(Very, very light “Fate of the Furious” spoilers lie ahead.) The “Fast & Furious” franchise is full of villains. They range from street thugs and high school bullies to, in “The Fate of the Furious,” a criminal mastermind hacker bent on firing nukes at developed countries. Here are all the villains of “Fast & Furious” in order of just how effective, frightening and evil they can be.
21. Clay (Zachery Ty Bryan)
The rich jerk who gets “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift” protagonist Sean (Lucas Black) sent off to Tokyo. Clay is a preppy bully throwing around his family’s money, and that makes it easy to really hate him. But he’s ultimately a nobody who disappears into the franchise’s background.
20. Johnny Tran (Rick Yune)
As far as villains go, Johnny is more of a bully with a murdery streak than some of the hardened criminal overlords that show up in later movies. Johnny’s a guy who loses his temper and kills someone who insults him, because he’s actually just a big child. It’s telling that in the big climax of the movie, he’s literally Dom’s righteous wrath.
19. Takashi, AKA “Drift King” (Brian Tee)
Another young hooligan with ties to organized crime, Takashi is mostly just a rich bully who doesn’t like being insulted. He was originally responsible for Han’s death, which made him a super jerk, but he’s ultimately not the real power in the picture — that honor goes to Takashi’s uncle, the Yakuza boss played by Sonny Chiba.
18. Mose Jakande (Djimon Hounsou)
Jakande is the guy secret agent Mr. Nobody is battling through the course of “Furious 7.” An extremely well-outfitted terrorist warlord who Dom says was priming to torture Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) for information about the God’s Eye device, his relatively low amount of screen time means he takes a serious back seat to the infinitely badder Deckard Shaw.
17. Kara (Ronda Rousey)
Kara isn’t really a bad guy, but she is an antagonist — she’s the bodyguard of the Jordanian prince whose supercar hides the God’s Eye chip in “Furious 7.” When the team breaks into the prince’s penthouse (and Dom winds up jumping the car through three Dubai skyscrapers), Letty is pitted against Kara in one of the best fist-fights of the series.
16. Agent Riley Hicks (Gina Carano)
Shaw nearly managed to escape a key moment in “Fast & Furious 6” thanks to Hicks. A member of the Diplomatic Security Service with Hobbs and part of the team going after Shaw, she turns out to be a traitor. Would be higher because how awesome Carano is in a fight, but that awesomeness is negated by her being the absolute worst actor in the franchise.
15. Carter Verone (Cole Hauser)
Cole Hauser just has “extremely, frighteningly evil” on lockdown. Even though Carter is a bit of a bumbling criminal mastermind who seems to hire idiots to work for him, he sells the fact that if you cross him and he catches you, horrific torture will ensue (like that “rat-in-a-bucket-eating-your-intestines” trick). He might not be the most together villain, but he’s definitely one of the most frightening and unhinged.
14. Enrique and Roberto (Mo Gallini and Roberto Sanchez)
Carter Verone’s slightly dopey henchmen are great at looking mean and threatening to put bullets in the heads of Brian (Paul Walker) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson), but that’s about all they’re good for. Roberto gets dealt with pretty ingeniously when Roman pops him out of his car with a NOS-fueled ejector seat, and the heroes manage to take down Enrique together in a delightful beatdown.
13. Kamata (Sonny Chiba)
Yakuza boss uncle to Takashi, Kamata balances being a frightening gangster willing to kill people for disrespect with the kind of guy who honors his debts. He lets Lucas Black’s Sean race for the right to stay in Tokyo rather than be banished, but the fact that he even banishes people from cities, as a gangster, is pretty cool. He’s the honor-among-thieves type, which sets him apart from a lot of the overtly evil “Fast & Furious” villains.
12. Zizi (Michael Irby)
Reyes’ lieutenant is the guy usually holding the reins of any number of gun-toting goons, but doesn’t have much character besides. He’s a decent commander who’s great at leaving his men to die while narrowly escaping. He leads the group that takes down Hobbs’ team and is responsible for the death of Vince (Matt Schulze).
11. Owen Shaw’s Team
The anti-crew is a group of fast-driving special ops soldiers that give a dark take on Don’s family. But they’re largely not too notable. That’s largely because Shaw has no loyalty to them. They’re parts you switch out until you get the job done, he says, and when faced with the family, they can’t hang.
10. Owen Shaw (Luke Evans)
There’s something utilitarian about Owen Shaw that keeps him from being especially frightening. He’s super-capable, sure, and maybe he’s a match for Dom’s crew in a lot of respects, but he’s still just a well-funded mercenary. He’s skilled, but not especially frightening.
9. Arturo Braga (John Ortiz)
The tricksy Braga manages to divert trick everyone into thinking he’s not really the big bad guy of the movie. He’s got a big mouth and a policy of murdering people who work for him, but doesn’t really do much on his own — he leaves that up to his enforcer, Fenix.
8. Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida)
Drug lord Reyes is such a big deal, he basically runs Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro. He’s bulletproof, most of the cops are on his payroll, and he’s willing to murder anyone he wants, including international law enforcement officers like Hobbs’ team. Reyes insane amount of influence makes him a big obstacle, but he doesn’t spend enough time on screen to make too much of an impression.
7. Fenix Calderon (Laz Alonso)
The guy blamed for killing Letty (although he didn’t, actually), he gets Dom’s full wrath for most of “Fast & Furious.” Fenix is the hopelessly loyal Braga triggerman who also has a sadistic streak. He’s thrilled to have murdered Letty, which is why he earns getting t-boned between two cars at the end of the movie.
6. Letty (Michelle Rodriguez)
Amnesiac, mean, and a member of Owen Shaw’s crew, Letty is a major foil for the crew in “Fast & Furious 6.” She’s obviously a blind spot for Dom, but at the same time, Letty’s a bad-ass fighter enough to make you think she might actually put a bullet in a member of the family just on principle while she can’t remember who they are. They eventually save her, but for a while there, Letty’s a formidable loose cannon and a seriously threatening merc.
5. Rhodes (Kristofer Hivju)
Cipher’s enforcer Rhodes rates first and foremost because of a cold-blooded execution he commits in front of Dom. He’s a big, frightening dude otherwise, but while he’s a jerkbag murderer, he doesn’t manage to be much more than Cipher’s lacky.
4. Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel)
When Dom turns to the dark side in “Fate of the Furious,” he’s a formidable opponent. He knocks his team off the road, flips their cars, evades their pursuit, and even acts like he might shoot them. Dom’s dangerous and nearly unstoppable, but nobody ever quite believes he’d really go bad.
3. Luke Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson)
Sure, he joins Dom and the crew before too long, but for a while there, Hobbs is the unstoppable force that could finally be the real end of the family. As a law-and-order strongman, The Rock is a wrecking crew that’s always just an inch away from catching everyone and ruining everything. And when he says he’s coming for Toretto at the end of “Fast Five,” you believe he’s extremely serious.
2. Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham)
There’s something to be said for a guy who legitimately looks like he could kick The Rock’s ass. Deckard’s single-minded willingness to wreak all manner of havoc is overcome only by his badassery.This is the guy who sought out and murdered Han just to send a message. Deckard is the king of “Fast” villains not because he’s the most evil, but because he has the best shot of actually winning.
1. Cipher (Charlize Theron)
Thanks to some creative retconning, it turns out that Cipher has actually been the villain orchestrating things from behind the scenes maybe as far back as “Fast & Furious,” the fourth movie in the franchise. She’s willing to ruin all kinds of lives to get what she wants, and she’s the first “F&F” villain who could really do some damage, and it takes the crew to save the world.
