Fast X was planned as the end of the main Fast & Furious series, and then that ending became a two-parter, and now Fast X has potentially ballooned into a trilogy. That evolving plan clearly had a big impact on Fast X’s own conclusion, or lack thereof–it ends on a couple enormous cliffhangers.
Warning: This article will be filled with major spoilers for Fast X.
Fast X is split into four main storylines for all but the first five minutes or so. Dom goes to Brazil to figure out what the deal is with new baddie Dante. Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) is locked in a blacksite prison and has to team up with Cipher (Charlize Theron) to escape. Jakob (John Cena) goes on a road trip with Dom’s son Brian. Roman, Tej, Han and Ramsay (Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Sung Kang and Nathalie Emmanuel) spin their wheels while they wait for the movie to have some purpose for them to exist. Or to not exist?
Fast X ending explained
By the time the credits roll on Fast X, Jakob and Little Brian manage to meet up with Dom. Through a series of fun action movie contrivances, Little Brian ends up in Dante’s car, and Jakob sacrifices himself (and his “cannon car” that’s loaded with explosive ordinance) to clear out a bunch of enemies so Dom can make a move on Dante. Dom catches up to him, and Little Brian leaps from Dante’s car to Dom’s while the two do donuts around each other in the middle of a highway in an impossibly dramatic feat that no one could have anticipated. Dom and Little Brian drive off into the sunset.
Or so it seems, until about 30 seconds later, when Dante traps them on a dam and claims that this, actually, was his real plan. It’s at this exact moment that Roman, Tej, Han and Ramsay fly over the dam in a jet for reasons that aren’t clear–and Dante has Ames, the new boss of the Agency, shoot them down with a rocket, and the plane crashes and explodes, apparently with these four franchise mainstays inside.
Meanwhile, Dante has two gas-hauling big rigs on either end of the dam drive directly at Dom’s car. Dom, naturally, puts the pedal to the metal and drives off the front of the dam as the trucks explode behind him–a climactic money shot that they put in the trailers for the movie.
Dom and Little Brian survive, but then Dante reveals his last trick: blowing up the dam itself, while Dom and Little Brian stand at its base. Cut to black.
That’s cliffhanger number one.
So who’s actually dead at the end of Fast X?
If you ask me, Tej, Roman, Han and Ramsay are clearly not dead–it would be impressively terrible to kill them for no reason during a scene in which they had no apparent chance of actually contributing. Jakob, on the other hand, actually seems to be gone. Then again, we’ve seen characters survive being blown up in a car explosion before, so never say never.
The question for the next two years will be about how our heroes are going to wriggle out of this mess. My guess is that it’ll turn out that those four were doing some kind of misdirection with the plane, and they’ll be integral in saving Dom and Little Brian in an Ocean’s 11-style “Actually, they already did the heist ten minutes ago” kind of twist, because their presence during this part doesn’t currently make any sense.
Fast X’s other cliffhanger: Gal Gadot is back
Somehow, the movie wasn’t over after that. Instead, we caught back up with Letty and Cipher, who hadn’t been on screen for what felt like half the movie. They get out of their blacksite prison in Antarctica, and out in the wilds they encounter a submarine emerging from the ice that’s apparently there to pick them up, calling back to the nuclear sub that Cipher tried to steal in F8. The submarine hatch opens, and out steps Gisele (Gal Gadot), who we thought died four movies ago. Cut to black (again).
It’s hard to know what to make of this scene. Does Gisele work for Cipher now? If so, does that mean Cipher is not really evil? Does she secretly have Elena alive and hidden someplace too?
The answer to each of those questions is mostly like “no.” A better bet is that, like Han, Gisele is working for the Agency–and Brie Larson’s Little Miss Nobody in particular. In F9, they brought back Han by claiming he’d been on a secret mission for Mister Nobody, and so the easiest explanation here is that Gisele will get the same new story. Which would mean that while everyone thought Han and Gisele were dead, they were actually together doing secret government stuff for the Agency.
That said, Cipher remains an odd wild card by the end of Fast X. She was once set up as the ultimate big bad of this series, but it looks like Dante is now filling that role. Could Cipher join the #family? Never say never.
Fast X mid-credits scene explained: Can you smell what Agent Hobbs is cooking?
There’s one bonus scene that comes mid-way through the credits. We see a man in full Call of Duty-style tactical gear, his face covered, moving through a big, creepy and obviously nefarious room that is quite reminiscent of when Dom found Dante’s “vision board” earlier in the film. A phone rings, just like in that earlier scene, and the man picks up. It’s Dante, and he gives this man the same “you were responsible for my father’s death and now I’m coming for you” threat he gave everybody else.
The man then pulls off his helmet and mask, revealing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He calls Dante a “sumbitch,” and we cut to black one final time. Agent Hobbs is officially back.
When Johnson was one of the main cast members of this series, he had a well publicized feud with Vin Diesel that led to him exiting the main series for his Hobbs & Shaw spinoff with Jason Statham. But Hobbs & Shaw is over for now as far as anybody knows, and Johnson is now coming off the massive debacle that was Black Adam.
With Fast & Furious being the biggest franchise left that he’s associated with, it follows that Johnson would come back now, during this little downturn for him. And considering how Dom has barely any scenes with any of his fellow long-term cast members in Fast X, Johnson may not even have to resolve his beef with Diesel to make it work. They could just, you know, both be in the next two movies without ever actually seeing or speaking to each other.
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