When we first met Dom and company, they were merely street racers.
Now, thanks to years of facing increasingly high-profile villains, they have literally saved
the world multiple times. From forgettable crime lords to incredible super soldiers,
here are the Fast and Furious villains ranked from worst to best.
After the first movie, Brian O'Conner went on the run to Miami where he quickly made a
name for himself in the local racing scene and reconnected with his childhood friend,
Roman Pearce. Together, they work with the U.S. Customs agency to take down a serious
drug operation run by a man named Carter Verone, who's played by Cole Hauser. And,
well, the villain of 2 Fast 2 Furious isn't exactly a top-tier bad guy.
Not only is his fake Argentinian accent awful, but Verone is relatively small potatoes as far
as crime bosses go. Sure, he's got henchmen and a lot of property, but at the end of the day, he's
just a rich Miami jerk with a dirty cop or two in his pocket. Throughout the movie, his only real
leverage over Brian and Roman is that he continues to threaten undercover agent Monica Fuentes,
who's playing the helpless girlfriend and putting up with his abuse in the hopes of a large arrest.
When the time comes, all it takes is a good car crash and a bullet to the
shoulder to bring the crime boss down for good.
Despite the hype brought on by bringing back the original cast for 2009's Fast and Furious,
audiences ended up settling for another subpar villain — Fenix Calderon.
The character is introduced as Arturo Braga's number one henchman and best drug runner. He's
established pretty early on as an antagonist when it's revealed that he killed Letty and has
every intention of killing Brian and Dom. What makes him one of the lower
entries on this list is that he fails at literally every job he has in the movie.
First of all, it's revealed in Fast & Furious 6 that, after running Letty off
the road and having her at barrel's end, he decides to get fancy and shoot the gas
tank rather than execute her outright. She lives. Later in the fourth movie,
he's tasked with killing the people who helped him run drugs under the U.S. and
Mexico border. That team includes Brian and Dom. Surprise — he fails at that too.
After a climactic chase through underground tunnels, he does manage to wipe O'Conner's car
and is about to execute him when — you guessed it — he fails. Dom crashes into him,
ending his reign of criminal mediocrity for good.
Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift is a strange installment in the franchise. In addition to being
the lowest-grossing film of the series, it's the single biggest headache for the timeline of the
Fast and Furious movies thanks to the death of Han Seoul-Oh, who appears in the next three movies.
On top of all that, when it comes to villains, it's got one of the lower rungs on the totem
pole with Takashi, the self-proclaimed drift king of Tokyo. When young hot shot Sean Boswell makes
his way to the city looking to break into the racing scene, he gets a face full of humiliation
from Takashi before finding himself entangled in a web that includes the villain's Yakuza boss uncle
In the end, the duo agree to a drift race, with the loser being forced out of Tokyo for good.
If that feels a little low stakes for a franchise that includes our heroes running
away from a nuclear submarine, that's because it is. At the end of the day,
Takashi is just a rich kid with great family connections and some driving acumen.
Reyes has the distinguished honor of being one of the many villains in Fast Five,
a film that marks the franchise's departure from the realm of dated
street-racing movies and into the realm of the stunt-based action genre.
"Freeze!"
Reyes is another generic South American crime boss who orders other people to do his bidding and,
of course, fails to do anything to scare Dom's team. Granted, he's the reason that
the disjointed characters from the four previous movies are forced to get together in one setting,
but Reyes himself is not a fighter, a driver, or a particularly clever person.
In fact, most of the movie is spent seeing Dom and his gang straight-up
threatening him just so that they're able to more easily steal his stockpile of cash.
While actor Joaquim de Almeida does a great job portraying the crime boss, once the chips are down
and there are no more people or dirty cops for him to order around, he's a relatively toothless
being who crumbles like a Jenga tower when finally faced with the full brunt of the team.
Kiet, played perfectly by Tony Jaa in Fast and Furious 7,
is by far one of the more interesting antagonists of the franchise. Another
actor who deserves a lot of credit is the late Paul Walker, who clearly worked hard on his
stage combat training in order to look every bit the match for the incomparable Jaa in the movie.
The character is first introduced when Dom's team is intercepting the convoy carrying
Ramsey as a prisoner. Brian manages to get on board the bus, and he and Kiet engage
in an advanced martial arts fight that's only interrupted when the vehicle falls on its side.
Kiet manages to lock Brian inside as it's headed off a cliff, but our boy survives.
They encounter each other again at the climax of the movie where they engage
in yet another high-speed fight. This time, however, Brian manages to get a
clever edge over his opponent and send him down an elevator shaft to his apparent doom.
In a world where Dominic Toretto is constantly portrayed as a step ahead of literally everyone
he comes across, it takes a lot to successfully pull a fast one on him and the team. However,
Riley Hicks manages to do just that in a shocking twist that takes place in Fast & Furious 6.
When the movie opens, DSS Agent Lucas Hobbs is hot on the trail of Owen Shaw. However,
he knows that he needs to bring Dom's team in to successfully apprehend him.
