Film / Hobbs & Shaw

Spoilers for all The Fast and the Furious movies preceding this one, including Furious 7 will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Two worlds collide.

Shaw: It's my sister! Family business.
Hobbs: When it's the fate of the world, it becomes my business.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw is a 2019 action film directed by David Leitch (Deadpool 2, John Wick) and written by Chris Morgan, screenwriter of every Fast & Furious film since 2006's Tokyo Drift.

Hobbs & Shaw is the first spinoff of the Fast & Furious franchise, with series regulars Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham reprising their roles as Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw, respectively.

After Hattie Shaw (Vanessa Kirby), an MI6 agent and younger sister of Deckard, becomes infected with a super-virus that could wipe out half the world, Hobbs and Shaw are forced to work together to save her life (and the world) from Brixton (Idris Elba), a cybernetically and genetically enhanced Super-Soldier-turned-international terrorist who needs the virus to fulfill his mission.

The film also stars Eiza González as Madame M, an ally of Shaw's, and Eddie Marsan as Professor Andreiko, a Russian scientist who created the virus, while Helen Mirren reprises her role as Magdalene Shaw, the mother of the Shaw siblings. Roman Reigns (the real-life cousin of Johnson) also makes an appearance as one of Hobbs' brothers. The film is also notable for being Lighter and Softer than any of the main Fast and Furious films, due to it's greater focus on comedy when compared to the main Fast and Furious films (as in, the ones that focus on either Dom and/or his crew and all known associates besides Hobbs and Shaw, which are Darker and Edgier by comparison).

A sequel is currently in development.

Previews: Trailer 1, Trailer 2, Trailer 3.

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Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw contains examples of:

• Aborted Arc: When Eteon frames Hobbs and Shaw for multiple murders and spreads their face around the world, it serves only to set up a comedic scene at the London airport and explain why they don't bring CIA backup anywhere, but otherwise never affects the plot. Hobbs is even detained by airport security and manages to talk his way out of it off-screen, despite being the world's most wanted man. Air Marshall Dinkley even recognizes them, but immediately concludes they are innocent and tries to join their mission.
• Achilles' Heel: Brixton is constantly fed visual real-time information on his opponents' movements, but despite the advantage, he is still limited to his eyesight. He is so focused on what is in front of him that he is easily blindsided. Hobbs and Shaw realize this, and agree that someone has to take a hit so the other can attack from the side, and they switch off repeatedly.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Both Johnson and Roman Reigns get to show off their background in Professional Wrestling, utilising wrestling moves during the third act battle. And while they are not brothers in real life, they are cousins, which means their relationship in this movie is also an example of this.
  • Hobbs' daughter teases him about The People's Eyebrow, the raised eyebrow look The Rock was well known for in wrestling.
  • Hobbs threatens to take a chair, turn it sideways and ram it down Shaw's throat. This is very close to one of his wrestling catchphrases, only the chair had a different destination.
  • Shaw's garage contains a classic-model Mini Cooper, with which he did a job in Italy. Jason Statham, of course, starred in The Italian Job (2003). The original 1969 film featured classic Mini Coopers used in a heist in Italy, but the cars in the 2003 remake are the newer BMW model and not used in Italy.
  • Brixton's eyes sometimes go golden-orange. This is an allusion to his actor Idris Elba's previous role as Heimdall from the Thor movies (as well as all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe), whose eyes are golden-orange.
  • In Deadpool 2 (another film directed by David Leitch), the Merc with a Mouth uses a simple brick as a temporary weapon during the Final Battle. During his reappearance in The Stinger, Locke (another character played by Ryan Reynolds) uses a simple brick offscreen to stab an Eteon mook. It turns out it was pretty easy.
• Action Girl: Hattie proves every bit as capable in fights as either of the titular heroes.
• Age-Gap Romance: Well, romance might be pushing it a little, but there's a 16 year age gap between Dwayne Johnson and Vanessa Kirby.
• Agony of the Feet: A mook tries to stab Hobbs with a tattoo gun. Hobbs grabs the guy's wrist, causing the mook to drop the gun onto his foot needle first.
• Amazon Brigade: Madame M's crew are all young women who are well trained and well equipped.
• Artistic Age: For Shaw: judging by the flashbacks, there's only a few years between Deckard and Hattie. In real life, there's a 20-year age gap between Jason Statham and Vanessa Kirby.
