(Spoilers for F9 will be found below.)
If F9 was your first Fast & Furious movie, first off, watch Furious 7 now.
Did you do it? Good.
And now watch the rest of the Fast films (you can skip Hobbs and Shaw), so F9‘s mid-credits scene makes sense. Otherwise, you probably had no idea why Jason Statham was in the movie, and why director Justin Lin saved him until half the audience had already left the theater, and why I gasped when Han showed up (this only applies to the person sitting next to me at the time). In short: fan favorite Han, played by Sung Kang, was killed in 2006’s The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift… which takes place after the events of 2013’s Fast & Furious 6, but in that film’s mid-credits scene, we learn that the car accident that killed him was, well, no accident — he was murdered by Statham’s Deckard Shaw. Also, the words “killed” and “murdered” in that last sentence should be in quotes because Han is still alive. (I love this inexplicably complicated franchise.)
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Kang was asked whether he knows how the mid-credits scene resolves itself. “I have no idea. Justin will not tell me until probably the day of,” he answered. “I don’t know if he knows yet, but I’m sure he has ideas.” If it’s like every other Fast movie, Han and Shaw, who’s kind of a good guy now (again, complicated), will resolve their differences because family. That’s the power of Dom.
Kang also told a story about the first time he met Statham.
I did a movie with him prior to Tokyo Drift called War, and I was a character that was in his police squad. It was him against Jet Li. We shot that in Vancouver, and when we wrapped the movie, we were both at the airport on the same day. So he asked me, “Hey, what are you doing next?” And I said, “I’m going to go do this movie Tokyo Drift, Fast and Furious.” And he said, “Fast and Furious? That’s a good franchise to be a part of.” And I was like, “Yeah, man.” And he said again, “That’s a good one, man.” And then years later, he plays Shaw! It’s crazy.
Maybe Kang can be in the sequel to Spy. No one has announced a sequel to Spy, but I’m putting it out into the world because there should be a sequel to Spy.
(Via the Hollywood Reporter)