Things immediately go south, and it becomes clear that Shaw wasn't
only prepared for Hobbs and Toretto's plan — he was actually expecting it.
It turns out that Agent Hicks, who was a top performer in the DSS, was working with Shaw
the whole time. Not only that, but the two seem to be romantically involved, as well,
which comes as a surprise to Letty, who kind of has a thing with Shaw herself it seems.
That's why it's not surprising that when Letty and Riley encounter each other in the field, they have
one of the better fist fights of the franchise, helped in large part by the fact that actress Gina
Carano is a former real-life women's MMA fighter. Although she meets her end later in the movie,
she leaves a distinct mark on the franchise by helping Shaw prepare for a new class of hero
by staying a step ahead of them for the better part of the sixth installment in the franchise.
In the hierarchy of threats to Dominic Toretto and his gang,
Johnny Tran is by far the lowest on the list. However, he ranks higher than some villains,
in part, because he has the distinguished honor of being the first Fast and Furious antagonist.
Tran is the leader of a gang in Los Angeles that deals in high-end electronics for cars.
He and Dom previously had a relationship, but they agreed to a territory truce after
Dom slept with Tran's sister. As a result, each feared the other while in their respective
territory. However, while Dom just wanted to race cars and pull off the occasional DVD heist,
Tran had an ever-growing operation that got the attention of the FBI.
Unfortunately, he crossed the wrong team at Race Wars when Dom's friend, Jesse, raced him for pink
slips. Jesse runs after losing the race, and Tran goes off on Dom on neutral territory,
inviting a vicious beating upon his face. Tran responds by showing up to Toretto's house and
murdering Jesse and taking a shot at not only Dom but his sister, Mia, as well. The ensuing
chase results in Tran's death and solidifies the tense relationship between Dom and Brian forever.
In short, no, Tran isn't one of the worst threats that Toretto has faced. However, when they did
cross paths, they were equals, and his death put Dom and Brian on an entirely new criminal level.
Arturo Braga has the rare distinction of being the only villain in the movies, so far,
to return and not be considered an active member of the good guy's team.
He's introduced in Fast & Furious as a longtime heroin smuggler whose
cartel in Mexico has expanded well into Los Angeles. He's first seen by Brian and Dom
when the duo are forced to race each other in order to gain entry onto his team of drivers.
He's the man that pulls Fenix Calderon's strings,
and he's therefore responsible for all the hurt that Letty's apparent death causes.
"Especially me."
However, his reach extends further than that. While he's not the strongest or most talented
villain, he's by far the largest crime boss that the gang had come up against at that time.
His operation is far-reaching, driving alone can't stop him,
and it forces the good guys to join forces with the law in order to take him down.
In short, Braga may not be the most captivating villain,
but he's an important chess piece on the board in terms of raising the stakes
and making sure these characters don't stay battling street-level tough guys forever.
While Deckard Shaw was far and away the main villain of Furious 7,
it's actually Mose Jakande that causes the team so much grief in the film.
Born in Nigeria, Jakande is a mercenary and warlord who's determined to bring his
little private army into the forefront of world dominance through use of the God's Eye — a device
that allows the user to hack and use any piece of technology in a given area. Hoping to capture
this terrifying tech, Jakande kidnaps Ramsey in an attempt to force her to give him the device.
Worse still, he almost kills Toretto when our hero tries to rescue the computer hacker, forcing Dom
to literally drive off a cliff rather than face the slew of bullets Jakande plans to send his way.
The character becomes a further thorn in the team's side when he allies himself with Deckard
after realizing that they have a shared interest in stopping Dom's team. However,
he makes the grave tactical error of turning on Deckard once he's outlived his usefulness during
their climactic battle in Los Angeles. Once Jakande has the God's Eye and control over it,
he decides to try and kill both Deckard and Dom, which obviously doesn't work out in his favor.
While he may not have had a ton of screen time, he looms large over the seventh movie.
The Fast and the Furious movies have a lot of unnamed or downright useless
henchmen characters. Standing out amongst these nobodies with ease,
Connor Rhodes is perhaps the most influential sidekick in the entire franchise.
He's incredibly loyal to the villainous Cipher,
he's one of the men responsible for blackmailing Toretto by kidnapping Elena,
and he's even the trigger man when the time comes to execute her just to prove a point to
Dom. Not only is actor Kristofer Hivju a physical match for the ever-imposing Vin Diesel, but his
character proves a proper foil for him in a movie where the lines of good and evil are blurred.
While Dom is a reluctant participant in Cipher's villainy, Connor approaches his often heinous
tasks with glee. He even attempts to kill Letty more than once in the movie, finally sparking
Dom's rage. Unfortunately, once his blackmailed leverage over Dom goes out the window, he's no
match for an infuriated good guy, and he gets his neck snapped right on the hood of Dom's car.
After squaring off against MMA fighter Gina Carano in Fast & Furious 6,
Michelle Rodriguez's Letty got a sort of title shot in Furious 7 against none other
than UFC superstar Ronda Rousey, who played Abu Dhabi-based bodyguard Kara.
