Vin Diesel Announces Shock Return Of Paul Walker's Character For Final Fast & Furious Film

Vin Diesel made quite the shocking announcement about the final Fast & Furious film over the weekend.

The 57-year-old actor took the stage at Fuel Fest in Pomona, California, on Saturday night, where he offered an update on Fast X Part 2.

 

He was wearing a shirt that read, 'Fast X Part 2 Los Angeles Production 2025' while revealing his three demands to Universal Pictures for the final film.

 

'The studio said to me, "Vin, can we please have the finale of Fast and Furious [in] April 2027?"' Diesel said, confirming the release date.

 

He continued, 'I said, "Under three conditions." First, is to bring the franchise back to L.A.! The second thing was to return to the car culture, to the street racing!'

Diesel concluded, 'The third thing was reuniting Dom and Brian O’Conner,' referring to the late Paul Walker's beloved character.

 

Diesel was joined on stage by his co-star Tyrese Gibson, who shared a video of the fans screaming when he mentioned Dom and Brian O'Conner.

The video shows Diesel adding, 'That is what you're gonna get in the finale! Love you!' he concluded, as the video showed Diesel giving Paul's mother Cheryl a hug.

Gibson added, 'I've got love for every other city and every other country, but this Fast & Furious s**t started right here in L.A.'

The first film - 2001's The Fast and the Furious - was indeed set in Los Angeles, following Walker's Brian O'Conner as an undercover LAPD cop sent to infiltrate Dominic Toretto (Diesel) and his crew. 

Walker was still filming 2015's Furious 7 when he died tragically in a car accident in November 2013.

Production was halted for several months as the filmmakers tried to figure out how to deal with the Brian O'Connor character.

When filming resumed, they decided to 'retire' the character, having him drive off into the sunset, leaving his criminal crew behind to spend more time with his family, set to the iconic Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth song See You Again for a poignant farewell.

They used the late actor's brothers Cody and Caleb as stand-ins and digitally inserted the late actor's face on top of the brothers for the new shots.

Brian O'Conner has never been seen in any of the subsequent Fast & Furious films, though he has been mentioned and he's still alive and well in the film universe. 

That will seemingly change in Fast X Part 2, with Diesel promising fans that they will in fact see Brian O'Conner again. 

It seems likely that they could either use unseen footage of Walker from the previous films or bring back Cody and Caleb Walker as stand-ins with Walker's face digitally added like they did on Furious 7.

The Fast & Furious film franchise has grossed a whopping $7.2 billion at the global box office since its launch in 2001.