Fast X ending explained: How cliffhanger sets up Fast & Furious 11

The action film directed by Louis Leterrier also introduces a new villain, bringing Hernan Reyes’s son Dante to the fore, and leads to a spectacular cliffhanger finale.

And if the ending has left you scratching your head, you've come to the right place! We've unpacked the film's final moments for you below, adding in vital context and speculating on what the Fast X ending could mean for the future of the franchise. It's certainly a film that leaves plenty to chew on.

Keep on reading and we'll run you through the Fast X ending, explain what it all means, and help you make sense of the car-based carnage you've just witnessed. Strap in, because we're about to veer into spoiler territory!

Fast X ending explained

Eschewing the traditional BBQ-and-beers climax, Fast X ends on a cliffhanger that leaves the fates of Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his "familia" up in the air.

The movie is closely linked to 2011's Fast Five, introducing Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa) – son of that film's antagonist, drug lord Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), and a psychopathic terrorist who uses his seemingly limitless resources to pursue revenge against Dom, the man responsible for his father's death.

Throughout Fast X, Dante targets not just Dom but also every single member of his foe's extended family, determined to deliver on Hernan's old credo: "Never accept death where suffering is owed."

Having ruthlessly pursued Dom across the globe and manipulated events to ensure the Fast family are divided, Dante faces off against his quarry again – the pair engage in a long sequence of vehicular acrobatics through the streets of Portugal, with Dom eventually able to recover his kidnapped son Brian "Little B" Marcos (Leo Abelo Perry).

Dom and Little B appear to escape Dante and his goons, but at a cost: Dom's estranged brother Jakob (John Cena), who worked against his sibling in previous entry F9 (2021) before returning to the side of the angels, sacrifices himself in an explosive confrontation with Dante's forces, finding redemption in death.

Dante won't be thwarted, however – he is able to lead Dom into a trap, with two huge tankers operated by his men hemming in the legendary racer's Dodge Charger at the top of a dam. Salvation appears to have found Dom when his team – Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Ludacris), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Han (Sung Kang) – arrive by plane to rescue him, but once again the relief is short-lived, with the craft taken out of the air by a rocket.

Said shot was fired by Aimes (Alan Ritchson), head of the mysterious Agency that had previously worked alongside Dom's crew. Playing with audience expectations (how many times across the series have we seen an opponent of Dom's eventually switch sides and join the Fast family?), Aimes had appeared to warm to Dom having previously sought to lock him up – a la Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) – but it's revealed in the closing scenes of Fast X that he's actually a bad apple and the longtime criminal partner of Dante Reyes.

With nowhere else to go, Dom – with Little B in tow – drives his car off the road and straight down the dam.

The two tankers collide and erupt into flames, sending fiery chaos in Dom's direction, but our hero is able to outrun the explosion – still while driving vertically – and lands his vehicle safely in a lake at the bottom of the dam. (Physics? Where we're going, we don't need physics!)

Being a criminal mastermind though, Dante has foreseen even this eventuality and activates a series of explosive charges attached to the dam. We don't see what happens next, though it seems inevitable that Dom and Little B will be buried alive by the falling debris unless a guardian angel were to swoop in and save them...

That's not quite the end for Fast X, however – before the closing credits, we check in one last time with Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and Cypher (Charlize Theron) who have formed an uneasy alliance after finding themselves prisoners at one of the Agency's top-secret black sites, this one located in Antarctica.

Though the pair are able to escape captivity, they appear stranded in the middle of a frozen wilderness, until the ice erupts and an enormous underwater vessel emerges. Its captain? None other than Gisele Yashar (Gal Gadot).

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Is Gisele alive in Fast X? Gal Gadot return explained

Yes. Gisele had been presumed dead since the events of Fast & Furious 6 (2013), when she fell from the back of a Range Rover travelling at high speed, but here becomes the latest character in the franchise to stage a miraculous resurrection, following the trend set by Letty – apparently killed in Fast & Furious (2009) only to return with amnesia two films later – and Han – who originally met his 'end' in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006) before re-entering the fold, alive and well, in F9.

Han's own return to the land of the living might offer a clue as to how Gisele is still breathing – F9 revealed that Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), the original head of the Agency, had helped fake Han's death, while also revealing that Gisele had previously been an acquaintance of Nobody's.

Presumably, then, some similar trickery was performed by Nobody to allow Gisele to stage her demise. (Why did none of the Fast family, not even Han, seek to recover her body after she 'died'? We're sure Fast & Furious 11 will have a credible answer for that one...)

Gisele's return sets up a reunion with her still-grieving boyfriend Han – providing he himself survived the felling of his plane – and her surprise appearance brings the film to a close, though one final sequence does play out in the middle of the credits. Here's our take on that stupendously exciting Fast X post-credits scene...

Fast X is out now in cinemas. Find out how to rewatch all the Fast & Furious movies in order.

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