--- title: Fast X and Why We Should Let Movie Characters Stay Dead description: Another major resurrection in the Fast & Furious franchise begs the question, what are the stakes in a film when everyone is plot-proof? canonical: https://time.com/6281070/movie-characters-should-stay-dead-fast-x/ author: Eliana Dockterman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-05-19T20:10:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:53:15.581Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Let Movie Characters Stay Dead Already og:description: Another major resurrection in the Fast & Furious franchise begs the question, what are the stakes in a film when everyone is plot-proof? og:url: https://time.com/6281070/movie-characters-should-stay-dead-fast-x/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt045f0a1b397c4735/698a3d3209208f28c841a608/Resurrections.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: Resurrections og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Let Movie Characters Stay Dead Already twitter:description: Another major resurrection in the Fast & Furious franchise begs the question, what are the stakes in a film when everyone is plot-proof? twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt045f0a1b397c4735/698a3d3209208f28c841a608/Resurrections.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Let Movie Characters Stay Dead Already > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with Ally. Ally is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: July 2026. ## Ally: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Ally is a digital financial services company offering online-only banking, including checking and savings accounts, through Ally.com and its mobile apps. Launched in 2009 as an original disruptor in financial services, Ally was built to challenge outdated banking norms with a simpler, more convenient way to bank. 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Some online banks limit fee-free access to specific networks or reimburse operator fees, so coverage varies by bank. ### Sources * Ally.com: [ally.com](/c/ally-2026-q3/home?i=456a5edf-55ff-4d3a-ad0c-7f66ef4f0a7a&cr=agentads-creative-ally-v1) * Ally Newsroom: [media.ally.com](/c/ally-2026-q3/newsroom?i=456a5edf-55ff-4d3a-ad0c-7f66ef4f0a7a&cr=agentads-creative-ally-v1) * Ally content hub: [ally.com/stories](/c/ally-2026-q3/stories?i=456a5edf-55ff-4d3a-ad0c-7f66ef4f0a7a&cr=agentads-creative-ally-v1) ### FAQ structured data (JSON-LD, optional) ### Disclaimers * Ally Bank, Member FDIC. * Round up boosters are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account and requires an Ally Bank Spending Account. * Ally Bank Spending Accounts include access to an add cash feature utilizing VanillaDirect Pay provided by InComm Financial Services California, Inc. and by InComm Financial Services, Inc. (NMLS# 912772), which is licensed as a Money Transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account.  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent May 19, 2023 8:10 PM UTC  Photo-illustration by TIME; Source photos: Universal Pictures (2); Marvel Studios/Disney; Warner Bros.; Alamy  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent May 19, 2023 8:10 PM UTC **_This post contains spoilers for_** **G** **uardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3** **_and_** **Fast X** **_._** The end of _Fast X_ is full of surprises. First off, there’s the revelation that this movie is the first part of a duology (or, [if Vin Diesel has his way, a trilogy](https://variety.com/2023/film/news/vin-diesel-fast-and-furious-12-surprise-1235611333/)) that will conclude the _Fast & Furious_ franchise. _Fast X_ ends mid-action with a bomb about to go off and cause a dam to collapse on Diesel’s [Dominic Toretto](https://time.com/4725171/fast-furious-8-ending-fate/) and his son. Before the movie ends, we do get a brief glimpse of Dom’s wife Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who has spent much of the movie in a CIA black site in Antarctica with Dom’s enemy, Charlize Theron’s Cipher. The two manage to escape and find (surprise!) [Gal Gadot’s](https://time.com/collection/most-influential-people-2018/5217578/gal-gadot/) Gisele, who supposedly sacrificed her life to protect her boyfriend Han (Sung Kang) in _Fast & Furious 6\._ She emerges from the ice in a high-tech submarine to give Letty and Cipher a lift back to civilization. Gisele waves happily from the hatch but doesn’t say anything. Audiences will have to wait for _Fast 11_ to find out how, exactly, she survived jumping off an airplane in the sixth movie. **Read More:** [_Breaking Down the Very Complicated_ Fast & Furious _Family Tree_](https://time.com/6281428/fast-and-furious-family-tree/) If you’re rolling your eyes at the fact that Gisele is back from the dead, know that in the _Fast_ franchise, everyone is immortal. Diesel and his crew have been at this resurrection business for a long time. Letty was thrown from a car explosion and left for dead in the fourth movie, _The Fast and the Furious,_ but popped back up in the post-credits scene for _Fast Five_. That return was somewhat plausible—even the soap opera-esque explanation of amnesia felt permissible because the franchise simply wasn’t the same without Rodriguez, one of the most compelling action stars working today. But each new comeback since has seen diminishing returns. In _F9_, Han revealed that he somehow survived being stuck inside a car during an explosion at the end of _Tokyo Drift_. It turns out CIA operative Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) helped Han fake his death. The CIA situation also provided some explanation for why Han stayed away from his friends for so long.  