Summary

• The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift has a confusing place in the franchise's larger timeline.
• Sung Kang's Han Lue bridged the gap between Tokyo Drift and later entries through multiple films.
• Despite Han's death in Tokyo Drift, he returns in subsequent films, including F9 and Fast X.

The Fast and Furious movies are a series of quintessential blockbuster movies, focusing mainly on cool cars and over-the-top action sequences. However, while the franchise's stories tend to be on the lighter side of depth, that hasn't kept one plot element from becoming incredibly confusing to some people. The Fast and Furious movies aren't in order, which has left a lot of fans wondering how Tokyo Drift relates to the story.

As it turns out, Universal wanted to focus on a high school character and setting. It was during this time Han was first introduced to the franchise. His character is remembered for his death in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but somehow, Han returned as a main cast member in subsequent films. Here's how the timeline of the franchise allowed Han to expand his role, despite the character meeting an untimely end.

Updated by Jordan Iacobucci on February 26, 2024: The Fast and Furious franchise is nearing the end of the road, with an eleventh and supposedly final installment set to hit theaters in 2025. While the Fast Saga isn't exactly something that takes a lot of brain power to enjoy, its timeline gets particularly perplexing around its third installment. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift has a bizarre place in the franchise's timeline, not quite fitting in between the second and fourth installments.

Why Did They Make Tokyo Drift?

• The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift is the first film in the franchise to be directed by Justin Lin. Lin went on to direct Fast & Furious, Fast Five, Fast and Furious 6, and F9: The Fast Saga.

Tokyo Drift was the Fast & Furious franchise's third entry and the first directed by Justin Lin. However, it made viewers question how Tokyo Drift relates to Fast and Furious in the first place. It was based around characters seemingly unrelated to the main crew of the first two movies, mostly because the studio couldn't get any of them to be involved in the project. For this reason, it was retooled to make it stand out more, focusing more on racing than previous entries.

One of Tokyo Drift's more notable characters is Sung Kang's Han Lue, who first appeared in director Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow. As its name would suggest, it involves the illegal Japanese sport of drift racing, which Han and his friends are involved in. However, towards the climax of Tokyo Drift, Han is able to outmaneuver the antagonistic Takashi, only to be T-boned by another oncoming vehicle. The film concludes with his friends honoring him and posthumously revealing he was a member of Dom Toretto's crew.

Fast & Furious and Fast Five Take Place Before Tokyo Drift

• Vin Diesel makes a cameo appearance as Dominic Torretto in the final scene of Tokyo Drift.

Despite Han's death in Tokyo Drift, he returned as a main member of Dom's crew in the franchise's fourth and fifth entry. This likely confused audiences at first, but his role was meant to bridge the gap between the off-shoot third move and 2009's Fast & Furious, which takes place before Tokyo Drift. Han's roles in Fast & Furious and Fast Five were small compared to Tokyo Drift, but they helped establish why Dominic Toretto considered him part of his family.

How Han Returns After His Death

• Furious 7 is currently the highest-rated Fast and Furious movie on Rotten Tomatoes, with a Freshness Rating of 81%.

Han would return to prominence in Fast & Furious 6, which, chronologically, is still a prequel to Tokyo Drift. He begins the movie in a relationship with Gal Gadot's Gisele Yashar before her death, which also precedes Han's own. But in the movie's mid-credits scene, Han's death in Tokyo Drift is shown again, and the franchise finally catches up to the events of the third film. It's what else is shown in this scene, however, that sheds more light on what really happened to Han.

After striking Han's car, a character played by Jason Statham enters the frame and cryptically calls Dom. This plot thread is immediately picked up in the next film, Furious 7, when Dom's house is destroyed around the same time Han is killed. It's revealed that this is the doing of the vengeful Deckard Shaw, who wants revenge for what Dom's crew did to his brother, Owen. Domeventually takes out Deckard, but despite him killing a member of the crew, the villain joins forces with them in Fate of the Furious.

As many now know, however, Han returns to the franchise once again in F9 and Fast X. This means his tragic death in Tokyo Drift wasn't quite what it seemed, and that the character gets another chance to work alongside Dom's crew in the present. Hopefully, he'll get to stick around this time as the Fast and Furious franchise continues to grow.

Will The Tokyo Drift Crew Return For Fast 11?

• Fast and Furious 11 is set to bring the long-running franchise to an end. The film is expected to hit theaters on April 4, 2025.

The cast of Tokyo Drift differs from that of the main Fast and Furious movies, starring characters like Lucas Black's Sean Boswell, Bow Wow's Twinkie, and Jason Tobin's Earl. However, these characters have rarely shown up in succeeding Fast and Furious entries. Sean Boswell made a cameo appearance in Furious 7 in a scene that picks up shortly after Dominic Toretto's cameo in Tokyo Drift. In the aftermath of Han's death, Sean does what he can to help Dom avenge him. Later on, Sean, Earl, and Twinkie return in F9: The Fast Saga, where audiences learned they've begun studying astrophysics and help send Tej Parker and Roman Pearce into space.

While audiences still know little about Fast and Furious 11, it is possible the Tokyo Drift crew will return for the upcoming finale. After Dom's catastrophic defeat at the hands of Jason Momoa's villain, Dante Reyes, the crew will need all the help they can get to strike back. After Sean, Earl, and Twinkie managed to shoot a car into space, there is little else they couldn't do to help Dom's crew defeat Dante before he wreaks more havoc on the world. In fact, they may be the deciding factor in the ongoing war against Reyes.

Tokyo Drift may have a confusing timeline in relation to the other Fast and Furious movies, but the franchise has worked hard to graft its events into the larger storyline. With one final movie set to mark the end for Dom and his crew, now is the perfect time to revisit the events and characters of Tokyo Drift one last time.