Warning: Hobbs & Shaw SPOILERS are below!
Once just a standalone movie, The Fast and the Furious not only launched a massive blockbuster film series, but that series is now a multi-pronged franchise. Over this summer, director David Leitch’s Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw released in theaters, representing the first (and probably not the last) spinoff in this street racing turned globetrotting action hero franchise. Next up though, we get back to the main crew for Fast and Furious 9, but the question remains, how connected will this universe be?
Specifically, will Hobbs & Shaw and the events of that film tie in to what happens in Justin Lin’s Fast & Furious 9? Here’s what the spinoff's director David Leitch says:
There's definitely opportunities for them, but that's really a studio question. I tried my best to make this a real fertile world outside of Fast... The world's their oyster so I hope they take part in the fertile ground and explore it.
It seems that David Leitch doesn’t have much more insight on the potential connections between Hobbs & Shaw and Fast & Furious 9 than we do, and if he does, he isn’t letting on. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any though, and such a thing could be very much in Universal Pictures’ plans. And there are plenty of opportunities on that front should the studio choose to pursue them.
The director of Deadpool 2 and Hobbs & Shaw believes that there are some real opportunities for Universal to integrate the two parts of this growing franchise. As he told Comicbook.com, David Leitch tried his best in Hobbs & Shaw to create a world that could stand on its own and has plenty of storytelling opportunities within it.
While that world can theoretically operate independently as it did in the first film, the director would be happy to see the studio explore the mythology and world he created in Fast & Furious 9 and beyond. As he said, it’s Universal’s choice, but there is plenty of fertile ground in Hobbs & Shaw for Fast & Furious 9 to dig in to, thereby weaving the two arms of this cinematic franchise closer together.
Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson are not set to be in Fast & Furious 9, so if the latter film is going to tie in to Hobbs & Shaw, it will have to be through some sort of plot detail. Although maybe we could find out in a post-credits scene for Fast & Furious 9 that Idris Elba’s Brixton is still alive, because come on, he totally is.
I think it's more likely that either Fast & Furious 9 or Fast & Furious 10 will integrate the storyline about Eteon, the terrorist organization Brixton works for, whose mysterious leader remains unseen. I imagine that will definitely be explored in a Hobbs & Shaw sequel (which hasn’t been announced yet but seems inevitable), and it would be cool for Fast & Furious 10 to bring everyone together to defeat this great threat.
It seemed like the two arms of this franchise might be forever split, a product of the acrimony between some of its stars, specifically Vin Diesel and Tyrese Gibson and Dwayne Johnson. But recently, signs have indicated that feud may be over, increasing the chances that we’ll see The Rock return in Fast & Furious 10, or perhaps a cameo in the next film.
Fast & Furious 9 speeds into theaters on May 22, 2020. Check out our 2020 Release Schedule to see when all of next year’s biggest movies come out.
