While Sean Boswell may not have left an enormous stamp on the "Fast and Furious" franchise,
his own story in "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" is actually pretty packed.
From juvenile delinquency to being crowned Tokyo's newest Drift King, here's Sean's "Fast
and Furious" backstory explained.
Growing up, Sean Boswell never stayed in one place for very long.
His parents divorced when he was three years old, and his father — a US Navy officer
— eventually left the country for a position in Tokyo, Japan.
Back in the States, Sean and his mother moved frequently, often due to young Sean's reckless
or criminal behavior.
Their roots are in Alabama, but by the time the audience first meets Sean at the start
of "Tokyo Drift," he's attending a high school in Arizona, his third town in only two years.
At 17, Sean is a loner, interested in only one thing — driving.
We don't know where this love affair with cars begins, but we do know that he takes
to driving and street racing very quickly.
Sean gets a speeding ticket on his first day as a licensed driver and handily wins his
first race the day after that.
Sean finds a sense of calm and contrfol in the act of driving, but it only makes his
life more chaotic.
He gets two arrests on his record before Tokyo Drift even starts.
However, since he and his mother leave town every time he screws up, Sean is used to escaping
long-term consequences for his actions.
As a result, he doesn't seem to care much about the destruction he causes.
One afternoon after school, Sean finds himself chatting with his classmate, Cindy, much to
the irritation of Cindy's football star boyfriend, Clay.
After some teasing from Sean, Clay throws a baseball through the window of Sean's prized
1971 Chevrolet Monte Carlo.
Cindy, who clearly gets a kick out of playing with her boyfriend's insecurities, suggests
that Clay and Sean settle their dispute in a street race, putting herself up as the prize.
The two drivers race through a construction site for an upscale suburban housing development.
Falling behind in the race, Sean attempts to take a shortcut through one of the half-built
houses.
This puts him neck and neck with Clay and Cindy and helps him get to the finish line
first.
But Clay's aggressive driving ends up sending both cars out of control, and all three participants
are injured.
After the construction site debacle, the police threaten Sean with some serious charges that
could finally stick.
However, Sean's mother manages to arrange one last reprieve by sending him off to Tokyo
to live with his father.
Major Boswell sets a few strict but simple rules for Sean to live by — go to school,
come right home, and no driving.
But since Sean has never been inclined to follow rules, he gets involved in the Tokyo
street racing scene right away.
When Major Boswell learns that Sean has disobeyed him, he initially threatens to have him sent
back to the U.S.
But then the Major decides to give Sean one last chance, and the subject of Sean breaking
their arrangement is never brought up again.
Sean doesn't have to work very hard to find his crowd in Tokyo.
The first person to befriend him at school is Twinkie, an American Army brat who knows
about a race happening that very night.
Twinkie takes Sean to a multi-level parking structure where young drivers race to the
top, executing precise drifts to turn tight corners.
There, he encounters another of his classmates, Neela, and doesn't waste any time in beginning
to flirt.
But once again, he butts heads with a jealous boyfriend.
Neela is involved with Takashi, who earned his nickname "D.K.", short for "Drift King,"
for being the best racer on the circuit.
Having learned nothing from his last disastrous race in Arizona, the foolish and headstrong
Sean challenges Takashi to a race.
Eager for the chance to embarrass the American teen, Takashi accepts.
But there are two problems.
Sean has neither a car to race with nor the first idea of how drifting works.
Takashi's friend, the enigmatic Han, solves the first problem, offering up his own highly
modified Nissan Silvia S15 on a lark.
The second, however, proves insurmountable.
Twinkie tries to quickly explain drifting to Sean, but to no avail.
Sean winds up humiliating himself and doing thousands of dollars' worth of damage to Han's
Nissan.
Han, upon seeing how thoroughly Sean has trashed his car, has just three parting words for
Sean.
"Don't leave town."
Sean is now heavily indebted to Han, who we get to know much better in future "Fast and
Furious" films.
In order to work off his debt, Sean begins working for Han, doing whatever the more established
racer asks.
Han runs a garage and has vaguely defined connections to organized crime, though Sean
is insulated from the details of his business.
Sean only needs to concern himself with pickups and deliveries and answering the phone whenever
Han calls.
These are rules Sean has no trouble following.
He begins spending more and more of his time with Han, going so far as to move out of his
father's apartment and into a bunk at Han's garage.
Han is genuinely fond of Sean and has no hard feelings over the wrecked Nissan.
In fact, Han sees the loss of one car as a bargain in exchange for getting to know someone's
character.
The two develop a close relationship as Han teaches Sean that there's more to life than
just racing.
But of course, this being a "Fast and the Furious" movie, racing is still important.
While American street racing came very naturally to Sean, he doesn't hold a candle to the skilled
Tokyo drifters.
Han agrees to teach Sean how to drift so that he can have a chance at a rematch against
Takashi.
Having to essentially start from scratch and really work at something seems to teach Sean
some much-needed discipline.
And the training pays off, as Sean wins his return race against Takashi's lieutenant,
Morimoto.