• Artistic License – Engineering: Eteon's secret facility in Chernobyl is concealed under the power plant itself—which is all well and good except that the wide shots of the facility show some very obviously completed cooling tower rows next to the power plant's containment dome. Chernobyl's cooling towers were still under construction when the disaster occurred, with only two actually being started before the area was abandoned.
• Artistic License – Medicine: When people donate blood, they are told to keep their arm still until the process is over, to prevent the needle from moving in the donor's arm. Hattie's running around during the final battle scene with a blood filtration device plugged into her arm to extract the virus capsules, while she goes around swinging an axe at mooks with the arm said filtration device was plugged into, would have torn the veins in her arm to shreds. One thing that may mitigate this is the fact that it's not a normal needle filtering her blood. There appear to be six needles in the device in some kind of clamp-on wrist cuff, which may keep the device in place while doing anything strenuous.
• The Atoner: Shaw tells his sister about his deep regrets for certain actions that he has to make up for somehow. Word of God confirms he's talking about killing Han.
• Badass Family: We already knew Shaw had one but this movie introduces yet another member. With Hobbs, meanwhile, we meet his entire family of badasses in the third act.
• Badass in Distress: Hattie may be an ass-kicking Action Girl, but when captured by Super-Soldier Brixton she finds herself in need of a well-timed rescue.
• Bash Brothers: Hobbs and Shaw by the end, and brothers Luke and Mateo Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson and Roman Reigns) get some time tag-teaming some Eteon henchmen together too.
• Battle in the Rain: During the preparation for the final battle, Hobbs mentions that the northern coast was going to be in a raging storm come morning. The Final Battle with Brixton is a rain-soaked fistfight. It's all the more notable, as when they briefly cut back to Eteon's men and Hobbs' family fighting it's still glorious sunshine.
• Berserk Button: Neither Hobbs or Shaw can stand it when the other gives them anything that sounds like an order, leading them to play a series of increasingly juvenile pranks on each other throughout the film.
• Big Bad: Brixton Lore is the terrorist Super-Soldier after the virus.
• Big Brother Instinct: Shaw towards Hattie, even if she doesn't particularly care for it most of the time.
• Body Horror:
  • Throughout the film, we are repeatedly told that Brixton is “cybernetically enhanced”, but are never shown how. That is, until a scene late in the film where Brixton is being patched up, and we are treated to the sight of Brixton’s back being effectively zippered back up over his metal spine. From the sounds he’s making, it’s a less-than-pleasant experience.
  • The effects of the "Snowflake" virus are not a pretty sight; within 72 hours, it causes liquefaction of the host's organs, turning the body into, as described by Locke, "a bag of hot soup." Thankfully, we're spared from seeing this ourselves.
• Borrowed Biometric Bypass: Played for laughs when Shaw beats up a room full of mooks then has try each one in succession until he finds the one that actually has access to the facial scanner.
• Brick Joke: One involving an actual brick: Locke complains about the improbability of Hattie stabbing someone with a brick (not knowing about super strong cyborg Brixton) when he initially meets Hobbs. Cut to The Stinger and we see he's somehow managed to do the same with one of Eteon's goons. Turns out it's actually pretty easy.
• Breakout Villain: Both Hobbs & Shaw were antagonists when introduced, but were such hits with audiences (and played by two very bankable actors) that they were given an entire movie to themselves.
• Breather Episode: While it might become an Innocuously Important Episode to the main series, it's more or less a break from revolving around the equally intense adventures of the main series involving Dominic Toretto and his crew and more of a lighthearted buddy comedy actioner involving two unlikely allies (Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw) basically being forced to reconcile by teaming up against a greater threat. It's notable for also being the first installment to not involve Dom and his crew (besides Hobbs and Shaw) who probably weren't needed for the mission, considering it's a Spin-Off to the main franchise.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: After a long talk with Shaw, Agent Loeb notes that Shaw doesn't remember beating the hell out of him in a bar fight years before.
• The Cameo: Ryan Reynolds, Rob Delaney and Kevin Hart all have small but memorable roles in the film.
  • Martial artist and stuntman Daniel Bernhardt briefly appears in an uncredited role as an Eteon henchman.
