Fast Saga: Why Mia Toretto Didn’t Return For Fate of The Furious

Mia Toretto is Dom’s younger sister and a prominent member of his crew, so why didn’t she return in Fate of the Furious? Played by Jordana Brewster, the character debuted in the first film in the franchise from 2001 – Robert Cohen’s The Fast and the Furious. She has appeared in a total of five out of the eight installments in the main saga with an upcoming appearance in next year’s F9.

While she initially stayed out of her brother’s illegal dealings, Mia eventually joined Dom’s crew after getting entangled with his sketchy activities in The Fast and the Furious. She became much more involved in Dom’s crew when he developed feelings for Brian (Paul Walker) – a former FBI agent sent to conduct surveillance on the Torettos who walked away from his honest job to become an integral member of the squad he was supposed to take down. Since then, she’s played important tasks during the team’s operations – although she mostly operates on the sidelines for safety purposes.

Being a part of Dom’s biological and forged family, Mia is obviously an important part of the Fast & Furious franchise. Her romantic relationship with Brian rivals that of her brother and Letty’s (Michelle Rodriguez). Given this, why wasn’t she involved in Fate of the Furious especially because Dom was dealing with a personal issue after his secret child was taken hostage?

To be able to understand why Fate of the Furious didn’t bring back Mia, it’s important to remember how Furious 7 ended. After years of wanting Brian to settle down, especially with their growing family, the couple finally broke off from Dom’s crew to live a normal family life. This creative decision was motivated by the real-life tragic death of Walker. However, Instead of killing Brian in the film series to write the character out, Fast & Furious simply established that he’s retiring from partaking in illegal shenanigans to focus on Mia and his kids. Since Brewster’s character is tightly linked to Brian’s, it wasn’t possible for Fate of the Furious to bring her back without raising questions about Bryan’s whereabouts. The team did tinker on the possibility of calling Brian and Mia for help, but Letty insisted that they keep them out of the issue considering they’d officially retired from the gang.

For her part, Brewster understood why she had to skip Fate of the Furious. In an interview with Yahoo! Celebrity, she admitted it was weird not being back with her other co-stars for the eighth installment of the popular film series. That said, she also knew that it made sense saying “it’s strange because Paul’s not in it. And Mia is with Brian. It makes sense to me that I’m not there.” For what it’s worth, director F. Gary Gray did consider bringing in Walker back in Fate of the Furious via CGI, similar to how they did to finish Furious 7, but they ultimately scrapped the idea, eliminating any possibilities that Mia could play a major role in the film.

After sitting out Fate of the Furious, however, Mia is slated to appear for F9 which will see Dom facing off with their brother, Jakob Toretto (John Cena). Her and Brian’s son, Jack is also confirmed to appear in the upcoming film thanks to a set video shared by Diesel at the beginning of production. Mia’s return without Brian means fans will get some answers as to what’s going on with the character and why he’s not back with Dom’s crew despite Mia rejoining her brother’s team.

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