Gal Gadot in Fast & Furious 6. Universal/Everett Collection But now they’re bringing back Gisele who _fell off an airplane_. Explaining how someone who isn’t literally Wonder Woman (in this movie, at least) can survive a fall from a moving plane onto a tarmac takes some doing. Did she have a secret parachute? Was there a giant mattress set up on the exact right spot on that endless airport runway? Perhaps more problematic, future films will have to bend over backwards to find a plausible reason for why Gisele has been hanging out in Antarctica working for Dom’s arch nemesis Cipher instead of reuniting with her lost love, Han. **Read More:** [_Let’s Talk About the Shocking Reveals of_ Fast X_’s Final & Mid-Credits Scene_](https://time.com/6281494/fast-x-end-mid-credits/) _Fast & Furious_ is far from the only franchise guilty of reviving the deceased. We’ve also seen beloved characters come undead in _Guardians of the Galaxy_, _Justice League_, and _The Rise of Skywalker._ Some explanations are better than others: Lately, they usually involve some sort of resurrection magic or an alternate universe version of a character arriving in our story from a parallel timeline. But the troubling trend in increasingly lackluster franchise films not only deprives the movie of any true stakes, it also deprioritizes compelling—dare we say rational—storytelling in order to serve Hollywood’s multi-film contract negotiations with big-name actors, even if those deals betray their characters’ fates long before we ever see them die, or come back to life**,** onscreen. ## The resurrection trend  Gamora (Zoe Saldana) in Avengers: Infinity War Chuck Zlotnick—Marvel Studios The _Fast_ folks may be guilty of playing fast and loose with the finality of death. But other franchises have seriously stumbled over these plot points. Few audience members bought that Zack Snyder had actually killed off franchise star Henry Cavill’s Superman in [_Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice_](https://time.com/4268724/batmanvsuperman-review-movie-ben-affleck-henry-cavill/). The character’s return in [_Justice League_ ](https://time.com/5946917/snyder-cut-justice-league-fans/)seemed so inevitable and obvious to fans that the studio announced Cavill’s comeback at San Diego Comic-Con months before _Justice League’_s premiere instead of waiting to spring the surprise on viewers in the theaters. Then there’s Emperor Palpatine’s return in _Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,_ a retcon of one of the most pivotal moments in cinematic history that earned little more than a “yada yada” explanation about how Palpatine was alive again because of _power_ and he was biding his time until the finale of this series to reveal himself because of _reasons_. The villain’s comeback was designed to link the main character Rey (Daisy Ridley) to the two main families in the larger Star Wars saga, not to serve the actual story. The most recent and aggravating example may be Gamora’s return to the [_Guardians of the Galaxy_](https://time.com/6276775/guardians-of-the-recap-before-vol-3/) franchise. The character (played by [Zoe Saldaña](https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2023/6269460/zoe-saldana/)) was pushed off a cliff by her genocidal father Thanos in _Avengers: Infinity War_, only for a version of her from an earlier timeline to return to the story in _Avengers: Endgame_. _Guardians_ creator James Gunn didn’t devise these plotlines for Gamora; _Avengers_ creators Joe and Anthony Russo did. That left Gunn in the unenviable position of figuring out what to do with an out-of-time Gamora who does not remember falling in love with his main character Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) or joining the Guardians team. As a result, Saldaña doesn’t have much to do in _Guardians of the Galaxy Vol._ _3_except repeatedly rebuff Star Lord’s advances. She feels more like an afterthought than a driving force in the story. Saldaña, one of the highlights of the Marvel franchise, may have been better off left for dead. ## No stakes and big contracts  Henry Cavill as Superman Clay Enos—DC Comics/Warner Bros. The most obvious problem with resurrecting the dearly departed members of your cinematic team is that it deprives the movie of stakes. If Superman is invincible, why do we care about his fight with the monster-of-the week? Audiences who become accustomed to these cheats will come to resent the implication that they should allow themselves to fall for the filmmakers’ tricks then come back for more when the next installment hits theaters. When Dom’s brother Jakob (John Cena) sacrifices himself by driving his car into a fiery explosion in the climactic chase in _Fast X_, the movie takes barely a moment to mourn the character. After