While Meg Ryan's character may have been cut from Top Gun: Maverick because the actor wasn’t interested in reprising her Top Gun role, the sequel’s plot would have always meant that Rooster's mother Carole Bradshaw was better off dead. It is never easy to follow up a successful movie with an ever better sequel, but it is almost impossible to pull off this feat when over three decades have elapsed since the original movie’s release. Nonetheless, that is exactly what director Joseph Kosinski and star Tom Cruise managed to do with the long-awaited Top Gun sequel Top Gun: Maverick, in no small part due to the movie's heartfelt and engaging story.
Despite the massive 36-year wait between franchise installments, Top Gun: Maverick turned out to be all that Top Gun viewers could have wanted from the much-delayed sequel. As legendary director Quentin Tarantino noted, Top Gun: Maverick was a well-crafted thrill ride that felt like it came from the original Top Gun’s late helmer, action cinema legend Tony Scott. Part of what made this achievement possible was the tight plotting of Top Gun: Maverick.
Although Top Gun: Maverick brought back franchise fan favorites like Iceman, the sequel didn’t dwell on returning Top Gun characters for nostalgia’s sake alone. Iceman played a pivotal role in the plot, as did Top Gun: Maverick’s franchise newcomer Rooster. Played by Miles Teller, Rooster was the hot-headed son of Goose, Maverick’s co-pilot who died as a result of Iceman and Maverick’s reckless competitiveness in the original Top Gun. While Goose’s wife and Rooster’s mom Carole Bradshaw was killed off due to her actor, Meg Ryan, essentially retiring from the movie industry, this decision was what was best for Top Gun: Maverick’s story regardless of her availability. Kosinski’s vision for a Top Gun sequel had to make Maverick the only thing standing between Rooster and a repeat of his father’s tragic fate, something that Carole’s fate would always have complicated.
Why Top Gun: Maverick Killed Off Carole Bradshaw
Top Gun: Maverick explained that Carole died while Rooster was still relatively young, but not before the sequel could clarify that she didn’t approve of her son’s future career plans. Before she died, Top Gun: Maverick viewers are told that Ryan’s character initially blocked her son’s application to the Navy to avoid him falling victim to the same fate as his father. This left Maverick as the only line of defense stopping Rooster from recreating his father’s untimely death, which means that Carole would always have been a spanner in the works in story terms if the character had not been killed off.
Like Hangman’s Top Gun: Maverick rescue, Carole’s absence from the sequel is the sort of storytelling decision that would always have been necessary even if it weren’t for Ryan’s career choices. Ryan regularly starred in both movie and television roles until 2015, when she made her directorial debut with Ithaca. Since then, the star has been enjoying some time away from the movie industry, meaning she was not likely to reprise her role in the Top Gun sequel. Ultimately, however, Top Gun: Maverick always needed to write out Carole one way or another, and the Top Gun sequel was arguably helped by the actor’s decision to move away from filmmaking in recent years.