When Letty has to infiltrate a prince's penthouse, she's spotted by the head of security,
the aforementioned Kara. Realizing something is up, Kara pursues Letty to an off-limits area
of the party and has three female guards attack her. Once the three guards are dispatched, it's a
one-on-one fight between Letty and Kara that's one of the more vicious and brutal in the franchise.
The fight ends in a bit of a draw, with the girls tumbling over a banister onto
a DJ's setup, where Letty is able to make a quick escape from the party.
Unfortunately, that's all of the character that fans get from the movie, but the fight
scene itself made up a lot of the marketing for the seventh installment in the franchise.
It was so intensive that Rodriguez later admitted to actually sustaining injuries while filming.
After years of increasingly scary villains putting the team in increasingly intense situations,
the Toretto family finds their way to international acclaim when they're
asked by the American government to help bust a team of similarly
trained thieves with a penchant for, quote, "vehicular warfare."
The antagonists are led by Owen Shaw, a former SAS operative who's spent the last few years as
a mercenary. He's revealed to have been the one pulling Arturo Braga's strings,
showing him how to think of his operation more globally than locally.
In many ways, Owen represents everything that Dominic and his crew have been
preparing for their whole lives. His team is essentially a mirror version of Dom's,
and his ultimate goal is to create something that could literally destroy the world.
Owen hits them not only on a personal level but a professional one as well, making him far and
away their toughest villain at this point in the series. He would likely be higher on the list if
he didn't return in The Fate of the Furious as an ally to the very man who put him in a coma.
If Owen Shaw deserves top marks for having Braga in his pocket, Cipher edges him out
on the list because she actually had Owen in hers. Played by the inimitable Charlize Theron,
she's revealed in The Fate of the Furious as an expert hacker who's successfully
managed to convince the world that she's not actually a person but a hacking collective.
She uses her skills to move both people and governments around like chess pieces in order
to secure herself some massive power, such as use of the God's Eye and a "Nightshade" device.
"You all enjoy that? Next generation concussion grenade. It scrambles your senses."
In addition, similar to Owen, she manages to hit Dominic really close to home by kidnapping
his ex-girlfriend, Elena Neves, and the son he didn't know they had together.
However, unlike Shaw who failed to kill both Letty and Mia, Cipher successfully executes
Elena just to prove a point. Unlike many of the other villains that dare to cross Toretto's path,
she manages to escape without suffering serious bodily harm. And as the series is still ongoing,
it looks like Cipher is set to pose even more problems for our heroes going forward.
A lot of people on this list have been given bad marks for joining up with Dom and his crew
after spending an entire movie trying to end their lives in deeply personal ways.
While normally it's the mark of a bad villain to become a somewhat morally questionable good guy
in the end, it works for Deckard Shaw thanks to the incomparable charm of Jason Statham.
Deckard is first introduced at the end of Fast & Furious 6 when it's revealed that
the accident that killed Han was no accident at all. It was a targeted hit designed to
place a shot across the bow of Dom's family for what they did to Shaw's little brother,
Owen. He then spends Furious 7 on a relentless mission to finally give Dom a run for his money
as the film's core villain. Unfortunately, he's defeated in a car park fist fight by Dom.
It's revealed in subsequent movies, though, that Shaw's reputation as a murderer who betrayed
his country was a false narrative created by his enemies. Although he's quite the badass,
he has a code that he lives by. Prior to joining up as a reluctant ally in The Fate of the Furious,
he was a mercenary for hire who only took missions that would allow him to sleep at night.
In other words, he's a complicated villain in a franchise filled with some typical point-and-click
baddies. Although his recruitment in Dom's family is a little unorthodox,
the films go out of their way to explain that he belongs, and his charisma led to
the first spinoff movie, Hobbs and Shaw, that left very few fans complaining.
Prior to the spinoff Hobbs & Shaw, precious little was known about Deckard other than he
was a well-trained mercenary who you really didn't want to cross.
Although his change from villain to hero is pretty much completed in The Fate of the Furious,
his involvement with a man named Brixton Lore solidified his role as a good guy.
Brixton was in MI6 alongside Shaw early on in their respective careers. However,
Deckard didn't share Brixton's apathy for human life and, therefore, put a bullet in his head.
What he didn't know was that Brixton survived the assassination attempt
and was given mechanical and biological enhancements by a nefarious organization
known as Eteon that turned him into an actual super soldier.
All the other additions to this list are villains in their own right, but Brixton's status as a
literal supervillain makes him far and away the worst threat anyone involved with the team has
ever had to encounter. Even his motivations stand head-and-shoulders above his competition.
Owen Shaw, for example, wanted to unleash a weapon on the world,
but he did it for personal gain. Brixton, however, has fully bought into Eteon's company line about
enhancing the human race and making people evolve into the next stage of existence. He even gets
particularly cross with Hattie Shaw when she suggests that he's merely a profit-based killer.
In short, for a franchise that got its start with street-level villains causing the occasional
drive-by over turf wars, an Avengers-level supervillain is hard to compete with.
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