One of the most significant additions to the Fast & Furious cast of characters is Dominic Toretto’s long-lost brother, Jakob, but Jakob’s mere presence in F9 retcons much of what audiences thought they knew about the series. The most recent installment in the Fast & Furious franchise adds Jakob Toretto, played by former WWE champion John Cena, into the mix as a nigh-unstoppable superspy who has a more personal connection with Dom than anyone. Dom is even hesitant to go after Jakob, a stark contrast from the Dom that fans have grown accustomed to seeing.
The story goes that in 1989, Dom and Jakob were members of their father Jack’s pit crew as he raced stock cars in southern California. After Jack is killed in a tragic accident, Dom realizes that Jakob was the last person to work on Jack’s car and holds him responsible for the accident, accusing him of killing their father on purpose. Dom forces Jakob to race under the caveat that if Jakob loses, he’s to keep driving and never return. Dom wins and Jakob is never seen again, creating a long-simmering blood feud that comes to a head when Jakob comes crashing back into Dom’s life by attacking Mr. Nobody’s plane.
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The problem is, that is a major part of Dom’s history and sure to have influenced him in a significant way, yet not so much as an allusion to Jakob’s existence had ever been uttered in the eight movies and 20 years before F9. It’s an extraordinarily large bomb to drop nine movies into a franchise, but it’s now canon. So how exactly does Jakob’s existence retcon the franchise as a whole?
John Cena’s Jakob Toretto Changes Dom’s History

The presence of Jakob Toretto, first and foremost, completely throws Dominic Toretto’s known history out the window. While certain elements of Dom’s past were known, like most of the details of his father’s fatal car crash, it’s never mentioned by Dom or anyone else that Jakob served on that very same pit crew the day that Jack died. This carries over to the aftermath of the incident; it’s established early in the series that Dom nearly beat a man to death with a wrench, but it was never revealed until now that this stemmed from Dom sticking up for his little brother in the face of Kenny Linder, the man who inadvertently caused the wreck.
This sets an interesting precedent in regard to the events of Dominic Toretto’s past and things that viewers might not yet know about. With this retcon, it’s reasonable to infer that Dom has the willpower and the capacity to keep secrets for an extremely long time from even his closest confidants. The only member of the crew that knew of Jakob’s existence was Letty, and with how much Dom treats his friends as his very own family, what else is he willing to hide from them? If Jakob’s existence has been hidden so well for decades, there could be any number of secrets hiding in Dom’s past that perhaps only Letty, if anyone, knows about.
Is Jakob Toretto A Retcon? And Is He A Good Addition?
The addition of the Jakob Toretto character is a massive retcon to the series, as the films have featured plenty of backstory about Dom’s father and the crash that claimed his life, but never until F9 has it even been so much as hinted at that Dom (and Mia Toretto, for that matter) might have a brother. Roman Pearce, a character who has been part of the franchise for almost its entirety, reacts as such, as Dom’s crew is just as much family to him as any blood relatives are, so the fact that this has gone on for so long without being referenced in any way is quite a shock.
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It makes a certain amount of poetic sense that for Dom, someone for whom family is of the utmost importance, Jakob is ostensibly dead to him in every way. The fact that he’s gone for so long without Dom so much as acknowledging his existence emphasizes the sheer size of the rift between the two brothers and almost justifies the aggression of the resurfaced Jakob in Fast & Furious 9. Not only did Dom force him to keep driving out of Los Angeles and out of the street racing scene, but Jakob was also ostracized from his closest family, and for all intents and purposes shunned to a degree few ever experience.
This not only adds more layers of depth and dimension to Jakob’s character, but to Dom’s, as well. For the former, the lengths to which Dom went to hide Jakob’s entire existence is enough to push him to seek vengeance, while for the latter, the stakes are raised to unimaginable levels. For the man who places family on the highest pedestal imaginable, a sin that is punished with those familial bonds being completely and utterly severed is one that he very clearly finds unforgivable. Not to mention, Mia has also kept quiet about her estranged brother over the years, indicating that she may very well have kept quiet for Dom’s sake.
F9’s Other Changes Are Bigger Retcons
That being said, the reemergence of Jakob Toretto is far from the most notable retcon in the series. Most significantly, part of the reason for the Fast & Furious canon’s labyrinthine nature is the continued presence of Han Lue ever since the events of Tokyo Drift. Originally meant to be a one-off character, the consistently strong performances of Sung Kang have led to the series jumping through all sorts of hoops to include Han in more installments, placing 2006’s Tokyo Drift smack in the middle of the chronology of the series, and even going so far as to retcon the death entirely with the events of F9 and the reveal that it was faked all along.
Bearing that in mind, there’s substantial precedent for a universe-changing retcon. It’s worth noting that Dom and Mia never explicitly say their father had no other children, if for no other reason than that it would be a strange sort of non-point to make. But because of that fact, it’s easy to accept that the Toretto siblings might have simply made an agreement to never speak of Jakob’s name again due to his involvement in Jack’s death.
After two decades, the Fast & Furious franchise is a sprawling mythology, with its lore constantly evolving, looping back around on itself, and being retconned in a variety of ways. The addition of Jakob Toretto to the family, especially if he sticks around as long as The Rock’s Luke Hobbs, could be just the shot of NOS that the series needed.
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