Summary
Goose plays the piano at a bar, his son sitting on top of it. His wife, Carole, sits at a table with Maverick and Charlotte, embarrassed of Goose, but laughing at his antics. Carole embarrasses Maverick by talking about all of the women he’s slept with, and he eyes Charlotte nervously. He then goes to the piano to sing with Goose, and Carole tells Charlotte that Maverick is in love with her. We see Charlotte riding on the back of Maverick’s motorcycle. They stop next to the water and kiss passionately.
It's two weeks to graduation and the Top Gun trophy is still unclaimed. We see Maverick’s plane taking off for another training session. They spot some bogies in the sky, and Maverick and Iceman both go for it; they are working together. When Iceman takes too long to take a shot, Maverick gets impatient and tries to get in front of him. In the process, Maverick and Goose’s craft gets trapped in Iceman’s jetwash, and their engines go out. “I’m losing control!” Maverick says, and their craft gets caught in a spin going towards the ocean. Maverick is pinned and cannot reach the ejection handle, so Goose reaches forward to pull it. They both get ejected from the plane and fall into the water, but Goose hit his head on the canopy of the craft and dies. The Coast Guard flies in and collects Maverick who holds the dead body of his best friend.
Back at the hospital, Viper goes to talk to Maverick, and tells him that Goose is dead. “You fly jets long enough, something like this happens,” says Viper, trying to be consoling. Maverick wants to take responsibility for his friend’s death, but Viper tells him that other people will die on Maverick’s watch and that he has to “let him go.”
In the car with Charlotte, Maverick says, “I think maybe it was my fault,” and Charlotte tells him she wants to help. “I’ll be here if you need me, okay?” she says, before driving away. Maverick goes into Goose’s apartment, where Carole and Goose’s son are. He looks at a photo of him and Goose and picks up Goose’s dog tags, holding them tightly and putting them in a box. He starts to cry, then goes to talk to Carole, who tells him, “God, he loved flying with you, Maverick." Carole hugs him and the two of them weep.
Maverick appears before a council at Top Gun who review the circumstances of Goose’s death. They declare that the unrecoverable spin was unavoidable and that Maverick was not at fault. “Lieutenant Mitchell is restored to flight status without further delay,” they say. We see Maverick getting in a plane again and taking off. He chases a bogey in another training session, but Maverick is rattled and hesitant. “It doesn’t look good,” he says, in spite of getting close to making a shot. Back on the ground, when his flying companion confronts him about not making the shot, Maverick flies at him in a rage, snarling, “I will fire at him when I am good and ready, you got that?”
Jester goes to Viper to talk about the fact that Maverick isn’t getting over Goose’s death. “Keep sending him up,” instructs Viper. In the locker room, Iceman tries to talk to Maverick about Goose, telling him he’s sorry for the loss. Nearby, a pilot named Wolfman listens in, then goes to make a call to someone to let them know that Maverick has quit Top Gun.
We see Charlotte arriving at a restaurant, where she finds Maverick sitting at the bar alone. Sitting down next to him, she confronts him about the fact that he didn’t say goodbye. He congratulates her on getting a job in Washington, and Charlotte looks him in the eye and says, “Thanks, but I wasn’t gonna leave without saying goodbye.” She tells Maverick that she’s reviewed the incident with Goose and she knows it’s not Maverick’s fault, saying, “You’re one of the best pilots in the Navy. What you do up there, it’s dangerous. But you’ve got to go on.” He is unconvinced, but she insists that Maverick used to be larger-than-life, and he cannot possibly quit the Navy. Maverick doesn’t want her help, so Charlotte says goodbye and leaves abruptly.
Later, Maverick goes to Viper’s house. “I flew with your old man,” Viper tells him, adding, “You’re a lot like him, only better, and worse.” The two of them go outside and Viper asks Maverick, “Is that why you fly the way you do? Trying to prove something?” As they go for a walk, Viper tells Maverick the classified story of his father’s death: “His F-4 was hit, he was wounded, but he could’ve made it back. He stayed in it, saved three planes before he bought it.” Maverick confides that he doesn’t know what to do next, and Viper tells him he’s acquired enough points to graduate with his Top Gun class the next day, or he can quit, which would be “no disgrace.” “It’s your option, Lieutenant, all yours,” Viper says, and sends Maverick on his way, wishing him luck.
Analysis
At this point in the film, Maverick and Charlotte have finally professed their interest in one another and shared a particularly romantic evening, complete with rose and note on the pillow. When Goose’s wife, Carole, comes to visit, the connection between Maverick and Charlotte is confirmed all the more. Carole knows Maverick well, and has seen his promiscuous ways over the years. Thus it is particularly affecting when she privately tells Charlotte that Maverick only has eyes for her.
Just when Maverick and Goose’s lives seem pretty close to perfect, a terrible tragedy occurs and Goose dies on a training mission. In a freak sequence of events, Goose dies as he is ejected from a malfunctioning aircraft. Maverick clutches his body in the water after they’ve parachuted down, and the sight is one of deep despair. The event is tragic not only because of the death itself, but also because Goose is such a positive and galvanizing figure in the film, always ready to make someone laugh. He is portrayed as pure-hearted, loyal, not to mention a young father, and so his death comes as that much more of a shock.
No one takes the death harder than Maverick, his best friend. The moment that he finds that Goose has died, he holds onto the body for dear life. As a helicopter lands to bring Maverick back to Top Gun, the Coast Guard urges Maverick, “You’ve gotta let him go, sir.” The viewer can see that Maverick is going to have a difficult time letting go, not just physically but emotionally. His anguish is highlighted by the way this moment is shot. On a bright and sunny day, Maverick floats in the middle of a vast ocean, clutching the limp body of his friend and crying up to the heavens for mercy.
Maverick takes responsibility for Goose’s death, more so than he ought to. We see his anguish intimately, as the camera frames him in many closeups. When Maverick first gets back to Top Gun, Viper visits him in the locker room, and we see Maverick’s sullen face in the mirror up close. He confronts his own reflection, and by extension his own character, and the shot evokes this. Then, when he visits Goose’s house, he goes to console Carole, and we see his despairing expression in another closeup, another intimate moment that aligns us with Maverick’s guilty psychology. Then, when the council finds that Maverick was not at fault for Goose’s death, the camera frames his face tightly, showing us that he is still not convinced he isn’t the bad guy in this situation.
Charlotte tries to be the one who can help deliver Maverick from his period of mourning, but only Viper can empower Maverick to forgive himself. Charlotte tells him, “To be the best of the best, it means you make mistakes, and then you go on,” but he cannot hear that yet, so she leaves. When Maverick visits Viper at home, Viper tells Maverick about his father’s death and what a brave pilot he was. This information has the effect of calming Maverick, who has spent the whole film wondering about what happened to his father. Then, Viper tells Maverick that he cannot make the decision for him, and that Maverick must make it himself. This gesture empowers Maverick to think for himself and look into his own conscience for the answer, overcoming his insecurity.