• Canon Welding:
  • We find out here that Brixton had Shaw framed for the murder of his own team 8 years before the events of the film, when their Eteon recruitment went south. It not only explains why he was a rogue operative when we met him in Furious 7 (where it was mentioned the British government had tried to have him killed for some unspecified crimes) but also his implication to Hobbs in The Fate of the Furious that his traitor status was due to being set up (like Hobbs in that film).
  • It also explains Deckard's assertion in Fate that Cipher had "corrupted" Owen, an odd statement coming from someone who'd been a villain trying to kill Toretto and the team a film prior. Here we find out that Deckard was framed for the murder of his team, never truly stooping to the depths his brother Owen did, committing his worst acts in the seventh film out of a deeply displaced sense of family loyalty.
• Cardboard Prison: It's pretty well-demonstrated that if Magdalene Shaw wanted, she could escape the prison she's being held in. She's in there because she wants to be there, comparing it to retirement. The end of the movie implies she and her children are going to break her out.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Brixton flatly introduces himself as "Bad Guy" shortly before his massacre of the MI6 team.
• The Charmer: Despite Shaw's sabotage Hobbs is able to get through airport security by charisma alone.
• Creator Cameo: David Leitch briefly appears as the Eteon helicopter pilot that Brixton throat-chops and shoves out of the copter.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Locke may be a highly annoying Motor Mouth who thinks way too highly of his bond with Hobbs, but The Stinger shows he's a hell of a hand in close combat, with his wrecking an attempt to steal another Snowflake type virus including stabbing someone to death with a brick.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Due to his Super-Soldier status most of the battles against Brixton go this way for the heroes, with them repeatedly only surviving via taking advantage of their terrain (sending his bike crashing into a tour bus, having half his Ukrainian base collapse on him during the truck fight). It's only in the final battle the heroes are able to subvert this by working together to overload his enhanced senses.
• Curse Cut Short: While the "this guy's a real asshole!" is not buzzed out in the film (unlike the trailer), there is one later on:
  Hobbs: Welcome to my island, you mother-
  Brixton: PULL IT UP!
  • In the film proper, the mother is dropped out leading to Hobbs just saying "Welcome to my island, you-"
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Locke mentions Hattie supposedly stabbed one of her teammates with a brick.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Inverted with Brixton, who tells Hobbs and Shaw that the more implants Eteon puts in him, the more humane he becomes.
• Cyborg: Brixton is more or less one as he has cybernetic implants.
• Damsel out of Distress: Hattie is captured by villains multiple times but can usually escape her restraints and take out her attackers on her own (although she sometimes needs the distractions her brother and Hobbs provide).
• Dark and Troubled Past: Both Hobbs and Shaw have one, but in very different ways. Brixton is shown to have one as well, with strong ties to Shaw.
  • Hobbs is one of several brothers born on Samoa to a single mother. His deadbeat Disappeared Dad was a criminal who came back into their lives when they were teenagers, under the pretense of reconnecting with them but really to turn them into his new crew. Luke was the only one to see through his ruse and, when it became clear he was willing to let his sons die, turned him in to the police. He left Samoa shortly after and has never been back since; his brother Jonah is particularly sore about this, saying he abandoned his family.
  • Shaw is a former MI6 agent. He and Brixton are old associates, both of whom gradually became disillusioned with the world they were fighting to preserve over the course of their careers. Eteon approached both of them and offered the chance to Join or Die; Brixton accepted, but Shaw declined, and Brixton was sent to assassinate him to keep him from talking; he failed and Shaw ended up killing him, but not before successfully framing Deckard for going rogue and killing the rest of his squad. Shaw was forced to go underground and his sister broke all ties with him because she thought he was guilty, while Brixton's body was recovered and he was revived as a cyborg assassin.
• A Day in the Limelight: While Hobbs and Shaw have both been major players in the franchise since their debut, neither has gotten much insight into their backstories and both have still been supporting characters in Dom and his crew's stories. This film puts them both center-stage, and gives a lot more information on their origins and what drives them.
• Destination Defenestration: Shaw kicks a crook through a window and dangles him by a silk rope in order to get information out of him with the threat of dropping him.
• Disney Villain Death: When he's "decommissioned" by Eteon, a beaten Brixton deactivates, leading him to fall off the cliff they're on.
