Ryan Gosling showed up to D23 this weekend and casually broke the internet with a jacket. Just a jacket. Welcome to Star Wars fandom in 2026.
The actor took the stage at Disney’s showcase in Anaheim wearing a Mickey Mouse Club jacket, a nod to his actual childhood stint on the show three decades ago, before switching mid-panel into a new jacket built specifically for his Star Wars: Starfighter character. That’s when Lucasfilm made it official: Gosling’s character is named Kade Auberon, and the internet has not stopped talking about it since.
The Kade Auberon jacket isn’t subtle. It’s got an inverted Rebel Alliance symbol stitched on the back, a skull-and-crossbones spin on the standard insignia that instantly told fans this isn’t your typical clean-cut Star Wars hero. Director Shawn Levy handed him the jacket personally on stage, which is exactly the kind of theatrical bit that gets clipped and reposted eleven thousand times within the hour.
As for who Kade Auberon actually is, Gosling gave the crowd just enough to be dangerous. He described the character as someone from the wrong side of the galaxy whose fate is tied to the fastest starfighter ever built. Cryptic, a little dramatic, extremely on brand for a Star Wars lead.
The footage shown afterward apparently backs that up, with a teenager, likely co-star Flynn Gray, getting scolded for touching a ship he has no business touching, followed by a string of dogfight sequences that reportedly gave off serious Top Gun energy.
Kade Auberon’s story is set five years after The Rise of Skywalker, meaning Levy and company get to build a new corner of the galaxy without dragging Rey, Finn, or Poe back into it. That’s a deliberate choice, and going by the reaction to the jacket alone, it might already be paying off. Gosling is joined by Mia Goth, Matt Smith, Amy Adams, and Aaron Pierre, among others, in a cast stacked enough to make the wait until May 28, 2027 feel painfully long.
Say what you want about Disney’s marketing machine, but pairing a nostalgic Mickey Mouse Club callback with a brand new, slightly villainous-looking jacket reveal is a genuinely smart way to make people care about a character nobody knew existed a year ago. Kade Auberon didn’t even need a full trailer to trend. All it took was a jacket and a well-timed quote.
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