It’s been proven innumerably that death is not an obstacle that a multi-billion dollar movie franchise struggles to overcome, and Sung Kang’s Han will be the second major Fast & Furious character to return from the dead after Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty was previously thought to have been killed, only for it to be swiftly retconned via the classic amnesia development.
However, Han’s situation is slightly different in that we’ve actually seen him die twice. His first onscreen demise came in Tokyo Drift, but when the series shifted the timeline around a little bit to open the door for his return in parts five and six, it was retroactively revealed that Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw was the culprit all along, setting him up as number seven’s villain in the process.
The various trailers for F9 have all highlighted the comeback kid, finally vindicating the #JusticeForHan movement that’s rumbled along for years. And in a new interview, Kang admitted that his continued involvement in the Fast & Furious world is a once in a lifetime experience, and that’s especially true now that he’s returned from the dead a second time.
“This is a once in a lifetime experience, this whole Fast & Furious journey. How do you get killed off multiple times and keep coming back? Like, come on. This is crazy. The whole #JusticeForHan thing, it made me think, ‘Wow, there are actually people that appreciate the work I did as an actor’. In my own Hollywood struggle as an Asian-American, in your darkest hours, you go, ‘Wow, there are actually people from all over the world that appreciate what I did with that character’.”
The actor also addressed the criticisms of having Shaw be almost instantly forgiven for murdering one of the core crew, with the reformed bad guy going on to play a small but pivotal role in The Fate of the Furious before headlining his own spinoff alongside Dwayne Johnson’s Luke Hobbs.
“Han means so much to me because he was a character before Fast & Furious. Somebody asked me about Han and Shaw. I was like, ‘Wait, what? Shaw is at the barbecue in 8?’. Really, I was so confused. One of the big reasons to come back was I felt like we needed to correct something.”
Fast & Furious is hardly concerned with things like logic and common sense, so it’ll be interesting to see what suitably ridiculous explanation the upcoming ninth installment gives for Han’s sudden reappearance just in the nick of time, but at least it looks as though he’ll be sticking around for the final two movies as well.
