Fast X was planned as the end of the main Fast and Furious series, and then that ending became a two-parter, and now Fast X potentially turned into a trilogy. This evolutionary plan clearly had a big impact on Fast X’s own conclusion, or lack thereof – it ends with a couple of huge obstacles.
Warning: This article will contain major spoilers for Fast X.
Fast X is divided into four main storylines for all but the first five minutes or so. Dom travels to Brazil to find out what the deal is with new villain Dante. Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is locked in a black prison and has to team up with Cypher (Charlize Theron) to escape. Jakob (John Cena) goes on a road trip with Dom’s son Brian. Roman, Tej, Khan, and Ramsay (Tyreese Gibson, Ludacris, Song Kang, and Natalie Emmanuel) spin their wheels while they wait for the movie to have some purpose for their existence. Or not exist?
X’s quick ending explained
By the time the credits roll on Fast X, Jacob and Little Brian manage to meet up with Dom. Through a series of hilarious action sequences, Little Brian ends up in Dante’s car, and Jacob sacrifices himself (and his “cannon car”, loaded with explosive ammo) to take out a bunch of enemies so Dom can pounce on Dante. Dom catches up to him and Little Brian jumps from Dante’s car to Dom’s car as they do donuts with each other in the middle of the highway in an incredibly dramatic feat that no one could have predicted. Dom and Little Brian ride off into the sunset.
Or so it seems, until about 30 seconds later, Dante catches them on the levee and claims that it, in fact, was his real plan. It’s at this point that Roman, Tej, Khan, and Ramsay fly over the dam in a jet for inexplicable reasons — and Dante forces Ames, the new Agency boss, to shoot them down with a missile, and the plane crashes and explodes, apparently with four mainstays of the franchise inside.
Meanwhile, Dante has two large gas rigs on either end of the dike right next to Dom’s car. Dom naturally pedals and drives off the front of the dam as the trucks explode behind him – the climactic money shot they put in the trailers for the movie.
Dom and Little Brian survive, but then Dante pulls off his latest trick: he blows up the dam itself, with Dom and Little Brian standing at its base. Cut to black.
This is cliff number one.
So who’s really dead at the end of Fast X?
If you ask me, Tej, Roman, Khan and Ramsay are clearly not dead – it would be spectacularly awful to kill them off for no reason during a scene where they had no apparent chance to really contribute. Jacob, on the other hand, actually seems to be gone. Then again, we’ve seen characters survive car explosions before, so never say never.
The question of the next two years will be how our heroes are going to get out of this mess. My guess is that it turns out that the four have misdirected the plane and they’ll be involved in an Ocean’s 11-style rescue of Dom and Little Brian. “Actually, they already robbed ten minutes ago” kind of a twist, since their presence in this installment isn’t currently doesn’t make any sense.
Another highlight of Fast X: Gal Gadot returns
For some reason, the movie didn’t end after that. Instead, we met Letty and Cypher, who were off screen for what seemed like half of the movie. They break out of their black prison in Antarctica, and in the wild they encounter a submarine breaking out of the ice, which is apparently there to pick them up, calling back the nuclear submarine that Cypher tried to steal from F8. The hatch of the submarine opens and Gisele (Gal Gadot), who we thought was dead four movies ago, steps out. Cut to black (again).
It’s hard to know what to make of this scene. Is Giselle currently working on Cipher? If so, does that mean Cipher isn’t actually evil? Is she secretly keeping Elena alive and hidden somewhere?
The answer to each of these questions is mostly no. Better to say that Giselle, like Khan, works for the Agency, specifically Brie Larson’s Little Miss Nobody. In F9, they brought Han back, claiming he was on a secret mission for Mr. Nobody, so the easiest explanation is that Giselle will get the same new story. This would mean that while everyone thought Han and Giselle were dead, they were actually doing secret government work for the Agency together.
Still, Cipher remains a strange wild card until the end of Fast X. She was once considered the main baddie of the series, but it looks like Dante is now filling that role. Can Cipher join the #family? Never say never.
The Fast X mid-credits scene explains: Do you smell what Agent Hobbs is cooking?
There is one bonus scene that appears in the middle of the credits. We see a man in full Call of Duty-esque tactical gear with his face covered moving through a large, creepy, and distinctly vile room that is very reminiscent of when Dom found Dante’s “vision board” earlier in the film. The phone rings, as in the previous scene, and the man picks up the phone. It’s Dante, and he threatens this man as he threatens everyone else: “You are responsible for my father’s death, and now I’m coming after you.”
The man then removes his helmet and mask, revealing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He refers to Dante as a “sumbitcha” and we cut to black for the last time. Agent Hobbs is officially back.
When Johnson was one of the main actors in this series, he had highly publicized feud with Vin Diesel this led to his departure from the main series for his Hobbs and Shaw spin-off with Jason Statham. But as far as we know, Hobbs & Shaw is over, and Johnson is now stepping away from the massive disaster that was Black Adam and his failed attempt to become a DC power player.
With “The Fast and the Furious” being the biggest franchise he’s been associated with, it stands to reason that Johnson will be back now, during this mini-downtime for him. And given that Dom has almost no scenes with any of his long-term Fast X castmates, Johnson might not even have to settle his feud with Diesel to make it work. They could just, you know, both star in the next two movies without ever seeing or speaking to each other.
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