Random The ‘Fast And Furious’ Series Completely Changed Its Mind (10 items)

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  (#10) Leon Disappears From The Saga Without A Goodbye

  Most of the actors from The Fast & The Furious stuck around for the rest of the saga. Dom, Letty, Brian, and Mia are in most of the films - and even Vince and Hector show up again in sequels. But there’s one character that the Fast Saga straight-up dropped, even though this series is all about family. 

  In the first film, we meet Leon, a member of Dom’s crew who’s a little crusty but overall a good dude. By the time the crew’s back together in Fast & Furious, Leon is nowhere to be seen and no one brings him up.

  Actor Jeremy Strong, who played Leon, says that it makes perfect sense as to why he’s never seen again. In 2017, he told Entertainment Weekly:

  If you watch the film and you understand the characters, it would be understandable that he would disappear and move on, just as he showed up... As the film progresses, towards the end, there’s a scene where Leon kind of voices his disapproval and he’s shut down by Dom, which showed at this point, Leon is doubting his leader and Dom is losing control... After that, Jesse is killed, Letty and Vince almost die, so I think it’s understood that Leon had had enough of that situation. The heat had become too risky...

  That’s a great theory, but you’d think someone would have said, “Hey, where’s Leon?” at least once.
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  (#9) Brian Becomes An FBI Agent After He’s A Wanted Criminal

  In The Fast & The Furious, Brian O’Connor is a cop who infiltrates an underground drag racing ring and makes fast friends with Dom Toretto. After Brian lets Toretto escape at the end of the movie, he finds himself on the wrong side of the law. Somehow. 

  The second film follows Brian through the underworld of Miami as he’s turned into a police informant rather than being sent to jail. That all checks out. The next time we see Brian, in Fast & Furious, he’s a full-fledged member of the FBI. 

  It makes sense why he’d be in the FBI for narrative reasons, but how does this kind of employment arc even work? And how does one get on the fast track to being an FBI agent after going on the lam? 
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  (#2) Dom Has A Brother Who Is A 'Master Thief, Assassin, And High Performance Driver'

  The F9 trailer reveals that, throughout the entire saga, Toretto had a brother that no one knew about and who is apparently the toughest, smartest, best driver on the planet. Obviously, he’s played by John Cena.

  This retcon completely changes the character of Dom. In the early films of the saga, the only other family member he has is his sister, Mia, whom Dom is incredibly protective of. When Dom lets down his guard and forms a relationship with Brian (Paul Walker), it’s as if he found the brother he never had. But now we have to go back and rethink all of those interactions. 
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  (#3) The Events Of 'Tokyo Drift' Take Place At Least Seven Years In The Future

  The earliest - but not the most egregious - instance of timeline shenanigans in the Fast and the Furious franchise occurs in Fast 6 when it recontextualizes the demise of Han.

  Han was originally shown to perish in the third film of the series, 2006's The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. As it happens in that film, Han is taken out by a random car during a traffic collision. However, in Fast 6, this random car is shown to have been driven by Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), and the collision is not so random at all. 

  The problem, of course, is that Fast 6 came out in 2013, which means the events of Fast 4, 5, and 6 are all prequels to Tokyo Drift. So, Tokyo takes place seven years after 2 Fast 2 Furious.
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  (#4) Letty And Dom Actually Got Married Before 'Fast & Furious'

  This is one of the more out of nowhere retcons in the series, mostly because it deals with something that we should have known or even seen in one of the many films in this franchise. 

  Throughout Furious 7, Letty deals with intense amnesia and it’s not until Dom suffers a near-fatal incident that her memories come flooding back. While cradling Toretto, Letty reveals that she remembers their wedding - something that the audience didn’t see until Letty had a flashback.

  This means that she and Dom had to have been married after the events of the short film Los Bandoleros but before the events of Fast & Furious. So, when Dom leaves Letty in the beginning of Fast & Furious, he's not just abandoning his long time lover, he's abandoning the person he promised to be with "till death do us part."
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  (#6) Elena Somehow Found The Time To Join The Diplomatic Security Service Between 'Fast 6' And 'Furious 7'

  In Fast 5, patrol officer Elena Neves is recruited by Hobbs to track down Dom and Brian while they’re in Brazil. She falls in love with Dom and the two run away together to live in bliss. When Dom finds out that Letty’s still alive in Fast & Furious 6, he leaves Elena in the Canary Islands. 

  Elena is still technically a fugitive, but the next time we see her is in Furious 7, she’s working as a trainee with Hobbs. There’s no explanation, no training montage, she just scores a job with a highly secretive military outfit.

  This wouldn't be so headache-inducing if not for Fate of the Furious, which reveals that Dom got Elena pregnant at some unspecified time in the past. The conception must have occurred in the beginning of Fast 6, because that's the last time Elena and Dom are together, and she must be pregnant in Furious 7, because there's no mention of the child whatsoever. So, Elena went from fugitive to agent in significantly less than nine months.

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