When John Cena was announced to be joining the cast of Fast & Furious 9, it would be fair to assume that a lot of people expected him to play the role of muscle-for-hire, as well as filling the void of ‘professional wrestler turned actor’ left by Dwayne Johnson, who had already made it clear that he wouldn’t be returning for the ninth installment.
However, the first trailer for F9 revealed that Cena would not only be playing the movie’s main villain, but that his character Jakob also happened to be the estranged brother of Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto (which We Got This Covered told you months ago). It seems fitting for a franchise that has never cared much for logic to introduce the lead character’s long-lost sibling that has never been mentioned before as a master thief, assassin and high-performance driver with a grudge against Dom and his family, but those kind of narrative leaps of faith are one of the reasons why the Fast and Furious series has maintained such huge popularity with audiences.
Circling back to Johnson, though, and while he may not be involved in F9, it seems incredibly likely that he’ll rejoin the fray for Fast & Furious 10, which is set to bring what Universal are now officially calling The Fast Saga to a close. The world’s highest-paid movie star has plenty of history with Cena, with the two of them facing off against each other in WWE, and in a recent interview, the franchise’s latest big bad refused to confirm or deny anything but did say that he’d love to square off with his longtime adversary outside of the world of bright lights and spandex, teasing that we should “never say never.”
“Well, I will say this, man, it’s amazing the parallels that Fast runs with WWE. In Fast, never say never.”
There are definitely similarities in the careers of both men that came from a pro wrestling background, and while Cena may never quite manage to reach or maintain Johnson’s level of success, the 42 year-old has nonetheless been carving out a decent path for himself on the big screen as an action star, and will next be seen alongside Jackie Chan in Project X-Traction before suiting up for The Suicide Squad.
The Fast & Furious franchise has always been big on fan service though, and if the opportunity arises, there’s no way that the creative team wouldn’t find a way to have Cena and his former adversary take each other on in the next blockbuster installment.
