Fast X mid-credits scene explained: What that jaw-dropping cameo means

No-one could have seen this coming.

By Morgan Jeffery

Published: Friday, 19 May 2023 at 12:00 am

This article contains spoilers for Fast X.

The 10th entry in the Fast & Furious series – Fast X, pronounced “Fast Ten”, like fast-ten your seatbelts… no, we’re not kidding – packs plenty of surprises, not least the return of presumed-dead Gisele (Gal Gadot). But the film one-ups itself mere moments after that miracle resurrection (which serves as the movie’s ‘final’ scene, prior to the credits), delivering a mid-credits sting featuring a twist that no-one could have seen coming.

Fast X is closely linked to 2011’s Fast Five, introducing Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa) – son of that film’s antagonist, drug lord Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), and a psychopathic terrorist who uses his seemingly limitless resources to pursue revenge against Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), the man responsible for his father’s death.

Well, partly responsible…

The film ends on a cliffhanger, with the fate of Dom, his son and indeed the wider Fast family appearing grim (read more about the Fast X ending) but the mid-credits scene reveals that another character, the man who in fact delivered the killing blow that finished off Hernan Reyes, is also in Dante’s sights.

The sequence sees Dante’s lair infiltrated by a team of masked men in paramilitary gear. Dante himself is nowhere to be seen – he’s in Portugal, battling Dom – but a phone starts to ring and is answered by the squad’s leader. It’s Dante on the line – and he makes it clear that the vengeance he’s unleashed on Dom will be dealt out to this man also.

The masked figure reveals his face… it’s Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), who’s been MIA from the Fast & Furious franchise since 2017’s The Fate of the Furious (not counting the 2019 spin-off movie Hobbs & Shaw).

“I ain’t hard to find, you sumbitch!” Hobbs growls, before abruptly ending the call by crushing the phone in his fist.

From a narrative standpoint, the return of Hobbs to the franchise at this juncture makes perfect sense – as Dante correctly points out, while Dom was indirectly responsible for Hernan’s demise on that bridge in Brazil, it was in fact Hobbs who pulled the trigger and ended the villain’s life (in retaliation for Reyes’ men having previously executed Hobbs’s own squad).

Not only that, but had Hobbs’s absence from the series continued, it would’ve raised questions as to why he wasn’t joining the fray to aid Dom and the Fast family as he has previously. (The same question poses itself for the character of Brian O’Connor, who remains ‘retired’ even when his family is in desperate need – though given the passing in 2013 of actor Paul Walker, there’s not a great deal to be done about that. The films produced since his death have managed an impossible situation about as well as they ever could.)

Now, though, Hobbs’s brief spell away from the main series can be explained as his having been caught up in the events of Hobbs & Shaw and their aftermath – having been occupied alongside Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw battling a cyborg supervillain played by Idris Elba (seriously), he’ll now rejoin Dom’s family in their hour of greatest need.

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Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) in Furious 7.
Universal

All that being said, the character’s return is a hugely surprising twist – not because of what’s occurred on-screen, but because of what has been reported to have happened off it.

Back in 2016, having wrapped shooting on The Fate of the Furious, Dwayne Johnson made a post on Instagram in which he alleged that certain (unnamed) male co-stars didn’t “conduct themselves as stand up men and true professionals”.

In a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, Johnson elaborated on this, suggesting that he and Vin Diesel “have a fundamental difference in philosophies on how we approach moviemaking and collaborating”. Their differences were serious enough that while both men appear in The Fate of the Furious, they filmed separately for any scenes featuring their two characters together, with the footage being stitched together later.

In a subsequent interview, for Vanity Fair in 2021, Johnson revealed it was his request that he and Diesel share no scenes. “I wanted to forgo drama,” he said. “I thought that that was the best thing to do. For everybody.” Later that year, however, it was Diesel who took to Instagram, imploring Johnson to return to the Fast & Furious flagship having missed out on F9 (released that summer).

“I say this out of love… but you must show up, do not leave the franchise idle… you have a very important role to play,” wrote Diesel.

“I was very surprised by Vin’s recent post,” Johnson told CNN in response. “This past June, when Vin and I actually connected not over social media, I told him directly – and privately – that I would not be returning to the franchise. I was firm yet cordial with my words and said that I would always be supportive of the cast and always root for the franchise to be successful, but that there was no chance I would return.”

Clearly, something has shifted that meant Johnson reconsidered his position – though it appears this shift came late in the day, with The Hollywood Reporter reporting in March (after filming had wrapped on the rest of Fast X and just two months prior to the film’s release) that a bonus sequence was being filmed featuring “a guest cameo” that we now know to be the return of Hobbs.

What this means for Fast & Furious 11, and indeed the state of Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel’s off-screen relationship, remains unclear. Though fans might hope they’ve settled their differences and we’ll see Dom and Hobbs reunited to bring the Fast franchise to a suitably epic conclusion, the Fast X mid-credits scene doesn’t guarantee that, only featuring Johnson’s character in isolation.

It’s possible that, similar to The Fate of the Furious, the pair will not share any scenes together – perhaps Hobbs will re-team instead with his old sparring partner Shaw, who was last seen in Fast X preparing to “dig some graves” having discovered that Dante was targeting his mother Queenie Shaw (Dame Helen Mirren).

Whatever happens next, having Johnson/Hobbs back on board is unquestionably a boost for the series as it embarks on one last ride (or two). As it stands, Dom and his crew will need to call in the cavalry to help stop Dante Reyes… and Hobbs? Well, he is the cavalry.