The Fast and Furious series is a generally great one for several reasons. First and foremost is the family. Yes, that word gets memed a lot, but Dom’s (Vin Diesel) team that he’s built up over the course of nearly a dozen movies across 20+ years really does feel like a family at this point.

They also get up to some wild stuff, with the increasingly ridiculous action scenes (it’s a series constantly trying to top what came before) being another thing that makes Fast and Furious great.

Perhaps below those reasons come the villains of the series. Some are forgettable, some only stay villains temporarily, but then some others make an impression. Here, if a character is introduced as a villain, they can count for present purposes.

Disqualifying villains who never turned good would mean there’d be a pretty small stack to choose from, since most – but definitely not all – of the best villains in the series started as antagonists, but then became either members or allies of the family.

10. Takashi (Brian Tee)

Introduced in: ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’ (2006)

Image via Universal Pictures

The third movie in the series is a bit of an odd one, taking place almost entirely in Tokyo and being called, appropriately enough, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

The characters here are (purportedly) younger than those in the first two movies, and the film is largely a showcase of how cool street racing can be when it’s around a city as colorful, bustling, and stylish as Tokyo.

Besides Han (Sung Kang), most characters here don’t make the greatest of impressions. Takashi (aka D.K.) (Brian Tee) is the closest thing to a main villain here, though he’s pretty generic.

However, he does have links to the yakuza, which makes him a bit more dangerous, and his uncle ends up being played by the legendary Sonny Chiba, so that’s kind of cool; that gives Takashi a reason to exist and be at least a little respected.

9. Shaw (Luke Evans)

Introduced in: ‘Fast & Furious 6’ (2013)

Owen

Image via Universal Pictures

To be perfectly honest, Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) is a bit lame, and is overshadowed by another Shaw who enters Fast & Furious 6 in a memorable mid-credits scene.

Evans is a good actor and deserved better, but Owen might underwhelm because the more interesting conflict in Fast & Furious 6 is the re-emergence of Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who’d seemingly died in the fourth movie, Fast & Furious.

She has to remember who she is, and she clashes with her former allies. There are reasons for that, so Letty can’t quite be considered the villain here, but she’s a good source of drama within the film.

As a more traditional villain, Owen Shaw is just okay, but he feels, in hindsight, like he exists just to get his angrier and overall more interesting brother (hey, more family!) into the series.

8. Jakob Toretto (John Cena)

Introduced in: ‘F9’ (2021)

Image via Universal Pictures

Speaking of brothers and family, Jakob Toretto (John Cena) awkwardly stumbles into F9, and there was at least an idea here that could’ve worked.

Buying Vin Diesel and John Cena as relatives is tricky, sure, but Cena’s been on a good run acting-wise lately, and he’s definitely physically imposing enough to be a good bad guy here. There’s some physical menace to his character.

He’s also, sadly, a bit boring, and ends up being one-note as a villain, though still a bit more interesting than the guy pulling the strings in F9, Otto.

As a character, though, Jakob became a lot more interesting and endearing when he rocked up in Fast X, acting like a completely different person. He became part of the family well and truly, and was a key part in what’s arguably that film’s most emotional sequence.

7. Cipher (Charlize Theron)

Introduced in: ‘The Fate of the Furious’ (2017)

Image via Universal Pictures

The Fast and Furious series has a good many female heroes who kick as much ass as the men, but it’s a series that’s fairly light on female villains.

Maybe the Shaws’ mother, played by Helen Mirren… but even then, it’s her sons who cause the most chaos. So, the main female villain is ultimately Charlize Theron: a woman known as Cipher, who’s introduced in the eighth film, 2017’s The Fate of the Furious.

Like with Owen Shaw and Letty, the more interesting conflict in this eighth movie involves the usually heroic and lovable Dom, and the idea of whether he really has turned his back on his precious family. Cipher orchestrates that, largely through blackmailing Dom, and she does some other pretty awful things throughout.

F9 also sees her in a supporting villainous role. Unlike some other villains, she’s not been entirely forgiven, but some appearances since – like in Fast X – have suggested she might be a little more of an anti-hero now, rather than a full-on villain the way she was at first.

6. Carter Verone (Cole Hauser)

Introduced in: ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ (2003)

Image via Universal Pictures

Things start getting good here… or do things start getting bad here? Uh, what should be said is that here, the villains start getting better, partly because they do worse and/or more threatening things.

2 Fast 2 Furious, while as campy as it is underrated, also happens to have a particularly menacing central villain: a drug lord named Carter Verone (Cole Hauser).

Brian (Paul Walker) and eventual series mainstay Roman (Tyrese Gibson) are the unlikely duo who have to try and take him down, competing with each other over various things while being ultimately bonded by a common goal.

