Did SPOILER Really Die In Fast X?
FAST X SPOILERS FOLLOW! Before the latest movie in The Fast & Furious franchise was released there was talk about its ending. Series star and producer Vin Diesel had always said that Fast X would be the first of a two-part story that would end the series. Then his co-star Michelle Rodriguez revealed she expected some fans to revolt with how the movie ended. Now that Fast X is here though, we know exactly what this divisive ending really is, and it definitely has fans questioning everything. Central to that is the big question, who actually dies at the end of the movie? Is Dom one of them?
Central to the entire plot of Fast X is Jason Momoa's Dante. Channeling Jigsaw, Momoa spends the entire movie tormenting Diesel's Dominic Toretto and making him confront some hard decisions. Not only does he divide Diesel away from his "family" for most of the movie, he forces him to pick who he'll save and also consider that he can't save everyone (though not explicitly part of Dante's plan, John Cena as Jacob Toretto sacrifices himself to save Dom).
As the movie concludes, Dante reveals that Alan Ritchson's Agent Aimes was working with him all along, with the Reacher star picking up a rocket launcher and firing at a plane carrying Tyrese Gibson as Roman, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges as Tej, Nathalie Emmanuel as Ramsey, and Sung Kang as Han. Fast X comes to a close with Dom and his son Brian standing below a dam that's rigged to explode. His brother gone, his friends falling out of the sky, and oblivion facing him, the movie ends before we really know who has survived and what is left of them.
Why none of the potential Fast X deaths matter
There is however a fundamental flaw with the ending of Fast X and its cliffhanger revelation on who is still alive. Even though the movie wants fans to perhaps consider that a lot of their favorite characters are about to die, the very next scene completely eliminates any tension of this. After the movie plants the seed of immenent doom for Dom and company, they reveal that the person rescuing Cypher and Letty from Antarctice is...none other than Gal Gadot's Gisele Yashar.
Last seen in 2013's Fast & Furious 6, where she was presumably killed after flying out of a moving plane, sacrificing herself to save Han. No mention of Gisele being alive in the time since then has ever come up, and in fact her death/sacrifice was used in the previous movie when it was revealed that Han was alive and had been working for Mr. Nobody. So after Fast X tries to convince audiences that several key characters are all about to die, it then immediately reveals that the only lasting death in the franchise didn't matter at all. Why would any audience member feel any kind of tension about Fast X's cliffhanger deaths when the entire series is committed to making sure none of them actually count or matter.