Vin Diesel, who is never one to shy away from making bold claims—we’re still waiting on Furious 7 to win best picture—provoked headlines on Saturday
Vin Diesel, who is never one to shy away from making bold claims—we’re still waiting on Furious 7 to win best picture—provoked headlines on Saturday when he revealed why he said yes to making one last Fast & Furious film.
“The studio said to me, ‘Vin, can we please have the finale of Fast & Furious [in] April 2027?’” Diesel said at FuelFest in Pomona, California. “I said, ‘Under three conditions.’ The first is to bring the franchise back to LA. The second thing was to return to the car culture, to the street racing. The third thing was reuniting Dom and Brian O’Conner. That is what you’re going to get in the finale.”
That’s right: Diesel is promising to bring back Paul Walker’s beloved character, who was last seen driving off into the sunset in the concluding shot of 2015’s Furious 7. The franchise retired Brian, the billion-dollar series’ original antagonist, in the wake of Walker’s tragic 2013 death, the result of a car crash during a break from filming the seventh Fast installment.
In the aftermath of Walker’s passing, Furious 7’s cast and crew needed convincing to even complete the project. “The first thing all of us were struggling with was, ‘What the hell are we doing here? What’s Fast & Furious without Paul?’” Fast star Tyrese Gibson told me in 2021. “And are we going to come off as just a bunch of narcissists—deciding what Paul meant to the franchise, and saying, ‘We’re moving forward anyway?’”
But Walker’s family agreed that he would have wanted his Fast family to see the movie through. Walker’s younger brothers, Caleb and Cody, and actor John Brotherton all stepped in as doubles; with their support, and the revolutionary exploit of recent visual effects techniques, Furious 7 was finished.
There’s no doubt that the loss of Walker generated extra interest in Furious 7, which grossed $1.5 billion worldwide—almost double what Fast 6 earned. At the time, it became the fourth highest-earning movie in history. More importantly to Fast fans and those inside the franchise, it was the perfect swan song for both Walker and his character.
The last scene of Furious 7, scored to Charlie Puth and Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again,” finds Diesel’s Dom somberly paused at a stop sign, reflecting on the changes to come. Brian has decided to shift his focus from saving the world to being a father and husband. Then Brian pulls up next to him and asks, “You thought you could leave without saying goodbye?” In a narration that feels like Diesel talking to Walker, Dom reminisces about his and Brian’s bond: “I used to say I lived my life a quarter-mile at a time, and I think that’s why we were brothers, because you did too.” A montage of Brian moments plays as he and Dom drive side-by-side. Dom’s speech continues: “No matter where you are, whether it’s a quarter-mile away, or halfway across the world, you’ll always be with me, and you’ll always be my brother.” Then their cars veer off in opposite directions. We follow Brian down a long road. The screen cuts to white, and two final words appear: “For Paul.”
A number of fans would say that should have been the end of Fast. It was Brian who served as the entry point into this world, arriving in 2001’s The Fast and the Furious as an undercover cop whose eyes are suddenly opened up to a recent, more intense way of living. Yet the franchise has persisted without Brian, merely mentioning him in passing in each subsequent film. The closest Fast has gotten to a Brian reappearance was when his car pulled into the Toretto driveway in the final shot of F9—though of course, we didn’t see Brian himself in the scene.
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