The moment the Fast And Furious movies went from being about people who race cars and steal DVDs to being superhero car adventures, the one thing everyone has wanted to see is Dominic Toretto strapping a rocket to the back of his Charger and launching it into fucking space. They’re already dropping cars of out planes, jumping cars across skyscrapers, and fighting submarines with cars, so where do you go after eight movies other than space? Well, the James Bond series made it to 11 before going to space, but they barely ever connect from movie to movie. Fast And Furious is a proper saga that often makes actual narrative sense and only sometimes requires you to explain that three of the more recent movies take place in 2006.
All of that is to say that Fast And Furious 9, which was supposed to come out back in May but was pushed to 2021 because of COVID, apparently involves the Fast family—dramatic pause—going to space. The first indication that this might be the case came up during an interview on SiriusXM’s Jess Cagle Show back in July, when co-host Julia Cunningham offered a totally hypothetical scenario to Ludacris about a future Fast movie potentially going to space. Ludacris, who has apparently been taking interview lessons from Mark Ruffalo, then made a point to go back and tell Cunningham that the thing she suggested was a pretty clever guess. And then he realized how obvious that hint was. It’s a pretty funny clip:
This week, Michelle Rodriguez stopped by The Jess Cagle Show, and it turns out that she is… even worse at keeping secrets. Cunningham, possibly as a joke, brought up the idea of Ludacris going to space, but rather than shrug it off or feign ignorance, Rodriguez decided to basically confirm that it’s true. It’s also a pretty funny clip:
Here’s the transcript, which seems like definitive proof that at least someone is going to space Fast 9, even if it’s not Letty:
Julia Cunningham: Are you in space with Ludacris?
Michelle Rodriguez: Oh, no way. How did you guys find that out? See what happens? People start talking behind the scenes, man. When a movie doesn’t come out and forget about it, things get out. Nobody was supposed to know that!
Space aside, Rodriguez also brings up that Fast 9 actually hired a female writer who came in and added some dimension to the female characters, which has been a concern of hers for a while now. Back in 2017, she said she would be done with the series unless it found a way to change how it treated women, and in 2019 she announced that she would indeed by returning for Fast 9—which we can now guess is because she learned about the plan to hire a female writer. Oddly, she doesn’t actually name the writer in the SiriusXM interview, and only Daniel Casey is listed on IMDb, but she does say it’s a Black woman who has worked on Westworld and “just gets it.” Fast 9 will be released on April 2, 2021, at which point we’ll finally get to see some actual depth given to the female characters and somebody going to space.