the open question worth watching.
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