WARNING: This article contains full spoilers for Top Gun: Maverick

Top Gun Maverick has launched into cinemas and is slowly but surely becoming one of the most successful movies of the year. At the time of writing, Tom Cruise‘s latest high-octane adventure has earned almost $300 million at the box office.

And, although the movie brought back some notable people in Maverick’s life, the film may have just been giving the pilot a vision of his perfect life as he died in the air.

A new theory has cropped up online that points to the opening moments of Top Gun Maverick.

Viewers were reunited with Maverick as was told that his project, Darkstar, was about to be defunded.

The idea for the program was to send a plane hurtling at Mach 10 speed – something that had never been done before.

But after learning he was about to be shut down, Maverick decided to take matters into his own hands. He took one final death-defying try at hitting Mach 10.

And, against all odds, he did it.

In a glorious final display, Maverick’s plane went beyond the speed – but it did not end well. The plane exploded into hundreds of pieces, leaving the fate of Maverick a mystery.

But before long, viewers saw him stumbling into a nearby diner, asking for a glass of water, covered in dust but otherwise completely safe.

This is, of course, completely unrealistic. But what followed was a perfect journey for Cruise’s iconic character.

Shortly after the crash, he was enlisted by his former nemesis, Iceman, to train a new batch of recruits – a job only he can do.

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In the original 1986 Top Gun, Maverick lost his best friend, Goose, in a tragic flying accident. The film also showed that he had a young son, Bradley, who grew up to be Miles Teller’s Rooster in Top Gun Maverick.

Maverick obviously had a lot of guilt and loathing about the event that killed his best friend. And the new movie allowed Maverick the chance to settle those issues with both himself and Rooster, decades after his father’s death.

So, with Top Gun Maverick acting as a final hurrah for Cruise’s character, it makes sense that he would make peace with all of the important people from his life. (Via Vulture)

But this is also a trope used within cinema. When a character dies they often go through a final vision of their life, or how they would have liked to end their life. In Maverick’s case, it would have been to quell the hatred between him and Goose, fall in love forever, and close the book on his rivalry with Iceman – all while being the greatest pilot on the planet at the same time.

Could this mean Maverick was actually some sort of final-breath death dream?

Top Gun Maverick is in cinemas now.

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