Why there will never be a Top Gun 2, featuring Maverick
Maverick was an Expy of the last Navy fighter ace Randy "Duke" Cunningham, so his life and career paralleled Cunningham's somewhat. After completing his Indian Ocean deployment aboard Enterprise, Maverick reported back to TOPGUN as an instructor. He was however, a bit of a Sadist Teacher, as he didn't grasp that TOPGUN was about teaching pilots to eventually smoke him, and not about pwning noobs For the Evulz. He therefore left TOPGUN with an Unsatisfactory fitrep. Maverick returned to sea duty with an F-14 squadron deployed to the Mediterranean, where he earned his fourth MiG kill at the 1989 Gulf of Sudra incident. His carrier crossed the Suez Canal and deployed to the Red Sea for Desert Shield and Desert Storm, during which Maverick made Ace by getting his fifth, sixth and seventh kills. His string of air to air victories meant that he escaped discipline and censure for his continued antics while flying, but it couldn't ensure his promotion to Lieutenant Commander. He was rated in the lower percentiles on the promotion lists three years in a row, finally causing him to be downsized from the Navy in 1992. However, his status as a war hero and fighter ace, got him elected to Congress as a Republican in 92. Just like Duke Cunningham.During his freshman year as a Congressman, it emerged that Maverick had attended the infamous Tailhook Association convention at Las Vegas in 1991, where aviators were alleged to have perpetrated an orgy of sexual assaults. This allegation, as well as her own long repressed homosexual proclivities lead Charlie to leave Maverick, but through her job as a tech rep for a defense contractor, Maverick had made numerous contacts with executives in the defense contractor industry. Although, Maverick was eventually cleared of wrongdoing by NCIS (known as NIS back then), the damage to his reputation was so significant, that he couldn't be guaranteed reelection based on his MiG kills anymore. Maverick needed planeloads of money to outspend his way back into Congress. He therefore started to accept bribes from those defense contractor executives he had met through Charlie, in return for voting to fund pork barrel projects allocated to them. Initially, the bribe money was used to just fund his reelection campaigns, but eventually, he got so much in kickbacks and "campaign contributions" that Maverick started to live a high roller playboy life. This was hidden by a veneer of being a hawkish anti-gay ultra conservative "traditional family values" Congressman. Maverick was frequently on Fox News criticizing the conduct of the air campaigns over Bosnia and Kosovo, then lauding the Afghanistan bombing campaign and "shock and awe" during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Maverick was eyeing a Senate run in 2004.
During his Senate campaign, opposition research into Maverick's big spending playboy lifestyle uncovered initial circumstantial evidence of his accepting illegal campaign donations. This led to an FBI investigation. Maverick won reelection to his House seat by a hair's breath, but had to terminate his Senate campaign due to the allegations. The investigation revealed the full extent of Maverick's corruption. His ex wife Charlie also got caught up as an accessory, since she had introduced him to those executives. Maverick initially tried to strike a deal, where he would wear a wire to incriminate those executives, in return for a suspended sentence. However, Charlie had been living with a Tailhook victim all this while, who in return for immunity for Charlie, testified that Maverick had in fact been a participant at the grope-fest at Tailhook. This lead to the FBI canceling his deal, and ultimately, Maverick was sentenced to thirty years in federal prison.
- Jossed. The sequel Top Gun: Maverick was released on May 27, 2022.
