The concept of “family” in the Fast and Furious series is one of the best things about the series – if not the best thing. Dominic Toretto views family the way that fandom and fantasy heroes view family. He collects people who are deeply loyal to him and go along with his wild ideas, even though they can confront him and call him out at times. It doesn’t hurt that half of the members of la familia are people who Dom has had some kind of antagonistic relationship with at first… starting from day one with Brian O’Conner (literally) being on his case in the first film before becoming an integral part of his life.

I’m writing this as I watch Fast Five and there’s this moment where Mia Toretto and Brian are in a favela in Brazil surrounded by dudes and the atmosphere is so tense… and then the head honcho shows up and immediately greets Mia with a hug and a huge grin. He’s family, the scene tells us… and family is the most important thing to Torettos. 

I’m also reminded of how in Fate of the Furious, three films later, the loan shark Raldo enters the series as a jerk bugging Dom’s younger cousin Fernando. After he’s challenged to a race and then loses, he becomes family (extended) and shows up as one of Dom’s aces in the hole later on in the film and helps Dom connect with the Shaw family matriarch. Or how about Deckard Shaw becoming part of la familiar… even though he was, up until F9, known to be responsible for Han Lue’s death back in The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift. (I’ll say nothing about the Rock’s Hobbs because even though he was introduced in Fast Five as an antagonist, he never felt like part of la familia even before I knew that he and Vin Diesel hated each other.)

An Aside: this is why I think the big thing for this franchise is if the villain from Fast X hadn’t been Jason Momoa doing his best (worst) Joker imitation, but one of Dom’s “family” members. A plot point where Dom’s family is fractured from within – similar to Fate of the Furious and Dom’s “betrayal” of the group on Cipher’s orders, but more depressing – would’ve given Dom a challenge he would have to negotiate with and deal with carefully.