SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers are ahead for “Fast X,” which is now playing in theaters.
“You believe in ghosts?” Agent Monica Fuentes (Eva Mendes) asks at the end of 2011’s “Fast Five.” She’s just presented agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) with a surveillance photo of Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who was believed dead after a horrific crash in the fourth film, 2009’s “Fast & Furious.”
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With one mid-credits coda, the “Fast” franchise established that if you don’t see a body, no one is really dead.
(In fact, Rodriguez recently revealed that didn’t know about the third-act twist until she saw “Fast Five” in theaters. “I’m in Paris. I’m like, ‘Oh, hell no,’” she said in Feb. at the “Fast X” trailer launch event, explaining that she called producer and star Vin Diesel right away. “I find out by going to the movies, Vin?” she asked him.)
“Fast X,” directed by Louis Leterrier, already promised to be the biggest installment yet with a cast that boasts longtime Fast Family members Diesel, Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, John Cena, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Scott Eastwood and Nathalie Emmanuel, as well as Jason Statham, Helen Mirren and Charlize Theron as the super villain Cipher.
Newcomers to the action-packed arena include Alan Ritchson (as Aimes, the new no-nonsense head of the Agency, who thinks the “family” is just “a cult with cars”), Brie Larson (Tess, the headstrong daughter of Kurt Russell’s Mr. Nobody), Rita Moreno (who plays Dom’s grandmother, Abuelita Toretto) and Daniela Melchior (Isabel, a street racer with her own family ties). Jason Momoa serves as the movie’s primary villain, Dante, who exacts revenge on Dom and his family throughout the two-and-a-half-hour runtime.
So now that we’ve gone over the background, who does “Fast X” resurrect?
[This is your last spoiler warning…]
Get ready Fast Fam, because “Fast X” features not one, but two major returns, with credit scene appearances by Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbs and Gal Gadot’s Gisele.
After an action-packed chase scene, in which Dom escapes Dante’s latest trap (two remote-controlled big rigs that threaten to crush him and his son, Little Brian (Leo Abelo Perry) using NOs to drive/fly his car down the side of a dam and into the water below, the villain arms a series of bombs and the film cuts to black.
Then, Letty and Cipher appear, trekking through ice and snow after breaking out of the Agency’s maximum security prison in Antarctica. They cross a ridge and, suddenly, a large submarine breaks through the surface. Who should emerge from the hatch, coming to their rescue? Gisele.
“Still think my plan sucks,” Cipher cracks, as Letty looks on bemused.
Before she was “Wonder Woman,” Gadot made her big screen debut in the fourth “Fast & Furious,” starring as Gisele, an intelligence operative and weapons specialist who became an integral member of Dom’s family of racers. When the character seemingly died in 2013’s “Fast & Furious 6” — falling into the abyss as the crew tried to take down an airplane — it seemed that her time in the high-octane franchise had to an end.
Most “Fast” fans will be quick to point out the fact that Gisele’s love interest, Han (Kang), was revealed to have survived his brush with death in the last installment, 2021’s “F9: The Fast Saga.” So, with this third resurrection, the franchise has officially started a trend.
It also begs the question whether Han knew Gisele was alive the whole time? Only time — and the next movie — will tell.
Also, with Letty and Cipher punching their way to a truce in “Fast X,” could Gisele’s reappearance bring things one-step closer to the female-focused film fans have long-desired? Maybe.
But the bigger surprise is the return of Johnson, after he publicly declined Diesel’s request to rejoin the action franchise in a December 2021 interview with CNN following the two action stars’ very public feud.
“The world awaits the finale of ‘Fast 10,’” Diesel wrote on Instagram in November 2021. “I told you years ago that I was going to fulfill my promise to Pablo [the late Paul Walker]. I swore that we would reach and manifest the best ‘Fast’ in the finale that is 10!”
In the interview, Johnson explained that he’d already spoken with Diesel privately. “I was firm yet cordial with my words and said that I would always be supportive of the cast and always root for the franchise to be successful, but that there was no chance I would return,” he said while wishing the “Fast & Furious” family “the best of luck and success in the next chapter.”
A chapter that now apparently includes Johnson, after all.
“Fast X’s” mid-credits scene follows a tactical team,searching a movie palace for something (or someone), as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans’ “Happy Trails” plays in the background. One officer, covered head to toe in black with a face mask and goggles concealing their identity, reaches for a ringing cell phone. The screen reads “No Caller ID,” but the voice on the other end is unmistakably Dante.
“You’ve done some dastardly dirty deeds, Sheriff. Dom drove the car, but you pulled the trigger,” Dante says while footage from “Fast Five” shows Hobbs shoot and kill Dante’s father, Hernan Reyes, that film’s villain. “Now I’m going to make you suffer,” Dante threatens. “The devil is coming for you, lawman.”
The camera pushes in tighter on Johnson’s face, growing angrier by the minute, as he prepares a comeback. “Well, I ain’t hard to find, you sumbitch!” Johnson growls.
Using “Fast Five” to bring Hobbs back into the fold makes complete sense, given the movie marked Johnson’s franchise debut. In the film, his character Hobbs begins as an antagonist to Dom’s crew, trying to bring them to justice after a job gone wrong, but, as the plot progresses, he turns to our heroes’ side. Then, Johnson rode with the “family” in 2013’s “Fast & Furious 6,” as well as 2015’s “Furious 7,” but bowed out of the mainline series following 2017’s “The Fate of the Furious” and teamed up with Statham to headline the 2019 spin-off, “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.”
Thus, the “Fast X” mid-credits scene not only sets up Hobbs’ reintegration into the main storyline, but also opens a plethora of possibilities about what road the upcoming 11th installment might take.
The biggest question, though, is when will Dom and Hobbs reunite onscreen? Or will they spend most of the next movie traveling down parallel paths before colliding at the end? Who’s to say.
(And, if, somehow, these returns turn out to be a one-off — much like Mendes’ reappearance — at least fans can still look forward to Johnson and Gadot starring alongside Ryan Reynolds in two more “Red Notice” movies for Netflix.)
The next “Fast” installment will again be helmed by Letterier, with Christina Hodson and Oren Uziel writing the script. On the red carpet at the premiere in Rome last week, Diesel teased the possibility of a 12th movie, turning “Fast X” into a final trilogy of films that send the Torettos speeding off into the sunset.
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