Letty Ortiz is a vital player in the "Fast" franchise, but her story gets a little twisted
along the way. From her early beginnings to the action superstar she is now, here's Letty
Ortiz's entire "Fast and Furious" timeline, explained.
Long before Letty Ortiz and Dominic Toretto were an unstoppable street racing and thieving
team, they were childhood friends and neighbors in Los Angeles. A mutual interest in cars
helped a mutual crush form, and by the time they were teenagers the two were an inseparable
couple in the street racing world. With street racing success also came small-scale heists
with the help of Dom's sister, Mia.
As Letty and Dom grow up, so do their ambitions, graduating from petty theft to high-speed
highway robbery. And when we meet them in "The Fast and the Furious," the duo and their
crew — made up of long-time friends — have managed to spin up a pretty successful operation
stealing DVD players off of highway-bound 18-wheelers. They're so successful, in fact,
that an LAPD officer, Brian O'Conner, goes undercover to infiltrate their operation.
Letty isn't immediately sold on Brian, but she's loyal to Dom, who forms a fast friendship
with the undercover cop. In the meantime, Letty and Dom both regularly participate in
Race Wars, a local (and extremely unfortunately named) street racing tournament where victors
can win piles of cash or even the pink slips to each other's cars. Letty is a top contender
at Race Wars, and she frequently leaves her competitors in the dust. Eventually, though,
all of Letty's plans come crashing down when Brian reveals his true identity and their
criminal operation is exposed. Brian ultimately decides to let Dom go rather than arrest him,
but his new status as a wanted criminal forces Dom to go on the run, leaving Letty behind.
Letty spends the next five years searching for Dom and eventually manages to track him
down in the Dominican Republic. Letty and Dom pick up right where they left off, both
romantically and professionally, as she finds Dom in the middle of planning a new heist.
It turns out that while hiding out in the Dominican Republic, Dom has become aware of
a problem with the local fuel supply. Due to rising oil and gas prices, there's a serious
fuel shortage among local towns, with prices sky high whenever people are lucky enough
to find it. After a local policeman gives Dom a tip with
details about an upcoming gasoline shipment Dom decides to steal it in a Robin Hood-like
endeavor. Letty throws her hat in the ring without hesitation, and she becomes an integral
part of the plan.
"Furious 7" reveals that sometime shortly after their reunion in the Dominican Republic,
Letty and Dom snuck off and got married in an intimate ceremony, with just the two of
them and a priest.
During the ceremony, revealed in flashbacks, Dom gives Letty his silver cross necklace,
which he gives to Letty as a token of his love and commitment to her. As the priest
wraps the chain of the cross around their joined hands, Dom tells Letty that they, quote,
"have eternity" at that moment. In response, Letty promises him,
"You will never be alone again. I vow wherever you go, I go. You ride, I ride. You fight,
I fight."
Letty ends her vows by promising that if Dom ever dies on her, she'll die with him. So,
pretty much the most "Fast and Furious" wedding vows imaginable.
In lieu of a honeymoon, the newly married Dom and Letty rejoin their crew to go execute
the fuel heist. Letty has one of the more active roles in the plan, jumping from Dom's
speeding car onto the back of the truck and breaking individual tankers off with liquid
nitrogen. Unfortunately, the driver soon spots her, and the whole plan goes quickly downhill
from there. Although Letty manages to free a few of the tankers, she has to bail out
onto the hood of Dom's car before the last one goes careening off a cliff, causing a
massive explosion.
While the crew still comes away from the heist with a hefty pile of cash, the incident draws
the attention of law enforcement, putting pressure on the gang to quickly disperse.
But even though Letty resolves to stick by Dom's side, he realizes that his fugitive
status puts her at risk, and he sneaks away in the middle of the night, leaving her with
a stack of cash and his cross necklace, symbolizing their marriage.
With Dom gone, Letty contacts Brian and begins working undercover on an operation to take
down a drug lord, only to be seemingly killed in a car crash. Dom, Brian, and Mia all mourn
her, but "Fast & Furious 6" reveals that Letty didn't actually die. She was hospitalized
with amnesia, which left her vulnerable to mercenary Owen Shaw, who was sent to kill
Letty but instead recruits her to his cause. Letty spends the next few years as part of
Shaw's team, working as a precision driver and mercenary, taking whatever illegal jobs
Shaw sees fit to assign her. Though her memory left her, Letty's skills never did, and that
makes her a deadly asset to Shaw, and even a threat to her husband when they finally
reconnect.
Although she doesn't recognize any of them, Letty's adventures with Shaw eventually put
her back in contact with Dom and her old crew. Having just learned that she's alive and not
realizing Letty has amnesia, Dom attempts to speak to her, but she shoots him and flees,
viewing him as the enemy. Repeated encounters with Dom intrigue Letty, since he seems to
know more about her than anyone else. But even though Dom tells her some stories about
her past and gives the cross necklace back to her, Letty refuses to switch sides and
remains loyal to Shaw.