And Verone is someone worth taking seriously, given how powerful he is… and there’s also the scene where he tortures someone by threatening to force a rat to scratch its way through to the victim’s insides using heat.

Yeah, that scene is mortifying, and kind of so much darker than most other things in the series. Carter Verone has got to be considered, at the very least, a solid series villain for that moment alone.​​​

5.Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida)

Introduced in: ‘Fast Five’ (2011)

Image via Universal Pictures

In Fast Five, street racing well and truly took a backseat to the more heist-heavy action sequences the series would become known for, and that evolution required a new sort of villain.

Of all the villains in the first five movies, Hernan Reyes (Joaquin de Almeida) is quite comfortably the best, because you understand the power he holds over Rio de Janeiro early on, and witness his general ruthlessness toward his enemies.

So, when the family goes up against him to try and steal a bunch of his money, they feel like they’re in genuine danger, enabling Fast Five to feel more suspenseful and explosive than previous entries in the series.

Reyes does share the spotlight in this fifth movie with another memorable antagonist of sorts, but he’s a great character here, even with his limited screen time… plus, his defeat does ultimately lead to the emergence of a greater threat many years later.

4. Brixton Lore (Idris Elba)

Introduced in: ‘Hobbs & Shaw’ (2019)

Image via Universal Pictures

How are you going to look past a character called Brixton Lore, especially when Brixton Lore is played by the legendary Idris Elba? Okay, Idris Elba was in Cats… but he’s still legendary.

 The Wire and Pacific Rim counteract Cats. End of story. Also, he’s great in the Fast and Furious spin-off that was Hobbs & Shaw, understanding the goofier tone of this one perfectly and making the most of how heightened things got here.

Hobbs & Shaw is a buddy movie featuring two unlikely side characters from the main series, and in it, they’re forced to confront Brixton Lore, who’s a former MI6 agent with cybernetic enhancements.

His mere presence puts the Fast and Furious series in a borderline science fiction world.

Also, Elba chews scenery while being charismatic, and commanding the screen in a physically imposing way when he needs to. All in all, he’s actually a very underrated antagonist.

3Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson)

Introduced in: ‘Fast Five’ (2011)

Image via Universal Pictures

So, as mentioned before, Fast Five was a step-up in terms of quality and action for the Fast and Furious series, and, love him or hate him, Dwayne Johnson contributed to that uptick impressively.

He is introduced in Fast Five as kind of a bad guy. The audience wants to see Dom and his crew succeed, even if they’re stealing money and technically committing crimes.

It doesn’t take long for Hobbs to come around to the family, striking up a somewhat uneasy alliance with them in future movies…

Johnson’s Luke Hobbs wants to stop them no matter what, and he’s gruff, loud, brutish, and no-nonsense enough that he can be fairly intimidating (and the size of the man himself helps in this regard, too).

It doesn’t take long for Hobbs to come around to the family, striking up a somewhat uneasy alliance with them in future movies and therefore no longer feeling in any way villainous, but he is an antagonist of sorts for much of Fast Five, and an awesome one at that.

2Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham)

Introduced in: ‘Fast & Furious 6’ (2013)

Image via Universal Pictures

The superior Shaw brother, by far, was Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), who’s introduced at the end of Fast & Furious 6 looking to avenge his brother.

He then becomes the central antagonist of Furious 7, and a pretty great one, considering he actually manages to damage the crew, killing Han (seemingly) in his aforementioned mid-credits scene, blowing up Dom’s house, and then pursuing the other members of the family quite relentlessly.

Jason Statham is very good at looking angry all the time…

Jason Statham is very good at looking angry all the time, and so his utilization as a broad, blunt, and determined villain in Furious 7 (otherwise known as the very emotional one) is really effective.

As was the case with Hobbs, Deckard Shaw softens up a little and becomes less villainous in later movies, but at least he had Furious 7 to truly cut loose.

1Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa)

Introduced in: ‘Fast X’ (2023)

In Fast X, the villain is not defeated, and nor do they start turning toward being good. Fast X ends on a cruel cliffhanger with the main villain, Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa), more in power than ever before.

He’s done more damage to Dom and his crew than any other villain in the whole series up until that point, and he’s had an unsettling amount of fun doing so, with Jason Momoa hamming it up every second he’s on-screen.

If the name Reyes sounds familiar, it’s because Dante Reyes is the son of Hernan Reyes, the Fast Five villain who was killed at the end of that movie, making Dante organize a mission of revenge against anyone associated with that death.

Fast X is a mess of a film, but the main villain is so good. He’s campy, silly, entertaining, and also genuinely dangerous, given he doesn’t hesitate to cause genuine (and maybe even long-lasting) death and destruction.

There’s also every indication that, in Fast XI, he’s going to keep being just as evil, because it’s hard to imagine the series finding a better single bad guy than this one.