New rumored spoilers for Star Wars: Starfighter describe an entire sequence from the movie, and it might be the best pitch yet for what Shawn Levy and Ryan Gosling are going for.
The details come from MakingStarWars, the same outlet that named Gosling’s character months before Lucasfilm did — they reported “Cade,” and D23 made it official as Kade Auberon, just with a K.
Across a pair of threads posted August 15 and August 24, which the site says were compiled and fact-checked from its sources, MakingStarWars lays out a full nightclub fight sequence involving Kade, the Force-sensitive kid (reportedly named Rone), a mysterious woman named Belle, and an undefeated alien fighter called Fanga.
Kade And The Kid Walk Into A Fight Club
Per MakingStarWars, Kade and the kid enter a nightclub running three fighting rings at once, on the hunt for a woman dressed head-to-toe in gold at the bar.
A Kowakian monkey-lizard — the same species as Jabba’s cackling pet, Salacious Crumb — identifies her as Belle.
That name should sound familiar.
MakingStarWars previously reported that Eva Mendes, Gosling’s real-life wife, plays Belle, a 650-year-old cantina owner decked out in gold.
Mendes has never appeared in an official cast list, but a woman in gold named Belle running this establishment matches that earlier report exactly.
Belle gets a quick introduction: she checks on a downed fighter, asks how many fingers she’s holding up, gets nothing back, and flatly declares him done.
Then she spots Kade, and according to the report, these two clearly have history.
Here’s the setup: Kade needs a key from Belle. She won’t hand it over. So Kade offers to fight for it. If he can last in the ring long enough to win, the key is his.
Deal struck, Kade heads for the ring, turns around, and blows Belle a kiss as the crowd erupts.
Enter Fanga
Then the ring rises and Fanga makes his entrance: huge, white-furred, undefeated, the house favorite, and wearing a pair of tiny goggles.
The kid immediately begs Kade not to do this.
Kade responds by cupping his hands around his eyes to mock the goggles while the crowd chants Fanga’s name even louder.
The sources keep landing on the same description of the creature: picture a cross between a Wookiee and a Wampa, with beautiful white fur, a nasty mouth, and an absolutely ferocious look.
Notably, the sources did not recognize the species from anywhere else in Star Wars, and nothing in the scene explains what Fanga actually is, which suggests Levy’s team built a brand-new alien for the movie.
The fight goes about as well as you’d expect.
Kade strikes a phony martial-arts stance, charges, and bounces straight off Fanga onto the floor.
From there, his entire strategy is not dying: ducking punches, slipping between the monster’s legs, getting swung around by his own collar.
He does land one punch, stunning the crowd and Fanga alike, then makes the mistake of grabbing the goggles to stop himself from falling into the audience.
Fanga answers by launching him into it anyway.
Kade lands next to the kid, who has apparently been straining to use the Force the entire fight.
Kade asks if he’s even trying; the kid swears he is.
The crowd then surfs Kade back toward the ring while he screams, “Try harder! Try very harder!”
Meanwhile, Fanga charges, slips on the blood and saliva coating the floor, sails over Kade, and wipes out a table full of his own fans.
When someone in the crowd laughs at him, Fanga picks the guy up and throws him across the room, then leaps back into the ring in a single bound and unloads a massive punch.
And Kade catches it.
One hand. He holds the monster back like it’s nothing, yawns, plays bored, and keeps glancing at the clock.
The Force Twist And Belle’s Kiss
Kade isn’t doing any of it. The kid is.
Hand stretched toward the ring, the kid is pouring everything he has into holding Fanga back with the Force while Kade shamelessly pretends he’s the greatest fighter in the galaxy.
Belle notices.
She deliberately steps into the kid’s line of sight, his concentration breaks, and Fanga’s punch finally connects.
Kade is knocked cold and then thoroughly demolished. He gets picked up, dropped, thrown, body-slammed, and eventually spun above Fanga’s head like a propeller.
Then the buzzer sounds. Time expires.
Kade survived long enough, which means he technically won, and the crowd is furious, since their undefeated champion just lost along with all of their bets.
A barely conscious Kade raises one arm in victory, and Fanga hurls him through the air one more time for good measure.
The battered Kade stumbles out of the ring and back to Belle, who kisses him and hands over the key. End of scene.
And yes, if the earlier Belle report holds up, Gosling’s big movie-star kiss comes courtesy of his actual wife.
Fanga Was A Full Practical Creature On Set
The August 24 follow-up thread adds production details that should make practical-effects fans happy.
Fanga was reportedly 100% practical on set, meaning Gosling physically performed the fight opposite a full creature build rather than a tennis ball on a stick.
Whether ILM keeps him mostly practical, enhances him, or replaces pieces digitally remains to be seen.
The other fight rings in the club also had creatures and fighters battling in the background, with some clearly intended for later VFX replacement; unfinished and unpainted costumes were reportedly used during filming.
The design intent is clear, too: Kade is supposed to look like he has zero chance against Fanga in a straight fight, which is exactly what makes the whole sequence play as comedy.
It All Lines Up
The sequence locks in several story beats: Kade and Belle have history, the kid can use the Force but can’t control it, Kade knows about the kid’s abilities, and whatever that key unlocks matters enough to Kade that he’ll get pulverized for it.
It also connects to the July leak that had Kade escorting the kid to a Jedi temple or academy on the hidden planet Adaria.
Watching the kid struggle to control the Force here would explain exactly why Kade is trying to get him there and leaves the key as the big open question.
The tone matches everything official as well.
Kade bluffing, improvising, cheating, and getting the absolute snot kicked out of him is pure Han Solo, the Harrison Ford throwback IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond described after visiting the set, and the kind of “simpler movie” screenwriter Jonathan Tropper says he set out to write.
It also fits what a Hasbro rep told us at San Diego Comic-Con: everything they’re hearing about the movie is good, with Gosling heavily involved in the vein of Ryan Reynolds and Deadpool and they especially excited about the kid in the movie.
Release Info
Star Wars: Starfighter opens in theaters and IMAX on May 28, 2027, three days after Star Wars turns 50.
Shawn Levy directs from a script by Jonathan Tropper, with a cast that includes Ryan Gosling, Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams. Filming wrapped in December 2025.
It’s the first theatrical Star Wars since The Mandalorian and Grogu underperformed, and the trades have already set the box office bar accordingly, so a crowd-pleasing Gosling-versus-monster set piece is exactly the kind of word of mouth Lucasfilm needs.
