To borrow a metaphor from the franchise, the finish line for the Fast And Furious series has never really been in sight. A devastating emotional blow was dealt during the making of Furious 7 when Paul Walker died in an off-set car crash, but his co-stars have kept the legacy of Brian O'Conner alive with three more sequels since then, and each installment continues to make hundreds of million dollars globally. Star Vin Diesel has contributed to confusion about the plans to wrap things up, saying a few months ago that plans for a final duology might actually be a full trilogy – but Fast X director Louis Leterrier has assured fans that the grand finale is legitimately in sight.
Exactly how the Fast & Furious series will conclude remains a mystery maintained by the filmmaker, but he recently told Collider that there is a plan for the way things will end. Elements that take place between the end of the most recent sequel and the big endgame may change as further work is done developing the untitled Fast & Furious 11 (not to mention the Dwayne Johnson's upcoming Hobbs-centric feature that is in the works), but there is a specific vision for where the last movie leaves Dominic Toretto and his family. Said Leterrier,
What I can tell you is that we know exactly where the franchise ends today. We know where we're ending. The roads we're going to take are going to be different, but we know where it all ends, and I know as a fan it's both sort of satisfying and truly surprising.
After watching the most recent installment of the Fast & Furious franchise, "truly surprising" is actually believable. Jason Momoa's Dante is one of the most chaotic big screen villains we've seen in a while, and the end of Fast X specifically veers away from tired tropes and cliches that weighed down Fate Of The Furious and F9. It's unclear which members of Dom's family are going to live and who is going to die, and that uncertainty makes for a terrific foundation for a big surprise.
Continuing, Louis Leterrier addressed the fact that delivering an ending that is going to satisfy the fans is a complicated endeavor, but the idea is to ride a particular line:
As you know, fan service is tricky because you want to deliver the right thing, but you wanna surprise the people, you don't want to give them exactly what you know everybody's expecting the Fast & Furious franchise, where it's going to end up.
Simply put, the desires of fans can be oxymoronic or paradoxical. On the one hand, audiences want to see events and conclusions that they've pictured in their own minds for years and years, and on the other, they want to witness events and conclusions that they never could have imagined. Doing both is impossible, and yet it's constantly asked of franchise filmmakers.
What we will see at the end of the franchise is one of many questions swirling around Fast & Furious 11 – but another one of them unfortunately is "when will it get made?" It looks as though fans are going to be dangling on Fast X's cliffhanger for a while now, as the sequel isn't expected before 2025, and work isn't presently being done developing the script due to the on-going WGA strike. Stay tuned for more updates about the project here on CinemaBlend, and learn about all of the other exciting films on the way to theaters in the coming months with our 2023 Movie Release Calendar.
