While he's still top-billed in D3: The Mighty Ducks, here's why Emilio Estevez's role as Couch Gordon is essentially a cameo. While he might be well known for The Mighty Ducks franchise, Emilio Estevez has had an incredibly varied career. He first rose to fame as a member of the so-called "Brat Pack," a group of young actors that included the likes of Demi Moore and Rob Lowe. Estevez's work in movies like The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo's Fire helped make him a leading man in the late '80s, and he went on to front more hits like Young Guns and its sequel Blaze Of Glory.
Emilio Estevez also fronted The Mighty Ducks as the character of Gordon Bombay, an attorney sentenced to community service. He's forced to coach a youth hockey team, but after he bonds with this group of misfits, he helps lead them to glory. The 1990s saw Estevez make a transition from movie star to director because while The Mighty Ducks and its follow-ups were successes, many of his other films like future cult favorite Judgment Night and Freejack were box-office disappointments.
While Emilio Estevez's Coach Gordon is featured front and center on the poster for 1996's D3: The Mighty Ducks, the character barely appears in the sequel. Instead, the team gets a new coach in the form of Ted Orion (Jeffrey Nordling), but Gordon does reappear a couple of times throughout the story. The reason the top-billed Estevez isn't didn't make much of a return in The Mighty Ducks 3 is that he was directing The War At Home, a passion project the actor had been trying to get off the ground for years.
The War At Home sees Estevez play a Vietnam vet suffering from PTSD who has trouble re-adjusting to small-town life. Kathy Bates plays the mother of Estevez's character, while his real-life father Martin Sheen played his dad. Estevez cut a deal with Disney for D3: The Mighty Ducks; he would play a small role in exchange for the studio financing The War At Home. This meant he got no fee for his appearance in The Mighty Ducks' third outing, but the studio provided The War At Home's entire $3 million budget instead.
Estevez's work on The War At Home also meant the actor could only shoot for about a week on D3: The Mighty Ducks, which is why his appearances are so fleeting. Sadly, the third movie is often considered the worst in The Mighty Ducks saga and would have benefitted from a bigger role from Estevez. That said, he later returned as the lead for Disney+ series The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. He's also pegged to return as Billy The Kid for western sequel Young Guns 3.