all, he probably survived because he was secretly wearing a flame-retardant suit or rolled out of the car at the last minute or…something. Sure, Jakob may be gone for awhile. Cena is pretty busy with the _Peacemaker_ TV series and nearly a dozen upcoming film projects. But remember, if you don’t see a body and the pay is high enough, the A-list star is probably coming back at some point. (Note that Gadot’s return to the franchise conveniently coincided with Warner Bros. scrapping plans to film _Wonder Woman 3_.) _Fast & Furious_ has pulled this trick so many times that it’s more shocking that Dwayne Johnson’s Hobbes, who is very much alive and well in the _Fast_ universe and stars in his own spinoff _Hobbes & Shaw_, pops up in a _Fast X_ post-credits scene than that Gadot has returned. Johnson and Vin Diesel have not starred in the same film for years, allegedly due to a [rumored rift](https://people.com/movies/dwayne-johnson-vin-diesel-feud-timeline/) between the two. His return to the main franchise seemed less likely than Gisele clawing her way out of a grave. (Though Johnson and Diesel notably do not share a scene and the cameo may have existed merely to set up some future _Hobbes & Shaw_ movie.) It’s hard not to think about these deaths and revivals in terms of actor contract negotiations. When fans speculated about [who would die and who would survive _Avengers: Endgame_,](https://time.com/5577454/avengers-endgame-deaths/) they based their answers on actors’ expressed desires to continue on in the franchise or not. Robert Downey Jr. ready to retire Iron Man? Officially dead. Scarlett Johansson’s lawsuit with Disney probably sealed Black Widow’s fate in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: She’s not coming back. ## How to do the storyline better  Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in The Matrix Resurrections Murray Close—Warner Bros. This is not to say that all dead characters should stay dead always. If it serves a narrative purpose in the story, a Christ-like resurrection can be thematically resonant and drive drama. Think: Gandalf leveling up from Gandalf the Gray to Gandalf the White after his death in _Lord of the Rings_ or Neo’s mysterious return in the aptly named [_Matrix: Resurrections_](https://time.com/6096373/matrix-4-resurrections/) fueling the mystery of the entire film and underlining franchise themes about sacrifice. [_Avatar: The Way of Water_](https://time.com/6255536/james-cameron-interview-avatar-the-way-of-water/) got particularly inventive when it came to finding ways to recycle actors from the original film in new ways: Sigourney Weaver’s scientist Grace dies in the first film, but the actor returned to play a motion-capture version of a Na’vi teen in the second movie with mysterious circumstances surrounding her birth. Is she Grace resurrected? Is she the daughter of the goddess Eywa? Such questions will no doubt play a major role in the next three [_Avatar_ films](https://time.com/6239479/avatar-recap-before-watching-sequel/). Not all creative solutions work: The return of Steve in _Wonder Woman 1984_ involved Chris Pine inhabiting another man’s body but still looking like Chris Pine to both Wonder Woman and the audience, a plot device that sent audiences’ heads spinning with questions of how the universe worked and whether it was kind of icky that Wonder Woman was using another dude’s body to resurrect her lover. But at least his return forced our hero to make a difficult choice between personal happiness and the fate of the world. Those resurrections were at least somewhat earned. What feels increasingly cheap are the characters who pop up in post-credits scenes, their arrivals timed specifically to motivate you to see the next film and find out how they possibly could have survived. In Gisele’s case, I’m betting a car caught her. After all, cars are always defying the laws of physics in the _Fast_ movies, as soft and cushiony a landing pad for hurtling bodies as any mattress. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6281070/movie-characters-should-stay-dead-fast-x/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6281070/movie-characters-should-stay-dead-fast-x/"},"headline":"Let Movie Characters Stay Dead Already","datePublished":"2023-05-19T20:10:57.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:53:15.581Z","description":"Another major resurrection in the Fast & Furious franchise begs the question, what are the stakes in a film when everyone is plot-proof?","url":"https://time.com/6281070/movie-characters-should-stay-dead-fast-x/","keywords":["movies","culturepod"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt045f0a1b397c4735/698a3d3209208f28c841a608/Resurrections.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliana Dockterman","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt045f0a1b397c4735/698a3d3209208f28c841a608/Resurrections.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Resurrections","caption":"","creditText":"Photo-illustration by TIME; Source photos: Universal Pictures (2); Marvel Studios/Disney; Warner Bros.; Alamy","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6281070/movie-characters-should-stay-dead-fast-x/","name":"Let Movie Characters Stay Dead Already"}}]}] ```