• The Dog Bites Back: Andreiko pays Brixton back for his abuse by almost incinerating him with a flamethrower, rescuing Hobbs, Shaw and Hattie in the process.
• Dude in Distress: At about the halfway point of the movie, Hobbs and Shaw are both captured and nearly killed with electric shocks, requiring Hattie and Andreiko to rescue them.
• Embarrassing Tattoo: Hobbs threatens a crook based out of a tattoo parlor with a tattoo gun to make him talk. His lack of cooperation makes Hobbs use the gun on him. When Hobbs gets what he wants and walks away, we see that he carved "I <3 COPS" in pink on his forehead.
• Evil Brit: Subverted with Shaw, who despite his past actions is portrayed as a hero, if not a very pleasant one. Played straight with Brixton.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Eteon has a single-minded determination to further the evolution of humanity, which includes culling all those people it considers weak or inferior.
• Flanderization: The Fate of the Furious had Hobbs and Shaw start as antagonists but eventually get on, becoming Fire-Forged Friends chasing Cipher (the two notably share a laugh over the ridiculousness of each other's threats at one point there). This film instead plays up the two's verbal sparring and bickering from their jail scenes in Fate to the point they can initially barely stand to be in the same room.
• Flashback Effects: Flashback scenes appear to be shot on 8mm film, whereas the rest of the film is shot digitally
• Force and Finesse: The titular characters' combat dynamic. Hobbs is the force and Deckard is the Finesse.
• Frameup: Done repeatedly: Brixton frames Hattie for the murder of her team after she injects herself with the virus. Then, after Hobbs and Shaw ruin his attempt to kidnap her, he has them framed for his attack on the CIA as well. Later in the film it's revealed Brixton did this to Shaw in their past, framing him for the murder of his own team after he refused to join Eteon.
• Genre Shift: The Fast and the Furious started off as a relatively grounded crime drama, with each sequel it got more action-packed and over the top, but stayed relatively in that world. This film is more in the realm of comic books and classic James Bond, fighting a literal Super-Soldier with a metal spine as their primary villain.
• Get Out!: Luke is forced to go to his family, asking for his brother for help. Resentful for him leaving, his brother tells him he wants nothing do with him. However, their mother has final say on the matter, and she says that they will help him.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Brixton is taking orders from a mysterious figure represented only as The Voice, represented by an audio waveform whenever they tap in to talk. Brixton is technically The Dragon, but Hobbs and Shaw thought he was at the top of the chain and are not aware of anyone else involved until the very end.
• Groin Attack: Both Hobbs and Deckard do this in their respective first on-screen fights. Deckard hits a guy with a rope while Hobbs simply kicks his guy in the crotch before uppercutting him into a chair. Hobbs himself becomes a victim of this in his fight with Hattie.
• Hallway Fight: We get two happening simultaneously, as seen here. Hobbs and Shaw both go down two corridors that are connected by a window. Hobbs quickly takes down the Giant Mook in his hallway while Shaw takes down a larger number of villains.
• Headbutting Heroes: Practically a Central Theme of the movie. Hobbs and Shaw just can't stand each other, and aren't shy about exchanging insults and screwing each other over. Despite this, while they still don't exactly like each other even by the film's end, they do trust each other, and that goes a long way towards keeping them both alive.
• Hollywood Hacking: Exaggerated. In the movie are 'net-connected weapons that can be disabled remotely with ease. Becomes Fridge Logic because even the bad guy can be disabled in a similar way, but nobody even considers doing it via hacking.
• Idiot Ball:
  • A second after Hobbs tells the guard how dangerous Hattie is. The guard reacts unprofessionally after the very first taunt. Possibly the whole station as nobody notices anything while Hattie beats the guards and the bad guys go to the roof undisturbed.
  • The mysterious leader of Eteon initially holds it in regards to dealing with Hobbs & Shaw. Instead of letting Brixton and his men eliminate the duo before they can become an even bigger threat to their plans, the boss insists that they be forcibly recruited into their operation. This attempt ends up costing them an entire base, countless men and resources, and ultimately the Snowflake Virus itself.
  • Brixton gets the ball during the ending—even after it is clear that his cybernetics cannot help much against two strong opponents at the same time, he doesn't even try to line his opponents up so they can't attack at the same time. At the beginning of the movie, however, he had no problems with multiple opponents.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Brixton may be a cyborg with super reflexes and a heads-up display built into his eyes, but when he shoots at anyone important, he misses every time.
