While Top Gun: Maverick’s callsigns are all relevant to their characters, Monica Barbaro’s moniker Phoenix proves just how carefully the sequel foreshadowed its twist. Director Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick pitch was a fully formed take on the sequel that included many of the major set pieces and the backbone of Rooster and Maverick’s conflict. As early as 2013, Kosinski had a clear idea of how he wanted to handle the plot of Top Gun: Maverick and the director (along with Top Gun: Maverick’s screenwriters) planned every detail of the movie to a tee.
This dedication can be seen in the callsigns of Top Gun: Maverick's recruits. Most obviously, Miles Teller’s Rooster is named after his late father, Goose, who was once Maverick’s co-pilot. Meanwhile, Glen Powell’s ruthless Hangman is so named because he is more than willing to leave his colleagues hanging if it will save his skin (which secretly sets up Hangman’s unexpected Top Gun: Maverick redemption). However, the smartest callsign callback is reserved for Monica Barbara’s character Natasha Trace. Her callsign "Phoenix" proves prescient when Trace survives a bird strike during a practice run, ejecting from the ashes of her smoldering plane and surviving to face the movie’s main mission. This makes the callsign more than a cool nickname and actually a clever bit of narrative foreshadowing.
Who Is Top Gun 2’s Phoenix?
Phoenix is an exceptional pilot who is recruited alongside Hangman and Rooster early in Top Gun: Maverick’s story. Like the rest of the recruits who Maverick approved for the top-secret mission, she was quickly “killed” by Maverick during their first practice run, and she suffered through a grueling push-up-based punishment as a result. Later, during the training period, Phoenix and her co-pilot Bob suffered a serious accident when a bird strike led to a left engine fire. Phoenix extinguished the fire but still needed to eject, an incident that (alongside Maverick’s risky test run) helped convince the Navy’s top brass that Maverick himself needed to lead the mission due to its threat level.
How Phoenix Rises From The Ashes In Top Gun: Maverick
Phoenix literally lived up to her callsign when she and Bob’s plane suffered a bird strike during a test mission. The pair managed to extinguish the left engine fire but their engine failed to restart, forcing the duo to eject from the plane. Both survived and still made it to the mission itself, where their roles went off without a hitch. Thus, Phoenix rose from the ashes of her burning, broken plane, escaped a near-death experience, and still flew high with the rest of Maverick’s selected crew in the finale of Top Gun: Maverick.
While all of Top Gun: Maverick’s new callsigns have specific meanings, Phoenix’s moniker might be the cleverest bit of foreshadowing included in the long-awaited sequel. Eagle-eyed viewers could have anticipated Phoenix’s fiery fate and her unlikely survival by paying attention to her callsign, proving that Top Gun: Maverick’s storyline was planned out down to incidental details. Like her co-pilot Bob, Natasha Trace is not one of the most fleshed-out supporting characters in Top Gun: Maverick, but the sequel still affords her a cleverly foreshadowed arc in her limited screen time. Subsequent Top Gun: Maverick sequels could give Phoenix more screen time, but the character’s callsign ensures she already has a stellar story.