Fast & Furious: Every Death In The Series Ranked From Least To Most Tragic
Compared to other huge blockbuster franchises, there aren’t actually that many deaths in the Fast & Furious series. That’s surprising considering how much damage and destruction the team causes to each exotic destination they land in.
But it means that the few deaths there are in the series have a big impact on the viewers, whether it's tearjerking because it’s a fan-favorite character, or satisfying because they are one of the deadliest villains in the franchise. Between multiple car explosions, getting shot at such close range, and falling from airplanes, there isn’t much variety in the death scenes, but they certainly vary on how tragic they are.
10 Conor Rhodes
Conor Rhodes is Cipher’s righthand man in Fate of the Furious, and he’s one of the most sinister characters the gang has encountered up to this point. He killed Elena, the mother of Dom’s child, at such a short range and with absolutely no remorse, so Dom did the exact same to him. Dom broke Conor’s neck as easily as he could snap a pencil, and it was the most satisfying death in the entire series. It’s one of many instances that shows just how brooding and violent Dom can actually be.
9 Riley Hicks
Riley Hicks’ murder is far from tragic, and in some ways it’s hilarious. After sparking up a feud with Letty in London earlier on in the movie, the two meet again on the plane in the final scene. They throw punches back and forth, but it goes nowhere.
It’s only when Letty lands on a harpoon gun that the fight finally comes to an end. Letty screams, “wrong team, b*tch,” as Riley had been a double agent for Owen Shaw, and then shoots her with the harpoon. Riley goes flying out of the plane, never to be seen again.
8 Fenix
Fenix’s murder sets a precedent in the Fast & Furious series, as up until this point, it had never been all that outrageously creative with murders, but it’s more than made up for here. After an intense drive through underground tunnels beneath the Mexican border, Dom is trying to avenge Letty by killing her murderer.
It’s a team effort between Dom and Brian, as Brian holds Fenix’s leg so he can’t escape while Dom drives at him in a muscle car at top speed. Fenix gets squashed between Dom’s car and his own car, ultimately getting crushed to death.
7 Johnny Tran
Dom was seen as a force to be reckoned with in the later films, as Vin Diesel beefs up more and more with each consecutive film, but it was when he killed Johnny Tran that the viewers saw how brutal he could be. In The Fast and the Furious, he avenged Jesse’s murder by literally shooting Tran in the back at such close range. It sounds brutal, but it’s totally what the antagonist deserved after murdering Jesse, who was one of the most beloved characters of the series, despite being in just the one movie.
6 Vince
Though some think Fast Five is where the series lost its way, it’s the most important tentpole movie in the series, as the series went from street racing crime dramas to epic Heist movies. But that’s not the only thing that changed.
Characters from the original movie were starting to get reintroduced, and one of them was the Brian-hating Vince. He was the most hated character of the first movie, mostly because he would start unnecessary fights; however, he redeemed himself in Fast Five, as he died from gunshot wounds protecting Luke Hobbs.
5 Elena
Though her story arc seemingly came completely out of the blue, as her and Dom first meet during Fast Five, and then all of a sudden, she is the mother of Dom’s child, her death is still tough to watch.
She is shot point-blank by Conor Rhodes, one of Cipher’s henchmen, and it’s mostly tragic due to the circumstances that she’s in, as she is murdered in front of both Dom and her son.
4 Gisele
Fast & Furious 6 sees one of the biggest climaxes to any of the Fast and Furious movies, as the team tries and stop a plane from taking off. Though the entire set piece is seen as completely ridiculous to some, the are some captivating and heartfelt moments in it.
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The big one comes when Han is holding onto Gisele’s hand as she’s about to fall from their swinging car. But she loses her grip and Han watches the love of his life fall to her death. However, fans should have seen it coming, as Gisele wasn’t in Tokyo Drift with him, which is set after the events of the sixth movie.
3 Letty
In Fast and Furious, the fourth entry in the series sees Letty 'killed off,' and though it was off-screen, there are flashbacks to it. After a speeding car tumbles down a hill, Letty is badly injured, and then she’s shot by Fenix, one of the henchmen of the drug lord Letty was trying to take down. The death hits even harder because she was just trying to do it to clear Dom’s name with the FBI.
However, in the Fast & Furious series, nobody stays dead for too long, and though she was absent for Fast Five, the mid-credits scene in the movie shows Hobbs looking at a screenshot of her, still alive. And fascinatingly enough, Michelle Rodriguez didn’t even know the twist ending until she saw it in the movie theatre herself.
2 Han
Though it has been retconned several times over at this point, as he even shows up in the F9 trailer, clearly alive and kicking, it still doesn’t make Han's 'death' any easier to watch.
The constantly eating, drift racing smooth talker is the best character introduced after the first movie, and though he is killed off fairly early on in Tokyo Drift, audiences had spent enough time with him and got to know him so much by that point. Though he tries to get out before it happens, his car literally explodes into a ball of flames. What makes it worse is that his friends are forced to watch him die without being able to do anything about it.
1 Jesse
As The Fast and the Furious was clearly the most realistic movie in the series, there’s no denying just how grim Jesse’s death was. He was looked at as the child of the group, the one that everyone looks after and takes care of, as he doesn’t know his father and doesn’t always make the best decisions, but he was so loveable at the same time.
And that’s what made it so hard to watch Jesse race for pink slips against Johnny Tran. There was no denying that Jesse was going to lose, as Jesse was in a VW Jetta and Tran was driving a Honda S2000. After Jesse flees the scene when he loses, he gets shot down by Tran on Dom’s driveway, and it’s unbearable.