Cars that are both fast AND furious? A simple concept, but one that 2001’s The Fast and the Furious transformed into a massive, billion-dollar franchise. What began as a light Point Break remake that swapped surfboards for cars—but kept all the unironic man-love—soon ballooned into an epic, globe-trotting heist series injected with a dangerous dose of NoS, one where the concept of family can forgive all crimes and the action set-pieces gleefully laugh in the face of physics. As is the case with most big stories that came from small beginnings, the exact chronological timeline of the Fast & Furious films has gotten a bit complicated.
If you’re new to the series (or just planning a rewatch!) but don’t know where to point the wheel, we’re here to get you through it one quarter mile at a time. Below, you’ll find two options: the Fast & Furious movies in order of chronological events, and the Fast & Furious movies in order of when each film was released in theaters. There’s no “right” way to do it, and it certainly helps that these are some of the most endlessly rewatchable action movies ever made.
Table of Contents
Fast & Furious Movies in Order of Release
Here is the Fast Saga in order of how its films were released in theaters.
The Fast and the Furious – June 22, 2001
2 Fast 2 Furious – June 6, 2003
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift – June 16, 2006
Fast & Furious – April 3, 2009
Fast Five – April 29, 2011
Fast & Furious 6 – May 24, 2013
Furious 7 – April 3, 2015
The Fate of the Furious – April 14, 2017
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw – August 2, 2019
F9 – June 25, 2021
Fast & Furious Movies in Chronological Order of Events
The Fast and the Furious
Directed by Rob Cohen, the first film in the series set the stage by building a bonafide action movie around the culture of drag racing. Set around the film’s release year of 2001, The Fast and the Furious introduced Paul Walker‘s Brian O’Connor, an LAPD officer who goes undercover to take down a crew of carjackers. Things get muddled when Brian develops a genuine friendship with the crew’s charismatic leader, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), and a romantic relationship with Dom’s sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster). This is also the first time we meet vital series mainstay Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez).
2 Fast 2 Furious
The most standalone entry in the franchise, 2 Fast 2 Furious, follows Brian O’Connor to Miami in the aftermath of The Fast and the Furious. The only Furious film to not feature Vin Diesel in any capacity, the sequel’s biggest contribution is introducing Tyrese Gibson as Roman Pearce and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges as Tej Parker. (The story of what Dom and Letty were up to after the first movie is explained in the short film, Los Bandoleros.)
Fast and Furious
This is where things get screwy. The fourth movie in the series is actually the third chronologically and, story-wise, a direct sequel to the first film. Re-teaming Walker and Diesel—and establishing Han Lue (Sung Kang) as a former associate of Dom—Fast and Furious takes place five years after The Fast and the Furious. It’s also the first time we meet Gal Gadot as team-member Gisel.
Fast Five
The film that pivoted away from car racing and directly into glorious nonsense, director Justin Lin‘s Fast Five picks up immediately after Fast and Furious. This is also the first time we meet Dwayne Johnson as the extremely large and spinoff-worthy DEA Agent Luke Hobbs.
Fast & Furious 6
Lin’s third straight entry in the franchise takes place about six months after Fast Five. A post-credits scene introduces Jason Statham‘s Deckard Shaw and changes some of the events of…
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
The third film of the franchise is the sixth, chronologically, taking place just a few months after Fast & Furious 6. (Although the studio in no way planned for this, so some stuff absolutely does not line up and part of the fun is you just accept it.)
Furious 7
Director James Wan‘s Fast film takes place just under a year after Fast & Furious 6 and slightly overlaps with the end of Tokyo Drift.
The Fate of the Furious
Director F. Gary Gray‘s 2017 film picks up just a few months after Furious 7. In addition to a chase scene featuring a nuclear submarine, the film also introduces key characters like Charlize Theron‘s criminal mastermind Cipher and Helen Mirren as Shaw matriarch, Magdalene Shaw.
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
It’s actually pretty unclear when exactly this spinoff film takes place. It’s completely safe to say Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw team up here sometime after becoming bros in The Fate of the Furious, but there’s some compelling evidence—like the terrorist Brixton (Idris Elba) saying he was nearly killed “eight years ago” in 2014—that places it in 2022, which might also mean Hobbs & Shaw happens after the upcoming F9.
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