Our burning questions about Fast X (and a few answers)

tasha: Let’s face it, the Fast and Furious movies are a long, long way from any kind of grounded, reality-based narrative that would carefully answer all of our questions. This is more the kind of franchise that ignores physics and linear time, then has a character lampshade screaming in frustration over it.

In Fast Xthe latest installment in the series – and one of two or maybe three (or more?) total wrap-up films for the franchise – the screaming character is Aimes (Alan Ritchson), the new head of the Agency, the sort of “CIA but for the whole world” organization that sends Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his people hopping around the world, stopping rogue agents and collecting dangerous technology.

Aimes has a lot of questions about how Dom, Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and their sprawling crew of very simply characterized allies keep turning villains into cooking buddies, and why basic science won’t stop them from launching cars into space. And he has no answers. We’re doing a little bit better on Easter egg pinning, references, and mysteries Fast X — but as a more casual fan of this series, Austen, I came out of this movie with a bunch of questions, and I hope you, as an expert Fast family fan, can help.

Austen: Let’s race – or at least give it our best shot, because the one thing the Fast Family can’t outrun is the retcons.

[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Fast X, and the Fast and Furious movies in general.]

Who dies in Fast X? Han, Tej, Roman and Ramsey survived, right?

tasha: So Fast X gives us a big, obvious fake-out in the form of much of the Fast family away team being shot down in a plane that promptly explodes. There’s no way any of those people died, since they’re fan favorites, they go down without any major emotional drama, and we don’t see any bodies. But do you have any theories here about how they made it? Is there a car on board that plane that we’ll later find out was blasted into space?

Austen: If Jakob (Dom’s brother, John Cena’s character) has a kayak-sized glider that can get through the TSA without comment, I’m guessing Roman’s crew probably expected they needed a fancy way to get to their huge plane to escape in case of attack. Plus, it wouldn’t be the first time Han survived a seemingly deadly explosion, so he may have just taught the rest of the crew his secrets.

Rita Moreno is Dom’s grandmother? Since when?

tasha: I definitely thought I forgot something from a previous movie, and there’s no way this franchise could randomly give Dom a new blood relative out of the blue. (Not to mention she didn’t really give her a name, just calling her “Abuelita.”) But apparently this is her first appearance in the Fast and Furious franchise — yes, just out of the blue . Any idea where this family member has been all this time? Or why she didn’t step in to do something about her exiled grandson Jacob before he became F9villain?

Austen: Based on Dame Helen Mirren’s activities in this series, Rita Moreno likely either ran a crime syndicate in the Dominican Republic or organized car robberies herself. Unfortunately, the real answer is we don’t know – but who knows, we can dream that her adventures will be next Hobbs & Shawstyle spin-off to the series.

Are the heroes in this movie really killing US agents?

Photo: Universal Pictures

tasha: It took me a while to remember that ‘The Agency’, the group led by Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell’s “not in this movie” character), is not the CIA, even though it meets almost all the requirements for the CIA as it normally appears in these glossy action films: engaged in massive international deception with no respect for borders or local law enforcement; has more advanced technology than any other law enforcement agency in the world; general atmosphere of threat and corruption; endless faceless agents; source of a lot of underhand and side shifting. Plus also called “The Agency”.

But even if The Agency is not based in the US, it is currently run by people who appear to be American. And in previous movies, all of these cops were on the same side as the Fast family. (In fact, their Agency handler Little Nobody, played by Scott Eastwood, is still on their side.) But the crew is now simply killing those agents with impunity and en masse. I get that in these kinds of movies you need an army of goons to fight, but isn’t it a little weird that none of the heroes even pause for a second to think about who they’re killing? Isn’t this really like Finn fleeing to be an Empire slave, then killing every other Stormtrooper he meets without the slightest moral qualms?

Austen: The Agency is an incredibly useful organization for the Fast and Furious movies, because it’s really only as good or bad as the person in charge of it. As an extra-governmental task force with seemingly infinite power, resources and jurisdiction, it is mostly just a symbol of power and control. So his agents – like Stormtroopers – are meant to be symbols of oppression in this movie, not people.

In other words, for most of this movie, The Agency is a team full of anonymous people who are apparently perfectly fine to kill. Maybe there’s a reason they all wear face-covering helmets – again, like Stormtroopers. It’s to avoid seeing them as people instead of obstacles.

What’s wrong with Elena’s sister?

tasha: Here’s another character I assumed I forgot about from a previous movie, especially the way she’s presented as if she’s some kind of old rival who resurfaces. But no, this is the first movie for Elena’s little sister Isabel (Daniela Melchior), who’s here, I guess, so Dom has a lady to hang out with while Letty’s in jail — except Dame Helen Mirren, mean I. Did we have any indication that Letty had a sister before?

Austen: No, Isabel is new. And a bit redundant. But she does have some old non-computerized information for Dom to dig through, so at least that’s something.

Who’s that guy Shaw has in the body bag?

tasha: If the whole Shaw’s dude-in-a-bag thing was just a single quick shot, I’d dismiss it as a one-off visual gag. But we spend a few minutes — an eternity in a Fast movie — dealing with this guy who wakes up in the body bag in his underwear and hits the road. Do we know who he is?

Austen: No, but we know it’s nice of us to call him back. This is a callback to a mid-credits scene F9where Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) interrogates a man for information, and Han shows up, in what turns out to be a flash-forward to Fast X. We never find out who’s in the punching bag, or where Shaw got it from.

How did Gisele survive? And didn’t that submarine explode a few movies ago?

tasha: ???

Austen: This is what it is about. There doesn’t even seem to be an explanation for it for a moment. On the one hand, it was strongly believed that Gisele, Gal Gadot’s character, died in Fast and furious 6and the nuclear submarine from the end of The fate of the furious also exploded. On the other hand, who cares? This is Fast and Furious, and faaaamily aside, the one thing you can really count on in these movies is that they’ll admit whatever they want.

tasha: Fine. But… can you explain what’s going on with the robot spider’s laser surgeon? Does this series have it now?

Austen: Of course why not? Look at the prison with those laser spiders. If they can build that in Antarctica, what can’t they do?