‘The Fate of the Furious’ on HBO: Which Cast Members Should The Series Keep?

Saturday night, the 8th installment of the Fast/Furious Cinematic Universe makes it to HBO (and HBO’s streaming platforms). These movies are sold as the most reliable wild ride in all of cinema, and on that level, The Fate of the Furious delivers. The hook this time is that Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto turns on his “family” of charismatic car-thieves-turned-international-A-Team after he’s blackmailed by a notorious criminal hacker, played by optimal Xtreme hairstyling by Oscar-winner Charlize Theron. She’s not the only Oscar winner onboard this time around. Helen Mirren appears as the matriarch of criminal brothers Owen and Deckard Shaw (Luke Evans and Jason Statham), whose past appearances as the Big Bads of the previous two Furious movies proved to be popular enough that they’re reluctant allies this time around. The family vibe of the series has gotten seriously contagious, and it seems like everybody who goes up against Dom’s crew ends up marrying into it in some way or another.

That’s mostly fine. These aren’t the seven sequels to King Lear we’re talking about here. These are big, starry car-chase movies, and if Luke Evans or Jason Statham (or Charlize Theron or Helen Mirren) want to stick around for more fun in far-flung locales, who am I to throw cold water on their fun? But Fate shows a movie franchise that is starting to feel overstuffed. It’s the first movie fully without Paul Walker, and there’s an end-of-an-era feel to Furious 7 now that we see where Fate has moved the story. Officially car thieves no more, the gang really have become The A Team, or some other ’80s TV adventure serial. Kurt Russell is essentially a deep-state Charlie and Dom, Letty, Roman, Tej, and Ramsey are his Angels, with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s federal agent Hobbs serving as a kind of master general of the operation. You can already spot the too-many-cooks problem here, right? Dom’s in charge … but so is Hobbs. The Rock has proved to be so popular (his box-office appeal FAR eclipses Diesel’s) that his character has quietly become the series’ new protagonist. If there really is a backstage feud happening between Diesel and Johnson over the future of this cash cow of a franchise, you can see why.

Meanwhile, I know I shouldn’t care, but I absolutely have a problem with bringing Deckard Shaw into the family, even on a tetchy, squabbly basis. I know these are big-boy Hot Wheels movies, but Deckard killed Han way back in Tokyo Drift (though we didn’t find out about it until the end of Furious 6), and Han was family, and if we’ve ever learned anything from this series, it’s that family is forever. Deckard killed family. He can’t spend an entire movie playing cute but deadly combat with a baby under his arm and expect everything to be okay.

Of course, you can see why the producers wanted to keep Statham around. He’s a magnetic presence, and — as we learned via his performance in Spy — he’s surprisingly good playing action comedy. The baby was really the icing on the cake.

So now we look to the future. Obviously, with the money these movies are bringing in, sequels are going to keep happening. But the crew is getting too unwieldy, and if backstage reports and social media flareups are to be believed, too full of big star egos to keep on this track. This is a cast list that needs to be trimmed. So who stays and who goes?

Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto: Indispensable. The only movie in the entire Fast franchise that Dom isn’t in — 2 Fast 2 Furious — is by far the worst one. Is he the best actor? No. Is Dom even the most interesting character? No. But there’s also no reason to keep the engine running on this franchise if he’s not around.

Ludacris as Tej Parker: Second-most indispensable! Of the two comic-relief characters, he’s the more likeable one, and he’s recently emerged as the crew’s tech guru. These movies would be a LOT less fun without Tej.

Tyrese Gibson as Roman Gibson: I really, really want to say that Roman isn’t essential, because Roman is annoying as hell. He was also central to the blight on the series that was 2 Fast 2 Furious. But the comic relief duo of Roman and Tej would be lessened by cutting half of it off. That said, if Tyrese keeps popping off on Dwayne Johnson, he might get dropped anyway. One way or another.

Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey: She’s a late arrival to the team, and as a hacker, her skill set overlaps with Tej’s a bit, but this group could use a strong female presence, and if subsequent movies are smart, they’ll beef up her importance to the group.

Dwayne Johnson as Luke Hobbs: He’s probably the most popular character in the franchise, so why is he only the 5th most essential? Behind Roman?!?! But the truth is that Hobbs could and probably should spin off into his own side franchise right about now. He has arguably already overtaken the Fast films, but they should probably go back to Dom for the forseeable future. Spin off Hobbs, age up his daughter, soap-opera-style to have her be in on the action, and then pair him with …

Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw: Hobbs and Shaw made for a spiky, musclebound action comedy duo in Fate, and that kind of reluctant-allies vibe would totally play in a spinoff franchise. One that would have time to let Helen Mirren actually do something as Mum.

Michelle Rodriguez as Letty: This might be too low a ranking, but I always go back to how Fast Five, the best film in the franchise, did just fine without Letty. But you can’t get rid of her. Letty and Dom sell the family vibe the most, now that Brian and Mia are gone.

Kurt Russell as Mr. Nobody: He should be the connective tissue that binds the Fast movies and whatever franchises might spring forth from them.

Charlize Theron as Cipher: Charlize Theron is a great actress and all, but this character never clicked even a little, and it’s best of they don’t give her the Deckard Shaw treatment.

Gal Gadot as Gisele Yashar: Okay, sure, Gisele died at the end of Furious 6, and we all mourned the end of Han and Gisele’s great love, but HOW COOL WOULD THIS BE? Gadot’s price tag is probably out of this film’s league now, but they could afford Charlize Theron, right? And they resurrected Letty, right? Let Fast 9 be the movie where Hobbs and Shaw spin off after the first job and then Gisele comes back from the dead in the surprise of a lifetime. I’m already buying my ticket.

Where to stream The Fate of the Furious