The latest installment of the Fast and Furious franchise, The Fate of the Furious, suggests some significant changes are in store for the long-running series’ key characters.
Major spoilers for The Fate of the Furious below. This article is conjecture, a fan theory if you will. We will not see if it is true until after the tenth installment of The Fast and the Furious franchise comes out, a moment that Vin Diesel cites as the end of the current saga. I believe a foundation is being laid for the next phase of the series and it has to do with most of the characters we know and love retiring from the films, or at the very least retiring from the leading roles.
The first thing we must think about is the major unifying plotline from the fifth through the seventh films. In Fast Five, we learn that Mia is pregnant with Brian’s child. The balance between Brian as father and Brian as heist master / low-level superhero builds to a head in Furious 7. Brian is trying to live a life outside of the game, but gets pulled back in and his child is put in danger. This plotline was developed before Paul Walker’s tragic death, and the ‘retiring’ of his character because of the child can be seen as an aborted solution to the arc due to the actor’s passing. Regardless, three films in the series were devoted to exploring the risks, pressures and dangers of bringing a child into this fast and furious world.
That’s why it’s surprising The Fate of the Furious sees yet another child brought into this world, Dom and Elena’s. It feels strange to retread this narrative ground that led to Brian’s retirement; what could be the purpose? One explanation is they weren’t finished with the arc of Brian’s child, and that Paul’s death leading to Brian’s retirement cut that story short. I find this hard to believe, because how many of these films are going to be built around babies in danger at this point?
The final piece of the puzzle can be found in the background at the obligatory ending BBQ scene of Fate. Eschewing the typical Corona, Letty can be seen drinking a Coke. While I will have to rewatch to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks, if it is true, it implies that she too is pregnant with Dom’s child. This would make sense given their conversation in bed in Cuba, where she mentions children but says that she isn’t pregnant yet. But what if she is? From a screenwriting perspective it makes sense she doesn’t tell Dom in Cuba, since he would be less willing to put her in danger for Elena’s sake. As for an in-story explanation, a simple “she wasn’t ready to tell him yet” will do.
We can expect to learn if she is indeed pregnant by the ninth film, though a confirmation on Chekov’s Coca-Cola will be proof enough for me. If it’s true, then we will have three children with Toretto blood in the world: Brian and Mia’s, Dom and Elena’s and Dom and Letty’s. As I said before, we have to wonder why. With the baby in danger aspect being used over and over in the last three films, I can’t accept that it is the answer. To me there is only one possibility: we are seeing the birth of the next generation of the franchise.
At some point the current characters’ stories will come to an end. As mentioned above, Diesel has alluded to this moment being the tenth film. What the series will need is a rebirth, a return to young kids street racing. Yet it wouldn’t be enough for Diesel if it is just a random group of kids. This is the man who traded a cameo in Tokyo Drift for the rights to the Riddick character. He cares about his franchises and as a producer on the most recent films, he has power over the direction the franchise takes. It’s hard to imagine a reboot that isn’t connected to the Toretto family that started it all.
This may sound like a long shot, but I can’t wrap my head around all these babies otherwise. Given the loops they had to jump through to make it work for Brian’s character, why throw another into the franchise on top of that? (Or three, for that matter, if I’m right about Letty.) I think the end of Dom’s story involves the birth of the next generation.
Don’t be surprised if Fast and Furious 11 features a jump of a decade and a half, focusing on the next generation of Torettos, obsessed with speed and out in the streets. Dom and his comrades will be the elders, giving much needed advice about what family means at key moments. If I’m right, we will see more and more evidence in each subsequent film building up to this shift, but already I find it very likely.
Beyond that I find it very welcome. Considering the recent power creep in the current characters and exponential growth of the stakes of the storylines, I crave a return to where it all began, the streets.
