F9 debuted its first trailer last week, revealing explosive action sequences complemented by a plethora of surprise reveals. The biggest surprise was the resurrection of fan-favorite character Han Seoul-Oh, who seemingly met his untimely fate at the hands of Deckard Shaw at the end of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. The third film in the Fast & Furious franchise, and sixth chronologically, was actually the first time that Seoul-Oh appeared in the series. But according to longtime F&F director Justin Lin, the character actually made his debut outside the franchise.
In 2002, a full year after the first F&F film was released, Justin Lin directed Better Luck Tomorrow, a crime drama centering around a group of Asian-Americans high school seniors who, after becoming bored with their lives and stressed out by the pressures of academic success, turn to petty crime to feel better about themselves. The film featured actor Sung Kang as Han Lue, a tech-savvy thief who collaborates with main protagonists Ben and Virgil to pull of various crimes, which include stealing electronics and a school-wide cheat sheet operation to help students get better grades. The film received generally favorable reviews, earning an official selection at the Sundance Film Festival back in 2002, and was a modest box office success.
Four years later, Lin directed his first F&F film, Tokyo Drift. The film followed an American high school student named Sean Boswell, a character who would later appear in other F&F films, who is sent to Tokyo to live with his father and gets tangled up in the underground street racing circuit. After a bad encounter with an experienced racer Takashi, who has ties to the Yakuza, Sean agrees to work for Takashi's business partner Han Seoul-Oh, also portrayed by Kang.
Both Justin Lin and Sung Kang consider both Hans to be the same character, with Lin stating that Better Luck Tomorrow serves as the hero's origin story, despite the film not being considered an official entry in the F&F franchise. Han was originally only supposed to be a one-off character, which is why he was killed off in his debut film. But with Lin returning to the franchise four years later for the fourth installment, Fast and Furious, Han saw a reprieve and was brought back for the fourth, fifth and sixth installments through the magic of franchise timeline manipulation.
The fifth installment, Fast Five, sort of explains the name change that happens in between films. When Dwayne Johnson's Hobbs is trying to identify the members of Dominic Toretto's team, he identifies Han by the name Han Seoul-Oh. It is later implied that Seoul-Oh is an alias, with his real name allegedly being Han Lue. This fact is never brought up in the rest of the film or any of Han's subsequent appearances, but the two characters being linked has been taken as a fact by fans.
With the end of Fast and Furious 6 catching up with the events of Tokyo Drift, Han's time in the franchise was briefly cut short when his killer was revealed to be Deckard Shaw. Because of this, Han would be absent for the later films Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious before making his return in F9. Interestingly, the only F&F films that don't feature Han as a central character (first, second, seventh and eighth) are the only films in the franchise that aren't directed by Lin, showing he truly is the director's character.
Directed by Justin Lin, F9 stars Vin Diesel, John Cena, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Jordana Brewster, Nathalie Emmanuel and Sung Kang with Helen Mirren, Charlize Theron and Cardi B. The film arrives in theaters May 22.