Although more than 30 years will have passed between Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick, Jester could certainly still be serving as a high-ranking officer in the Navy, or conversely, he’s either retired or passed away.
In Top Gun, Michael Ironside played Lieutenant Commander Rick “Jester” Heatherly , an instructor at the eponymous flight academy who felt that Maverick was too reckless and later “shot down” the main protagonist during a training exercise.
But as Ironside revealed, we won’t actually see what Jester is doing nowadays.