The #JusticeForHan movement was the Fast & Furious fanbase making it clear to the filmmakers that they weren’t best pleased about how Sung Kang’s death was handled, even if they’d been bracing themselves for his demise since it was first established that the fifth and sixth installments took place before the events of Tokyo Drift.
Everyone knew he was going to bite the dust, but it was the way the creative team went about it that left such a bad taste in their mouths. Having murdered one of their closest friends and then acted as the big bad of number seven, Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw was instantly welcomed into the fold in The Fate of the Furious, with barely a mention of the fact he’d very recently killed a member of the family.
In a new interview with ScreenRant, Kang admitted that he was completely baffled by the that began with a candlelit vigil, before he developed an understanding of what it meant to Fast & Furious supporters all around the world.
“I saw pictures of that, and I was like, ‘What’s wrong with this person, having a vigil for a fictitious character?’. At first I was like, ‘Who is this person, a wacko?’. And then I started to get to know her, and I realized that there was a deeper meaning behind it. And I was just flattered and honored, that a character that I played meant so much to somebody, and then I had this whirlwind of support. And then eventually, when I landed on set, I would reflect on it going, ‘Wow, this happened because of a hashtag and a vigil’. Pretty crazy. A vigil you were at, that’s what it means.
Universal didn’t even try and keep it a secret that Han was returning for the recent ninth entry, using his mysterious reappearance as the stinger of the very first trailer. #JusticeForHan has been well and truly served, with the concluding pair of Fast & Furious blockbusters promising an interesting reunion with the man who thought he’d killed the snack-happy street racer.