Although Dwayne Johnson got to team back up with Jason Statham on the Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw, he was absent from the events of F9, despite Statham cameoing as Deckard Shaw if the F9 end-credits scene. In fact, back in July 2021, Johnson said he had no intention of returning to the main Fast & Furious film series. Well, it appears as though he’s changed his mind, though I will now post a SPOILER WARNING for those of you who don't want to know any more than that.
Ok, are we all good? For the folks still here, here's what's being reported.
According to The Wrap, Johnson reprises Luke Hobbs in Fast X’s post-credits scene, though with the movie still a week away from coming out, obviously no details about his appearance in the 2023 new movie release were disclosed. This does line up with a report from this past March that Fast X was “shooting a button or tag today that may or may not have a guest cameo.” At the time, I speculated this could be Gal Gadot returning as Gisele Yashar, but evidently it’s actually Johnson resurfacing as Hobbs.
Just so it’s clear, assuming this information is accurate, don’t go into Fast X thinking that Luke Hobbs will have a role in the main story. Instead, it sounds like this tag is being used to set up him being one of the leading players in Fast & Furious 11, which Louis Leterrier is returning to direct. This news also comes just a few hours after Vin Diesel teased that The Fast Saga could conclude with a trilogy rather than two more movies, so perhaps Johnson would appear in the hypothetical Fast & Furious 12 too.
Dwayne Johnson joined the Fast & Furious franchise in 2011’s Fast Five, where Luke Hobbs was introduced as a DSS agent hunting down Dominic Toretto, his sister Mia and Brian O’Connor in Rio de Janeiro for killing some DEA agents, a crime for which they were framed. After Hobbs learned the truth, he allowed them to go free by giving them a 24-hour head start, and they he became the crew’s full-blown ally in the following three Fast & Furious movies. Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious saw him forging a particularly entertaining dynamic with Deckard Shaw, resulting in the two of them begrudgingly teaming up on a side adventure in 2019.
As for why Johnson once said he wasn’t game for any more appearances in the The Fast Saga, it boiled down to his longtime feud with Vin Diesel. So if the WWE star is indeed returning to the franchise, then evidently conversations were had behind the scenes to ensure that these two can work together again, although that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll se Hobbs and Dom share screen time in Fast X. The Rock was most recently seen leading the DC movie Black Adam, which critically and commercially underwhelmed at the box office, and his next movie on the docket is Red One, which will stream exclusively to Amazon Prime Video subscribers.
Once more concrete details about Dwayne Johnson’s Fast & Furious return have been unveiled, we’ll pass them along. Until then, get ready for Fast X to race into theaters on May 19.
