Star Wars: Starfighter – Two New Skywalker Replacements Revealed

The first look at Star Wars: Starfighter seems to be setting up not one but two Skywalker replacements. Shawn Levy’s Starfighter movie is scheduled to release in May 2027, as part of Star Wars‘ 50th anniversary celebrations. Director Shawn Levy has just released a first BTS image from Starfighter, featuring Ryan Gosling and Flynn Gray in costume.

We’ve long suspected that Starfighter will riff on the entire Skywalker saga; the logo showed a light flare akin to the classic posters for A New Hope, after all. What we didn’t expect, though, was for the very first BTS image to feel like a homage to not one but two different Skywalkers – including one from the old Star Wars Expanded Universe.

Flynn Gray Is Clearly Luke Skywalker Coded

We don’t know much about the plot of Starfighter, which will see Ryan Gosling play a titular pilot who must protect the young Flynn Gray from dark forces pursuing him. That brief synopsis, though, immediately raised eyebrows; a sought-after child of power? It definitely sounds like Gray is coded as a Chosen One character, returning to a major Star Wars theme.

Gray’s costume evokes the Luke Skywalker design too, with a dirty white top. We’ve already seen an image of Gosling and Gray with a landspeeder reminiscent of Luke’s too, so the Luke imagery feels very deliberate indeed.

Ryan Gosling’s Character Feels Like A Very Different Skywalker

At first glance, Ryan Gosling’s character feels more like he’s based on the Han Solo archetype; a “scruffy-looking nerf-herder” who doesn’t wear a combat uniform, for all he’s a pilot. But attentive Star Wars fans have already spotted the similarity to a Skywalker from the old Expanded Universe (now branded Legends).

Appearing in Jan Duursema and John Ostrander’s fantastic Star Wars: Legacy series, Cade Skywalker was a descendant of Luke’s who fell from grace after the resurgent Sith destroyed the Jedi Order. He became a smuggler and bounty hunter, living in the galaxy’s shadows and desperately trying to ignore his legacy of power.

There’s simply no way Gosling can be the canon version of Cade Skywalker, of course; Luke’s canon Jedi Order seem to have followed the classic traditions of shunning romance and relationships. But Gosling’s look seems like a tremendous homage to the last Skywalker we expected to see.

As exciting as these parallels, archetypes, and designs may be, Star Wars: Starfighter is clearly so much more. That first BTS image also seems designed to persuade us this is no mere remix of the Skywalker saga; there’s no hint of a return to Tatooine, with a new waterworld instead.

And that’s definitely for the best, allowing Star Wars to move beyond nostalgia at last.