Fast Forever, the Final Fast & Furious Film, Is Coming. Here’s Everything We Know

We finally know when we will see the Fast & Furious family again.

It’s been almost three years since the release of Fast X. The plan at the time was for Fast & Furious 11—the second installment of the two-part franchise finale—to drive into theaters in April 2025. But then Universal’s crown jewel hit a speed bump. Fast X grossed just $714 million worldwide—which sounds like a lot, until you realize that the film cost an estimated $350 million and that Fast 8 grossed over $1.2 billion (Fast 9 took in only $726 million in 2021, but that installment gets a pandemic pass).

In the wake of those disappointing returns, both questions and silence have plagued the future of Fast. Some even wondered if Universal might just abandon ship, despite Fast X ending on too many cliffhangers to count. But the studio revved the engine back up this past Friday with the announcement of a title and release date for the long-running series’ swan song: It’s called Fast Forever, and it’s coming on March 17, 2028. With that crucial information now acquired, here’s everything else we know about the final Fast.

Late in Fast X, Jakob (John Cena), a reformed villain and the long-lost brother of Dom (Vin Diesel), sacrifices himself to allow Dom to save his son, Little B (Leo Abelo Perry), from new big bad Dante (Jason Momoa). Dom manages to get his boy back, only to fall into a trap set by Dante. Just as Dom and B are cornered by two self-driving oil tankers at the top of a secluded dam, family members Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Han (Sung Kang), Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges) and Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) fly to the rescue, but a missile is fired at them by government agent Aimes (Alan Ritchson), who is revealed to be partners with Dante.

Once the plane crashes out of sight, Dom flies his car down onto the dam, trying to out-race the flames from the trucks crashing into each other. Dom and B land in the water, but when they safely come to the surface, Dante triggers the explosives positioned around the dam, and the action cuts to black as the timer ticks down.

So that’s six main characters whose fates are left up in the air. And yet, the end of Fast X further asks, what is death in this world? The final scene finds Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and Cipher (Charlize Theron) trekking through a remote area of Antarctica, having escaped an Agency black site prison, when a submarine suddenly emerges from the ice. A figure pops their head out from the sub…and it’s none other than Gisele (Gal Gadot), who (seemingly) died in Fast 6.

And somehow, that wasn’t the most shocking return. Despite continuously insisting that he’d never rejoin Fast due to his beef with Diesel, Dwayne Johnson came home in the mid-credits scene. Hobbs (Johnson) receives a call from Dante, who vows revenge on Hobbs for killing his father in Fast Five. Responding with his signature insult, Hobbs declares, “I ain’t hard to find, you sumbitch.”

A lot of factors come into play when discussing the delays on Fast 11, but the most crucial one is likely Universal's insistence that Diesel and the film’s producers cut the film’s price. With box-office revenue down industry-wide, it’s almost impossible to justify spending $350 million on a film, especially if a $1 billion gross is no longer a certainty. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Universal drew a strict budget line for Fast 11 at $200 million, going as far as rejecting a recent draft of the script that looked likely to cost $250 million, already a stark decrease from the last movie.

In addition to having to figure out the financial issues, Diesel and the creative team found themselves at a creative crossroads. While Fast X and Forever were conceived as a two-part finale, longtime director Justin Lin departed not long after X started filming, which led to the hiring of Louis Leterrier. After completing X, Leterrier signed on to continue the story and resolve the many cliffhangers in Fast 11. But the discouraging box office for X matched the lack of enthusiasm from the diehard fans, who were tired of the over-the-top, globe-trotting action and yearning for the days when the family were L.A. street racers.

To his credit, Diesel appears to recognize this, and declared last year that Fast would be returning to its roots in L.A., street racing, and car culture. A smart plan—but how do you get from evil Jason Momoa trapping Dom in an exploding Portugal dam, back to the Toretto Market and its famous tuna sandwiches? Good luck to whatever writer is working on that U-turn!

A great question! We’ve already discussed the fact that six characters were facing death the last time we saw them. That being said, the easiest bet in gambling history is that Diesel is back as Dom. Rodriguez is the other rock of Fast, and so count her in. But, if we’re being honest, given the financial cuts, the participation of a lot of other mainstays or recent additions could be up in the air. (Meanwhile, fellow Fast OG Jordana Brewster literally walked by me in a coffee shop as I was writing this story, and it was a real journalist fail on my part for not asking if she’d signed her new deal yet.)

But can Universal justify paying a Theron, Gadot, Jason Statham, or Helen Mirren millions of dollars for a couple days of work to have the 10th-most screen time? And does Johnson still have the same thirst for a Fast encore? Fast X came as Johnson was rebounding from the Black Adam swing-and-miss by revisiting all his peaks: WWE, Fast and Moana. Since then, he’s transitioned into serious-actor mode with The Smashing Machine, and the fact that he’s also signed on for Benny Safdie’s next project Lizard Music indicates that he may be looking to stay in that lane for a while. (Although he did just film Jumanji 4, so maybe all hope is not lost.)

One promise that Diesel has made about the finale is that we will see a reunion between the original heartbeat of Fast: Dom and Brian. Paul Walker died in 2013 during a break from production on Furious 7, which was completed using a combination of visual effects and Walker’s brothers acting as stand-ins. Brian is canonically still alive in the Fast Universe; the end of 7 sent him off into retirement with Mia (Brewster) and their kids. Diesel insists that Fast won’t say goodbye without an appearance from Brian, no matter how controversial that might be.

Even if Fast Forever is the end of the road for Dom and his family, it’s hard to imagine that Universal won’t find a way to keep its most reliable franchise going. Between the main Fast series and spinoff Hobbs & Shaw, the studio has managed to get 11 films over a 27-year span, and so no Fast would leave a major hole in its blockbuster calendar. After his Fast X cameo, Johnson announced a new Hobbs-led film that would act as a bridge to Fast 11, but there has been no word on that since. Separately, the Wall Street Journal has reported that “writers are working on scripts for a live-action television series and executives have discussed spinoff films for certain characters or a stripped-down, lower budget movie.”

Thankfully, Fast is, indeed, forever.