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'Fast And Furious 9' May Return To The Scene Of A Traumatic Event In Dom's Life

Fast and Furious 9 Details
By Ethan Anderton/

It's hard to believe, but we're coming up on the ninth installment of the Fast and Furious franchise. What started off as a throwaway action movie in 2001 has become a muti-billion dollar film franchise that is popular around the world. But the Fast and Furious franchise has never forgotten its roots, especially when it comes to family. Now it seems like Fast and Furious 9 might take us back to an event in Dom's life that was first mentioned in that original movie from 18 years ago.

Here's a video that Vin Diesel posted to Instagram a little while back, chronicling week 20 of production in LA:

In the video, Diesel shows a racetrack as the set he and Michelle Rodriguez were filming on last week. While he's not specific about what that racetrack is, CinemaBlend seems to think it's Irwindale Speedway. Whether that location actually stands in for itself or not remains to be seen, but the mere setting of a racetrack may be all we need to know about this location to determine why it's important. Diesel also says in the video, "You diehards will know where we are. You day ones will know where we are."

That makes it sound like this racetrack will be reaching back into the past of the Fast and Furious franchise, and since he specifically says "day ones," then he's clearly talking about the original movie. And those die hard fans he talked about seem to have figured out why this location is important

In the original The Fast and the Furious, Dom told a story about his father to Brian O'Conner (Paul Walker):

"That's my dad. He was coming up in the pro-stock car circuit. Last race of the season. A guy named Kenny Linder came up from inside on the final turn, clipped his bumper, put him in the wall at 120. I watched my dad burn to death. I remembered hearing him scream. The people that were there said that he had died before the tanks blew. They said it was me that was screaming."

Following the accident, a week later, Dom beat Kenny Linder with a wrench in a fit of uncontrolled rage, though he never intended to hit him repeatedly. The beating resulted in severe injuries to the left side of his face, and Kenny could never race again. Instead, he went on to work as a high school janitor, and Dom was banned from the tracks for life.

Diesel has been posting a lot about fatherhood during production on this movie. While it stands to reason that's because Dom now has his own son, Brian Toretto, to take care of, it could also be because Dom's father is an important part of how this sequel plays out. Perhaps there's a chance that Kenny Linder has a son who wants revenge for what Dom did to his father. Or maybe there's just some kind of flashback sequence for some reason.

Whatever is happening with Fast and Furious 9, we know that it will require Paul Walker's character Brian O'Conner to be back in some capacity. We've personally seen a casting call for the sequel looking for a Paul Walker double to bring back Brian somehow. Plus, the late actor's brother Cody Walker was spotted on set awhile back too. Since Brian is still alive and has a family with Dom's sister Mia, any focus on fatherhood will undoubtedly show some tender moments of Brian being a good father in retirement.

We're still not sure what the plot of Fast and Furious 9 is, but we're interested to see how the franchise starts to wrap things up as it nears the end. Fast and Furious 9 is slated to arrive on May 22, 2020, and now that production is done, we'll have to wait patiently for the first trailer.

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