If the Fast saga knows how to do one thing, it’s bring people back. The blockbuster franchise has been going strong for two decades, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a character who appeared in one of them without being brought back for a cameo, a spin-off, or an elaborate flashback meant to sort out an otherwise screwy timeline.
Hard-pressed doesn’t mean impossible, however. There are a few notable characters who were posed as major players early on, only for them to disappear into the ether and be replaced by bigger stars (both figuratively and literally). One of these characters is Leon, played by Johnny Strong. While he may not ring a bell for newcomers to the franchise, he was one of the standouts of the original film, so we decided to investigate what the heck happened to him.
It may be weird to recount now, but The Fast and the Furious (2001) was a small-scale action film involving an undercover cop, Brian O’Connor (Paul Walker), and the criminal underworld of Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) he infiltrates. Leon was an integral part of Dom’s crew during this time, as he was part of the four-person operation who would boost electronics from passing trucks. While little is revealed about his past, Dom does say that Leon, along with his buddy Jesse (Chad Lindberg), “just showed up one day and never left.”
Leon is constantly present in scenes involving Dom, and his loyalty to the crew is unimpeachable. When things go wrong towards the end of the film, and Brian’s true intentions are revealed, Leon volunteers to fall back with Dom’s girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) to ensure her safety. The last mention we get of Leon is when Brian asks what happened to him and Letty. “They’re long gone,” Dom assures him. How prophetic those words turned out to be. For Leon, at least.
Does Leon return in Fast X?
Leon technically appears in a flashback sequence in Fast & Furious 6 (2013), but we never actually see or hear from him again. What happened? Well, Johnny Strong has a few ideas. He discussed the character with Entertainment Weekly in 2017, and he was of the opinion that Leon dipped after the crew imploded in the film’s climax. “I think it’s understood that Leon had had enough of that situation,” he theorized. The heat had become too risky and he didn’t want anything more to do with the gang.”
Strong notched a couple of high-profile films early in his career, including The Glimmer Man (1996), Get Carter (2000), and Black Hawk Down (2001). After appearing in The Fast and the Furious, however, he stepped away from acting for nearly a decade. Strong eventually resurfaced with Sinners and Saints in 2010, but it was as a multi-hyphenate, as he composed the film’s soundtrack. Nowadays, Strong is best known for his film scores and his output with the post-grunge band Operator.
When taking Strong’s career change into account, it makes sense that his character wasn’t expanded upon in Fast & Furious. There are no plans to include Leon in future installments. Still, he’s proud to be a part of the franchise’s enduring legacy.
“I love knowing that Leon is out there in that Fast & Furious universe somewhere,” he added. “Because there’s no resolution to him, that’s what keeps the spirit alive. I think it’s awesome that fans still talk about a character who was probably in the movie for a total of five minutes.”