Last year, the Fast & Furious franchise expanded with the spinoff Hobbs & Shaw, but next year marks our return to the main Fast & Furious narrative with F9. Among the things fans can expect the upcoming high-octane blockbuster is meeting Dominic and Mia Toretto’s estranged brother, Jakob, played by John Cena.
Clearly the Fast & Furious franchise is doing something right if it’s still racing along after nearly 20 years and has only become more popular rather than offer dwindling returns. However, on the off chance you’re skeptical about F9 delivering the goods, John Cena explained why hardcore fans will be impressed by what it’s offering with the following statement:
And the newest installment — everybody knows Fast is going to kill it when it comes to action. The thing I love about Fast 9 is people are going to see it weave that legacy together. It's not nearly 'What is Fast gonna do next for action;' it is action on the edge of your seat, but story. If you're a fan of the franchise, you get questions answered, you get new questions you can develop, it's another foothold to the narrative. That's the stuff that I love.
As John Cena laid out during his recent visit on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the Fast & Furious movies are always going to gives audiences the action they crave, so the big way F9 will stand out is how it expands the franchise’s mythology. Since that’s the sort of thing Cena likes, it’d make sense if that was one of the main reasons he agreed to play Jakob Toretto in F9.
Aside from Jakob Toretto not having been in Dom and Mia’s lives for a long time and being a skilled thief, assassin and high-performance driver, we’re still largely in the dark on what his deal is. Evidently though, he hates Dom so much that he’s willing to team up with Charlize Theron’s Cipher, the main antagonist from The Fate of the Furious. Where things will go from there is hard to say, although given John Cena’s popularity, I suspect his time in the Fast & Furious world won’t be a one-and-done thing, and that he could return for Fast 10.
Along with Jakob Toretto entering the mix, F9 will also see the return of Sung Kang’s Han Lue, who was believed to have been killed by Deckard Shaw, but it somehow still alive and kicking. We’ll also reunite with Lucas Black’s Sean Boswell, Bow Wow’s Twinkie and Jason Tobin’s Earl Hu, all of whom featured prominently alongside Han in Tokyo Drift. Oh, and if you needed yet another example of how F9 will stand out, the action will also make its way into outer space.
For now, F9 is intended to be the penultimate movie in the main Fast & Furious film series. However, with Hobbs & Shaw doing well for itself at the box office last year, a sequel is now in development, and there’s also a female-centric Fast & Furious spinoff being worked on. So while the original saga will wrap up in the coming years, the franchise as a whole isn’t going anywhere.
F9 was originally supposed to come out last May, but due to current events, it was delayed to April 2, 2021. Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more updates about it, and look through our 2021 release schedule to learn what other movies are supposed to hit the big screen next year.
