Nothing we have ever covered here at The A.V. Club has been as impactful as the stupid feud between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson, which started with some little back-and-forth sniping behind the scenes of Fate Of The Furious that involved Johnson referring Diesel as a “candy-ass” and Diesel (plus Tyrese Gibson) getting offended that Johnson was supposedly trying to take over a movie series that they had worked so hard to elevate from a dumb Point Break rip-off into an entertainingly dumb super-spy series. Johnson and Diesel didn’t end up filming any scenes together for Fate, and now Johnson is being left out of Fast And Furious 9 completely (ostensibly because he was too busy with his spin-off Hobbs & Shaw), but now Johnson has posted a video on Instagram that implies that they’ve all buried their respective hatchets and squashed the proverbial beef.
In the video, an extremely sweaty Dwayne Johnson—who apparently started filming immediately after lifting a truck over his head or whatever—thanks Diesel for some kind words he apparently said about Hobbs & Shaw and reflects on the wild journey it’s been in the 10 years since Diesel personally asked Johnson to join up with their wacky franchise. He even suggests that his character and Diesel’s Dominic Toretto haven’t seen the last of each other, implying that he has ever intention of coming back for Fast 10 (or maybe popping up in another reality-bending post-credits scene, which this series has done once already).
That all being said, the weird sweatiness of this video and the many references to Diesel specifically asking the very selfless Johnson (“I just want to make your movies better, guys! Honest!”) do make this seem like the exact kind of thing someone would make if they wanted to be a passive-aggressive jerk and make the other guy look bad. Nothing we have ever seen from Johnson would make us think he’s that petty, but maybe all of his charm is just an act and Diesel was right about him all along? All we know is that somebody somewhere is definitely being a candy-ass. Maybe. Probably?