Everyone in the Fast and Furious Family has two key traits
There are families you are born into, there are families you find, and there are families you put together from three barely related films from the 2000s because they incredible franchise potential.
The 22-year journey of The Fast and the Furious Unpleasant Fast X notoriously no clean arc follows, or even a logical one. The earlier movies have been Hollywood chopshop shot and stripped for parts, and a humble street-level action movie about drag-racing thieves has basically been rebuilt as a series of bombastic superhero flicks featuring cars more outfitted than Iron Man. This extends to the core cast of characters, called the Fast Family.
Why are they family? As far as I know, it’s because Vin Diesel says, like Dominic Toretto, “I don’t have any friends. I have family” in Fast Five. Since then, the stewards of the franchise have decided that the movies are about that.
Making the Fast and Furious movies about a sprawling found family has proven to be a boon for the movie writers, as they’ve decided it means the movies can mostly be about one man: Toretto. Everyone else is just there to support him. They are a single multi-ethnic entity where no one really has a story of their own, but everyone has something to offer.
They all have two properties: a skill and a quirk. Or sometimes they have two skills, or two quirks. A few even have the same properties. Like the cars, the rules are a bit fast and loose.
The family
These are, as it stands, going in Fast X, the core members of the Fast Family. Most are centered around Dominic Toretto or Brian O’Conner. (Actor Paul Walker passed away in 2013, but his character, Brian, still lives on in the Fast-verse — he’s just retired and raising his kids off-camera, with his wife Mia filling in for him.)
- Dominic Toretto (Diesel): Leader, has muscles
- Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez): Dom’s wife, is mean (free)
- Han Lue (Sung Kang): Cool, hungry (bonus trait: died, got better)
- Roman Pierce (Tyrese Gibson): Jokes, hungry too
- Tej Parker (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges): Does computers (Lawful Neutral), hates Roman
- Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel): Also does computers (Chaotic Good), has no last name
- Elena Neves (Elsa Pataky): Dom’s ex, died but didn’t get better
- Little B (Leo Abelo Perry): Dom and Elena’s son, feisty little boy
- Mia O’Conner (Jordana Brewster): Dom’s sister, Brian’s stand-in
The extended family
The fun thing about the Fast movies is how they often contort themselves to somehow fold the villains of previous films into the family, sometimes completely changing their characters in the process, for no real reason other than ‘it seems cool thing to do’. It’s actually a cool thing to do.
- Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson): Is The Rock, Has Police Muscles
- Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham): does kung fu, speaks Cockney
- Queenie Shaw (Helen Mirren): Deckard’s crime boss mother attacks Dom
- Gisele Yashar (Gal Gadot): Kicks ass, is into Han (bonus trait: also dead)
- Jakob Toretto (John Cena): Dom’s secret brother, resembles John Cena
- Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell): Boss of the entire government, know we love Corona
- Cipher (Charlize Theron): Does computers (Chaotic Evil), villain that no one can get rid of
- Sean Boswell (Lucas Black): The man of Tokyo Driftknows Bow Wow
If Fast X rolls in Rapid XI (and maybe Rapid XII), I doubt it will get any clearer Why these people choose to be together, but it’s nice to know that they can all rely on each other. For about two things each.