Star Wars Starfighter Footage Reveals a Mysterious Imperial Ship Called the G-17 Reaper

Shawn Levy and Ryan Gosling took the stage at D23 to talk about the next Star Wars movie, Starfighter, coming May 28, 2027. I cannot show you the footage they played, but I can describe exactly what happens in it, beat by beat.

Ryan Gosling's character hides a decommissioned G-17 Reaper

Gosling plays the film's lead character, and he wears a very cool black jacket with a logo that looks like a skull and crossbones, except the skull is actually an inverted rebel insignia. In the scene, the kid in the scene goes into a garage space and lifts a dusty cover off of a Starfighter engine, running his hand along it.

The character Gosling plays enters and says, "Hey, didn't I tell you not to touch anything?" The kid asks what kind of Starfighter it is, and he responds, "It's a decommissioned G-17 Imperial Reaper, the fastest Starfighter ever built." The kid says, "Never heard of it," and he responds, "There's a reason for that," before covering the engine back up.

We then get a close up of him buckling into a harness that has an Imperial crest on it.

The sea raft and those otherworldly water pillars behind Gosling and Levy on stage

After the garage scene, we see the sea raft, the same one we previously saw Gosling and his co-star on in a set photo, gliding over the water pulled by a parasail. Huge pillars of water surround them, surging up toward the sky like cyclones. I have no idea what these are, but they look awesome and otherworldly, very Avatar-esque if you ask me.

You can actually see these water pillars in the background screen that was playing behind Gosling and Levy while they were on stage at D23.

The footage ends with him pulling the cover back off of the G-17 Reaper as the camera glides up the body of the ship, and the movie title appears over the engine. The title incorporates the original Star Wars logo of the raked letters, which is such a cool throwback.

My theory on why the Empire was hiding the fastest Starfighter ever built

We had never heard of a G-17 Reaper before this footage, and yes, it does sound like the Grim Reaper, or the Reaper that Blue Oyster Cult told us not to fear. But why was it a secret that no one had ever heard of until now, and what was the Empire hiding with it? This movie is set around 40 years after the Empire fell.

In a galaxy where hyperspace travel is possible, I want to know why this ship's non-hyperspace speed is supposed to be so important. Can this Starfighter go beyond hyperspace? Or did the Empire need it for specific missions to go fast within one planet's atmosphere, since you are never supposed to make a hyperspace jump within an atmosphere, despite the sequel trilogy doing exactly that a couple of times with its own light speed skipping.

My theory is that this was a Starfighter commissioned as a passion project by a certain Imperial who, in his younger years, had a need for speed: Darth Vader, back when he was Anakin Skywalker, podracing champion of Tatooine's Mos Eisley pod circuit. The fact that this G-17 Reaper might have been the hot rod of Darth Vader himself would be a pretty fun twist for Starfighter, and any references we get to podracing might be our last chance to get some acknowledgment for one of the podracers from the prequels who never got his due.

Kevin Feige's reaction and the stacked Starfighter cast

Marvel head Kevin Feige said that he saw a cut of this movie and that he loved it, and now I kind of see why. It really is a classic gearhead movie, the way the original Iron Man was.

The cast of this movie is also going to include Amy Adams, Matt Smith, Aaron Pierre, and Mia Goth, alongside Gosling and the young actor who plays the kid. It is a stacked cast, and I cannot wait for this movie.

So what do you think this G-17 Reaper was really built for, and is Vader's need for speed the twist you want to see in Starfighter?