Once Fast & Furious 9 speeds into theaters next weekend, there are only going to be two installments left to go in the main timeline. Tyrese Gibson has already teased that parts ten and eleven are set to shoot back-to-back and form one massive, and no doubt insane, conclusion to the beloved series, so returning director Justin Lin faces a potential logistical nightmare in getting the band together again.
After all, you’d expect that the grand finale to one of the most successful franchises in the history of cinema would double down on fan service, which should realistically involve bringing back all of the major players still left alive in the main timeline. The two most notable stars to have sat out F9 were Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, who opted to make Hobbs & Shaw instead, leading to some bad blood between the formerly tight-knit family, but those fences at least appear to have been mended.
Statham is more than game for a comeback, but Johnson has remained tight-lipped so far, although Vin Diesel did make a pretty overt hint on social media that he was intent on bringing back The Fast Saga‘s other bald-headed alpha male for another round or two. Not only that, but in a new interview, Lin admitted that the door is always open to both Hobbs and Shaw, and he’s already been thinking about reintegrating the duo into his side of the universe.
“I think that’s always been our approach. So many of the conversations I have is about characters that are not even in there, but are still, obviously, they are living and breathing in this universe. On this one, when I came back, I was thinking a lot about Hobbs and Shaw, and all of the other characters. I never think of them as being gone, for sure.”
It would leave a lot of fans disappointed if Statham and Johnson sat out Fast & Furious 10 and 11, and the brand is famed for giving the people exactly what they want, so at the very least, it would be safe to assume that we’ll be getting cameos from the spinoff stars, if not seeing them in full-blown supporting roles.