• Jail Bake: During the ending credits, Deckard and Hattie give their incarcerated mother a cake, which Deckard advises is not for eating.
• Join or Die: Brixton attemps to recruit Hobbs & Shaw when they are captured under his master's orders. It works about as well as can be expected.
• Just Plane Wrong: When a helicopter is trying to gain altitude while chained to a truck, the pilot grunts and groans while pulling back on the main control stick. The clear implication is that a helicopter's ability to climb is in direct proportion to the amount of musclepower applied to the stick, as though the pilot is physically lifting the attached weight himself. In reality, the stick he's holding is called the cyclic pitch stick, and all it does is tilt the helicopter in the direction you pull the stick. Another control called the collective pitch lever, which you pull up on like a parking brake, controls how much lift the main rotor generates, in conjunction with a twist-grip throttle on the same lever (which works like a motorcycle's throttle). None of these controls gets harder to pull or twist if the helicopter is lifting a heavy load.
  • It's probably more of a case of the pilot straining due to repeatedly trying to make the Heli pitch in a panic situation, being more a security-blanket type reaction rather than any actual strain of the controls.
• Lighter and Softer: While the main franchise from which this film is spun off isn't without it's own occassional Comic Relief moments, they are still fairly dark, intense and gritty and emotionally serious films that feature a whole lot of tearjerker moments despite being an action-oriented franchise. Hobbs and Shaw, on the other hand, is more of a lighthearted action buddy comedy that has more levity and goofiness than any of the mainstream films that came before it. That being said, however, the Big Bad is still a fairly serious threat (though not without his Laughably Evil moments, either), the stakes are still high and the film does become more serious in the third act, but the overall tone is more in the line of Central Intelligence than your average Fast and Furious film (which is usually much more Darker and Edgier).
• Logical Weakness: Brixton's cybernetics make him impossible to beat in single combat, but his Combat Clairvoyance is limited to his sight, so people can still blindside him. Hobbs and Shaw just have to coordinate their attacks so that one is always in a blindspot as Brixton attacks the other.
• Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Hattie loses her shoes the first time Hobbs and Shaw rescue her, and remains barefoot until the trio leave London.
• Men Act, Women Are: Despite Hattie showing off combat skills of her own, she gets taken hostage by Brixton thus forcing Hobbs and Shaw to put aside their differences and rescue her. She's captured at other points in the film, but usually ends up rescuing herself.
• Men of Sherwood: The extended Hobbs family and many other local Samoans provide a small army to fight the villains with in the final battle and acquit themselves well.
• Mirroring Factions: A key theme of the film: the opening action scene with the two separately pummelling gangs to find out about the virus shows that while they have different styles they generally go about things the same way. Lampshaded repeatedly, especially by Hattie.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Shaw orders Hobbs not to act on his attraction to Hattie, but Hobbs just taunts Shaw with the thought of him doing the “horizontal hula sexy-sexy time” with his sister.
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: Eteon, a sinister group that vaguely resembles Spectre and HYDRA in scope and overall objectives.
• Neck Snap: How Brixton kills Professor Andreiko.
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: Shaw when he tries to figure out which agent out of a pile of agents he just knocked out will open the door that has a face recognition security system. Hobbs is forced to wait for him and does push-ups in the process.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • In the first trailer Hobbs slams a mook against an elevator Shaw is riding down in and mouths, "Fuck you!" at him. Shaw responds with Sarcastic Clapping. This scene is in the film, but Shaw is instead making a more vulgar gesture.
  • The second trailer shows Brixton broadcasting his face on a large TV screen. In the actual film, this never happens.
• Noodle Incident:
  • Hobbs claims this to be the fourth time he has saved the world. Assuming that his involvement in preventing Cipher from becoming a nuclear power counts as one, that leaves two very interesting adventures unaccounted for. This is likely a reference to his involvement in Fast 6 and Furious 7. Though he wasn’t the main player, he did help.
  • Shaw tries to ditch Hobbes at the airport by giving him a alias that not only is a juvenile pun, but also triggers security. A short time later, Hobbes manages to join them on the plane anyway, with only a brief quip about using his people skills to charm his way out of the mess.
