Based entirely on the words to come directly out of his own mouth, the prospect of Dwayne Johnson returning to the Fast & Furious franchise was borderline unthinkable.
After all, The Rock had made it abundantly clear more than once that his issues lay directly with figurehead and producer Vin Diesel, who’d even gone so far as to bring up the legacy of the late Paul Walker in an attempt to end the self-imposed exile of The Fast Saga‘s Luke Hobbs.
Johnson wasn’t buying it, and everyone took him at his word right up until the post-credits scene of Fast X, when the comeback nobody thought would ever happen became real. A peace treaty has been brokered, and while a big pile of money and elements of self-preservation were almost certainly key components, longtime Fast alum Sung Kang opined on the shock return to Entertainment Weekly by intimating everyone’s simply going to pretend that the pair were never even at odds to begin with.
“It’s a great kind of reflection on life and how movies can maybe be a teaching moment, give you opportunities to learn from your heroes,” says Kang. “Like, oh, they squashed that. What was that about? Like, I don’t even remember that. Like, what was the problem?”
The most interesting question for the next chapter to answer is whether or not Johnson and Diesel are actually going to share any scenes together, something that wasn’t exactly forthcoming in The Fate of the Furious. Maybe it’s part of the former’s contract that he’ll be kept away from the latter, or maybe they really have just kissed and made up.