Fast & Furious 11 is reportedly coming next year, and there are still countless details about the upcoming sequel that remain shrouded in mystery. There’s a lot of pressure riding on Fast & Furious 11 to drive the franchise back in the right direction following the underwhelming response to Fast X, but certain comments from the sequel’s lead star have teased a questionable approach to the movie.

Vin Diesel has recently confirmed that Brian O’Conner will somehow return in Fast & Furious 11, likely using the same special effects and CGI that allowed Paul Walker’s likeness to be recreated in Furious 7. This announcement is definitely exciting for longtime audiences of the franchise, but it also represents a frustrating trend that’s bogging down the most recent Fast & Furious sequels.

Fast & Furious Is Relying Too Heavily On Nostalgia

The Sequels Keep Bringing Back Faces From The Past

For many years now, Fast & Furious has relied too heavily on nostalgia to capture audiences’ attention rather than the fun, creative stories that could be found in the early sequels. While there are certainly problems with 2 Fast 2 Furious and Tokyo Drift, there’s something about the originality and creativity of these stories that seems totally missing from the most recent sequels.

The biggest indicator of this problem is the growing reliance on bringing back old faces, both as loose cameos and returning characters. This trend started with Han in F9, a character who really should have been ᴅᴇᴀᴅ by all accounts and whose return didn’t make much sense, and later continued with even more egregious examples such as Gisele’s comeback at the end of Fast X.

Not only do these returning characters become less exciting with each pᴀssing example, but it also feels like the sequels are betraying the audience’s investment in the story by relying solely on nostalgia to make money. Even Fast X’s villain has an unnecessary connection to Fast Five that adds very little to the narrative.

Diesel’s recent comments about Brian’s return in Fast & Furious 11 is just the latest example of this ongoing trend. Not only does the decision risk ruining Brian’s emotional ending from Furious 7, but there’s every possibility that Walker’s appearance could overshadow the actual story that audiences are coming back to see resolved.

Brian’s Return Won’t Work Without The Right Story

The Character Needs A Clear Reason To Come Back

Ultimately, Brian’s return means nothing if it’s not woven into the story effectively. The reason Furious 7 is one of the best Fast & Furious movies isn’t because of how well it handles Walker’s tragic death and Brian O’Conner’s subsequent departure, but because the story has a real thematic depth that runs deeper than cameos and nostalgia bait.

Furious 7 is far enough into the franchise to have elements of nostalgia, such as the friendship between Dom and Brian, while still maintaining a cohesive story that remains at the forefront of the movie. The writers did a great job of ensuring that Deckard’s vengeance against Dom and Brian was the primary narrative, and these minor details merely enhanced the story.

But in F9 and Fast X, these pieces of nostalgia appear with so much more importance, grandeur, and frequency that it’s much harder for audiences to get invested in the story at hand. This cannot be the case with Fast & Furious 11, especially when it’s dealing with a character return as important and long-awaited as Brian O’Conner.

The other problem with these excessive cameos and callbacks is that, after a while, they begin to overshadow and monopolize each other. For example, Fast 11 already has several major characters to focus on, including returning faces like Gisele and Agent Hobbs. Weaving Brian O’Conner’s Fast & Furious return into this already stacked narrative won’t be easy, and it risks demoting the other characters unfairly.

Fast & Furious 11 Needs To Be The End Of The Franchise

There’s Clearly No Need To Push The Series Any Further

Fast & Furious 11 needs to be the end of this long-running action franchise to maintain its strong legacy and devoted fan base. The sequels are clearly running out of ideas and relying so heavily on the past instead of the future that it simply doesn’t make sense for the story to continue any further.

There’s already been plenty of discussion about Fast 11 being the final movie in this series. At the same time, multiple Fast & Furious spinoffs in development seem to indicate otherwise. Although concepts like Hobbs & Shaw 2 and an all-female Fast & Furious reboot seem exciting on the surface, there’s nothing to suggest they’ll overcome this unfortunate trend.

There’s never going to be a more fitting end for the Fast & Furious franchise than its upcoming eleventh movie, and every sequel that continues past that point would likely feel forced and unnecessary. There are plenty of great installments in this acclaimed action franchise, but they’re slowly becoming overshadowed by the more underwhelming, unimaginative sequels.