It's easy to get the impression that it's been years since Sean was in any one place
long enough to make friends.
It seems as though he's long since given up on the idea of getting attached to people.
Upon arriving in Tokyo, Sean is disinterested in talking to anyone since he assumes that
he'll be sent back to the U.S. soon.
But as his stay in Tokyo lasts longer than he imagined, Sean begins to make real connections
to some of his peers, especially Twinkie.
Back in Arizona, Sean once turned a blind eye to another kid being bullied, but he makes
a point of standing up for Twinkie when he's attacked at school.
While Twinkie berates Sean for his interference, it still shows significant growth from where
he was prior to coming to Tokyo.
Sean also spends time sharing in Twinkie's interests, accompanying him on one of his
sales excursions on the streets of Tokyo.
Later, when Sean's feud with Takashi becomes a life-and-death struggle, Twinkie gives Sean
all of his savings to help Sean resolve things peacefully.
If not for this act of friendship, it's unlikely that Sean would've survived to the end of
Tokyo Drift.
Sean also steadily matures in his interactions with Neela.
His early flirtations are swiftly rebuffed, but soon, he begins to make the effort to
actually get to know her on her own terms.
Gradually, the two become real friends.
Sean and Neela bond over their shared love of cars and drift racing but also their mutual
status as outsiders in Japanese society.
Despite being born in Japan, Neela carries the stigma of being the child of an Australian
immigrant who Takashi implies was a sex worker.
After her mother's death, Neela was taken in by the Yakuza-affiliated Kamata family.
But despite being raised alongside Takashi, she's never treated as if she truly belongs.
Even Takashi treats Neela more like a possession than a person.
Sean and Neela's relationship doesn't go unnoticed by Takashi, who beats up Sean as a warning
to stay away from his girlfriend.
This is the last straw for Neela, who finds the courage to leave Takashi and takes shelter
at Han's garage.
By his own admission, one of the reasons Han likes keeping Sean around is to annoy his
business partner, Takashi.
While Takashi is the better connected of the two, Han is older and more shrewd.
As it turns out, Han may also be using Sean to divert Takashi's attention from a far more
serious betrayal — Han has been stealing from the commission owed to Kamata, humiliating
Takashi in the eyes of his uncle.
Takashi comes to Han's garage seeking revenge and is further enraged to see that Neela and
Sean are both living there.
The three of them flee the scene, Han in one car, Sean and Neela in another.
They're pursued individually by Takashi and his friend, Morimoto, in a high speed city
chase.
When Takashi is neck and neck with Sean and Neela and attempts to nudge them off the road,
Han drops back and puts his own car between them.
This helps get Sean and Neela out of danger, but it puts Han in the path of oncoming traffic.
Out of nowhere, he is T-boned by another, uninvolved vehicle and is apparently killed
in the ensuing explosion.
Later, in "Fast & Furious 6" we learn that the accident was really attempted murder by
Deckard Shaw.
And in "F9," we see that Han actually survived... somehow.
After Han's supposed death, Sean no longer has any protection from Takashi, who still
wants him dead.
Sean's father offers to send him back to the United States to escape Takashi's vengeance,
but Sean refuses.
He feels responsible for the mess he's in, and his days of running away from his problems
are over.
Instead, he throws himself at the mercy of Takashi's uncle, Kamata, apologizing in person
for Han's deception and offering a non-violent resolution to his conflict with Takashi.
"We race.
And the loser leaves town for good."
The absurd suggestion seems to amuse Kamata, and the challenge is accepted.
With his own car damaged in the chase and the rest of Han's cars seized by the police,
Sean once again finds himself without a ride for his race against the Drift King.
All that's left in Han's garage is the wreck of the Nissan that Sean used in his ill-fated
drift racing debut.
Sean, Twinkie, and the rest of Han's pit crew join forces to combine the high-performance
parts from Han's Nissan with the chassis of a vintage Mustang belonging to Sean's dad,
creating a new ride that's both American and Japanese.
Following a high-speed race down a precarious winding mountainside road, Sean crosses the
finish line first, winning his and Neela's freedom and the title of Drift King.
At the end of "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift," Sean is paid a visit by main franchise
protagonist Dominic Toretto, who challenges him to a race in honor of their mutual friend,
Han.
Later, "Furious 7" explains that this encounter wasn't simply the result of a friendly visit.
Rather, Dom traveled to Tokyo while on the trail of Han's killer, Deckard Shaw.
Now that the "Fast & Furious" timeline has caught up with "Tokyo Drift," Sean Boswell
is expected to appear more regularly in the series.
He was originally slated to show up in "The Fate of
the Furious," but he will instead return in 2021's "F9," where he, Twinkie, and fellow
Han garage alumnus Earl will be joining the Toretto gang for their next chapter of adventures.
While Sean Boswell is certainly no Dominic Toretto and the shifting timeline of the series
means that actor Lucas Black is now over a decade older than his character, fans will
hopefully enjoy checking in with Sean again.
After all, in a franchise that's all about the importance of family, it's only fitting
that everyone is welcome at the reunion.
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