• Orange/Blue Contrast: Used during the split-screen/back-and-forth montage of Hobbs and Shaw's days, with orange for Hobbs and blue for Shaw, in terms of lighting. This highlights the differences between them in personality, daily life, base of operations and the people they talk to.
• Outside-Genre Foe: Despite its increasingly outrageous stunts, up to this point the franchise was still largely confined within the realms of reality. Super-Soldier Brixton and the Nebulous Evil Organisation he works for, however, are straight out of a Science Fiction movie.
• Overly Long Gag: The retinal scan scene, where Shaw tries to bypass a retinal scanner by hauling a dozen unconscious mooks and scanning them one at a time. ACCESS DENIED. ACCESS DENIED. ACCESS DENIED. ACCESS...
• Paper-Thin Disguise: After everyone being framed as terrorists, Shaw hand waves a claim about being able to digitally hide their appearance and create new passports when they travel. While Hattie's in-person disguise is rather convincing (due to wearing big glasses and a brown pixie cut wig to hide her medium-length blonde hair), Shaw's amounts to wearing a beanie, while Hobbs has a mustache and a hat. While Hobbs is given trouble at the airport due to Shaw messing with him, no one is discovered. All the more blatant as Hattie ditches her wig as soon as she's on the plane, which you'd think the aircrew might have noticed.
• Precision F-Strike: Hobbs and Shaw's simultaneous reaction when it's first suggested that they work together?
  Hobbs and Shaw: No fucking way!
• Pun: Shaw decides to give Hobbs a cute fake identity while they're infiltrating the UK airport: Mike Oxmaul. Hobbs gets him back in one of the post-credits scenes, calling the police to arrest him—identifying him as Mr. Hugh Janus.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Deckerd gives one to Brixton towards the end of the film.
  You set me up as a traitor. Turned my own sister against me. Forced me to kill my own brother! You!
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Air Marshal Dinkley mentions that being an air marshal is the best he can do with his skills and training, but he's desperate to get back into the front lines and tries to convince Hobbs and Shaw to let him be of use to them.
• Relative Error: Deckard Shaw catches Luke Hobbs fighting Shaw's sister Hattie and furiously demands he get his hands off her, causing Hobbs to think she's his girlfriend. This naturally squicks both of them.
  Hobbs: Bullshit! She's too good-looking to be your sister.
• Running Gag: "No one tells me what to do!"
• Sarcastic Clapping: In the first trailer Shaw does this when Hobbs smashes a mook's face against the elevator he's riding down in. In the actual movie he makes a jerking-off motion in this moment.
• Sequel Hook:
  • Brixton is defeated, but Eteon's mysterious leader is still out there—and has an as-yet-unknown past connection with Hobbs to boot.
  • In The Stinger, Locke mentions an even deadlier virus than Snowflake, one that eats a person alive from the outside.
• Sherlock Scan: How Hobbs and Shaw peg Dinkley as an Air Marshal. Dinkley himself manages one to accurately determine Hobbs and Shaw's respective professions.
• Shoe Slap: Hobbs' mom throws her thong slippers to keep the family in line.
• Shout-Out:
  • Shaw has a classic-model Mini Cooper, which he says he used for a job in Italy. This is a reference to The Italian Job (1969), which featured bank robbers in Italy making their escape in classic Mini Coopers. Statham starred in the 2003 remake, though the Mini Coopers in that film were the newer BMW model and never used in Italy.
  • Brixton boasts about being "black Superman" when he's trying to get the captive heroes to join him. When Shaw explains his backstory, Hobbs compares him to The Terminator.
  • Locke spends most of The Stinger complaining about the Game of Thrones finale. Doubles as Spoiling Shout-Out.
  • Posters for 48 Hrs., Cobra, and Lethal Weapon 3 are seen at some point.
  • Brixton's hyper-advanced motorcycle that can self-drive and change shape makes some very familiar noises while doing so.
  • In one shot during their time at Hobbs' home, someone standing behind his mother can be seen wearing a hook necklace. It looks identical to the hook used by Maui in Moana.
• Shrouded in Myth: The Wizards, the unit that Air Marshal Dinkley used to be a member of. They're so covert that they earned that nickname from the "magic" they pull off. Hobbs and Shaw are both decently impressed by what they've heard.