While Letty continues to assist her boss in his schemes, Shaw gets angry with her when
she pushes back against his actions. Shaw is a villain through and through, while Letty's
inherent goodness begins to come back out the more she thinks about Dom and his memories
of her. This comes to a head when, while driving a stolen tank, Shaw sends Letty out of the
vehicle to detach a cable, fully aware that he's likely going to end up killing her in
the process right in front of Dom. To Shaw, Letty is expendable, and he's willing to get
her killed solely to get under Dom's skin.
Fortunately, Dom is able to save Letty in a dangerous gamble, catching her in midair
just before she falls to her death. Later, when Shaw and his people are being arrested,
Dom stands up for Letty, claiming her as one of his crew. After realizing that Dom was
willing to sacrifice his life in order to save her, Letty decides to rejoin Dom's crew,
even though she still doesn't remember their life together completely. After defeating
Shaw for good, Letty and Dom become romantically involved again — with Dom's current girlfriend,
Elena, graciously stepping aside and Dom agreeing to patiently wait for Letty to regain her
memories.
After spending some time together and competing again in Race Wars in the hopes of jogging
her memory, Letty finally decides that it's too hard to be involved with someone who's
known her for her whole life while she can't remember any of it. Although she understands
Dom loves her, she can't bring herself to stay with him, knowing she's incapable of
sharing the lifetime of memories he has of her. Until she can remember her past, she
decides to break things off with Dom in the hope that she can rediscover her true self.
Still, even though she and Dom have broken up, that doesn't mean she's left Dom's crew.
She assists him in the rescue of elite hacker Ramsey in a ludicrous plan that involves — among
other things — parachuting in cars out of a plane. Eventually, after completing their
mission, Dom returns the cross necklace to Letty before heading off to take on Owen Shaw's
brother, Deckard — who's made it his mission to eliminate every member of Dom's crew as
revenge. When Dom is injured after defeating Deckard, Letty holds him in her lap, telling
him that she finally remembers everything, including their marriage in the Dominican
Republic.
About five years after their wedding, Dom and Letty finally take their long-overdue
honeymoon in Havana, where they relax, discuss the possibility of someday having a baby,
and, of course, eventually wind up in a high-stakes street race. However, unbeknownst to Letty,
Dom is waylaid during their Havana trip by a cyberterrorist named Cipher, who blackmails
Dom into working for her and lying to his whole crew in the process.
After leaving Havana, Dom and Letty head to Berlin to assist Luke Hobbs in stealing an
EMP. As they drive off following the heist, Letty can tell something is bothering Dom,
but when she asks him if he's okay, he just makes a vague reference to seeing her again.
"You good?"
"I'll see you when it's done."
Moments later, Dom betrays the team, running Hobbs off the road and stealing the EMP for
Cipher. Letty is shocked that Dom would go rogue, especially without telling her, and
she spends time looking sadly at photos of the two of them together while the rest of
the team tries to make sense of Dom's betrayal.
Although the rest of the team sees no option but to accept that Dom isn't who they thought
he was, Letty remains confident in his character, reminding Ramsey of the time that Dom saved
her life. Even though she doesn't understand what he's doing, Letty is sure there's something
more going on that will make sense of Dom's actions... even when the bad guys break into
their base and Cipher kisses Dom right in front of Letty, despite Letty's pleas for
Dom not to betray his family.
Still, Letty has no choice but to work with the team to try to stop Dom and Cipher when
they head to New York City to steal a nuclear football. While there, Letty manages to steal
the briefcase with the nuclear codes inside, but she's chased down by Dom. Letty tells
him that although she doesn't know why he's turned on her, she's sure he loves her and
therefore won't shoot her. It turns out that her instincts are right. When one of Cipher's
men threatens Letty moments later, Dom comes to her rescue, but he still takes the briefcase
and returns to Cipher, leaving Letty heartbroken.
Even after Dom's repeated betrayal, when Letty and the crew head to Russia to stop Dom and
Cipher once and for all, Letty tells Hobbs that if he tries to kill Dom, he'll have to
kill her as well. Letty's faith in her husband eventually pays off once Dom manages to get
the upper hand on Cipher. It's revealed that Dom has an infant son that he didn't know
about with Elena, who Cipher has been holding hostage in order to control him. She executes
Elena to keep Dom in line, but he's able to turn the tables with the help of a rehabilitated
Owen and Deckard Shaw, who sneak under Cipher's guard and rescue his son.
As Letty and the team work to stop Cipher from stealing a nuclear submarine, Dom finally
fights back, jumping into the battle in the nick of time. After saving the entire team,
Dom pulls up alongside Letty's car, and she gives him a relieved smile. Dom then manages
to use his vehicle to drive a missile into Cipher's submarine, but he's caught in the
path of the explosion. Right before he's enveloped by fire, Letty leads the crew in circling
their cars around him, forming a protective barrier and saving his life. Once reunited,
Dom reassures Letty that he never left her, and he never will, something she knew deep
down all along.
Afterward, Dom and Letty return to New York with the rest of the crew, where Dom introduces
her to his son, Brian. As they meet, Dom describes Letty by saying:
"I want to introduce you to the most important person in my universe, one who never gave
up on me."
With Elena gone, Letty will be the only mother Brian knows, raising him with Dom as the three of them become a new family.
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