• Slap-Slap-Kiss: Hattie, similar to her brother, has an immense disdain for Hobbs at first, but unlike Deckard eventually starts taking a shine to him even if they still occasionally butt heads.
• Smart Gun: All of Eteon's weapons are these, preventing Hobbs and Shaw from using their guns against them. Hattie hacks the verification code to disable all the guns during the final battle, giving the Samoans with their traditional axes, clubs and spears a more even fight.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Nearly every interaction between Deckard and Hobbs is full of this. Hattie sometimes gets involved, as well.
• Stab the Scorpion: After Hattie escapes from some goons in front of their hostage, the professor, he moves toward her with a scalpel but is just using it to cut an escape hatch through a tarp.
• Status Quo Is God: After defeating Brixton and rescuing Hattie, Hobbs and Shaw argue over who really deserves more credit in saving the day.
• Stopped Numbering Sequels: The first Fast & Furious film without a number in its title since Fast Five, but justified in that it's not a main-line entry.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Hobbs and Shaw can't stand each other, but are forced to work together to defeat Brixton. Although by the end of the film they have become Vitriolic Best Buds.
• Tell Me How You Fight: Hobbs realizes Hattie is not the remorseless traitor she is being framed after their fight.
• Too Much Alike: Air Marshal Dinkley proposes that the reason Hobbs and Shaw get on each other's nerves so much is that they're both big, strong men with alpha male attitudes and so take an instinctive dislike to each other.
• Waif-Fu: Played with. Hattie is a highly trained MI-6 operative and can handle any number of ordinary mooks, but trying to fight the equally skilled, much bigger, much heavier Hobbs doesn't go so well.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Shaw's brother Owen, who he was shown to be close enough to in Furious 7 to go after Dom's crew in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge after they left him in a coma, is mentioned exactly once, and never seen even in the flashbacks to Deckard and Hattie's youth - a particular oddity in a film that shows us so much of the Shaw family backstory.^note In the flashback for the Keith Moon a second boy is seen helping set the bomb up on the safe, before running away from the explosion in the opposite direction to Deckard and Hattie, this is presumably Owen, but he's not clarifed as such.
  • Luke and Hattie share a quick kiss at sunset before the final battle. He asks if she wants to do it again, and she says no, but maybe the next sunset if they survive. After the final fight ends, Hattie and Luke have exactly zero scenes together.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: A variant: Brixton is all for killing Hobbs and Shaw after they foil his attempt to capture Hattie in London, but his mysterious superior insists he try to turn them to their side. This means he doesn't immediately kill them when he has them at his mercy - inevitably leading to their getting free and destroying his Ukrainian base. When he's getting patched up after this, his master concedes he was right, much to Brixton's visible frustration.
• Wild Samoan: Completely averted with Hobbs' family. They're a Badass Family but oldest brother Jonah is a bit of a tech wiz, and the entire family works a chop shop converted into a completely legitimate business in hot demand with clients all over the world.
• Willfully Weak: Hobbs manages to track down Hattie and she tries to fight him off. Despite being a skilled MI6 operative, he's still a foot taller and 200 pounds heavier. A few moments makes it seem like she is getting the upper hand using Improvised Weapons, grappling and arm locks, but he is just biding his time letting her wear herself out. The instant he's done he just lifts her in the air.
• Word, Schmord!: Upon being told "you don't save the world with genocide", Brixton replies "Genocide schmenocide".
• Wrestler in All of Us: Not surprisingly, Roman Reigns (as Luke Hobbs's brother Mateo) gets to employ both his signature spear and the Samoan Drop in the battle against Brixton's men, while Hobbs himself dishes out a spinebuster and later puts Brixton out of commission via a German suplex on solid rock.
• You Are Fat: Deckard keeps insisting that Hobbs is fat rather than muscular.
  • Hilariously, Hobbs' mother says she's "skin and bones" and tells him to eat something.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: With a side order of You Have Failed Me. When Hobbs and Shaw best Brixton, the Eteon leader "decommissions" him - shutting off all his mechanical parts and killing him - to avoid his revealing anything.
• You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Brixton claims Hattie won't shoot him when she threatens him with an Eteon gun to the head. As it turns out, she would, but she can't; she needs an identity chip to fire it and doesn't have one.

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♫ Why can't we be friends?
Why can't we be friends? ♫