Plan Your 'Fast and the Furious' Refresher Binge With Our Guide to Untangling the Timeline

Most franchises have a chronology that unfolds in a straight line. The Fast and the Furious series, on the other hand, zig zags all over the place. We bet you’re planning to re-watch all the Fast films this weekend before Furious 7 arrives on April 3 to further complicate the timeline. So as you start your binge engines, here’s our primer for how events have progressed up until this point. Remember, this is assembled in chronological order, not production order. (Warning: Spoilers to follow)

The Fast and The Furious

-Los Angeles undercover cop Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) infiltrates a crew of street racers headed up by Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), under the suspicion that they’re behind a series of truck heists in the city.

-O’Conner falls for Toretto’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), while Dom remains committed to steady girlfriend Letty (Michelle Rodriguez).

-After suspecting rival racer Johnny Tran of ripping off the trucks, Brian discovers that Dom is definitely the guilty party. Rather then arrest the guy that’s become his friend, he hands over the keys to his own car and they go their separate ways: Brian to Miami and Dom to Baja.

2 Fast 2 Furious

-The short film, Turbo-Charged Prelude, depicts Brian’s journey to Florida’s sun-dappled party town, where he hooks up with street-race organizer Tej (Ludacris) and races under the codename Bullet. Meanwhile, he becomes one of America’s most wanted due to the whole “letting Dom go” thing.

-Scooped up by the U.S. Customs Service, Brian is forced to go back undercover — in partnership with his childhood buddy Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson) — to help a deep-cover Customs agent, Monica Fuentes (Eva Mendes), bring down drug kingpin Carter Verone (Cole Hauser).

-Brian and Roman successfully capture Carter, get their records expunged and line their own pockets with spare drug money. O’Connor suggests he’s ready to put down roots in Miami, with Pearce serving as the Riggs to his Murtaugh.

Fast & Furious

-The short Los Bandoloeros flash-forwards five years and find Dom in the Dominican Republic, planning a heist with a new crew, including Han (Sung Kang), Leo (Tego Calderon) and Rico (Don Omar). Letty turns up, having followed his trail to the DR from Mexico, and signs aboard the operation that’s seen at the beginning of Fast & Furious. But increased police vigilance forces Dom to ditch his girlfriend and go on the lam once more.

-Three months after that, Dom is in Panama City when Mia calls him with news of Letty’s murder. He returns stateside to observe her funeral from a distance. Meanwhile Brian — who has signed up with the FBI rather than continue to play Lethal Weapon with Roman — is on the trail of yet another drug runner…one who holds the key to solving Letty’s death.

-Brian and Dom reunite to attack the drug lord head-on, and this time Dom surrenders to the authorities rather than flee. Sentenced to 25 years-to-life, Dom is en route to the big house, when Brian and Mia zoom by and initiate a prison-bus break.

Fast Five

-Once again fugitives from justice, Dom, Brian and Mia head off to Rio de Janeiro where they reconnect with original Fast and the Furious crew member, Vince (Matt Schulze). Their subsequent participation in a great train robbery puts Diplomatic Security Service agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) on the trio’s trail.

-Meanwhile, using information they’ve gleaned from a computer chip outlining the criminal empire of Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), Dom and Brian plot a heist to score one last big payday. That heist requires the participation of all their buddies, including Han, Tej, Roman, Leo, Rico and Gisele (Gal Gadot) who converge on Rio to execute an Ocean’s Eleven-style scheme.

-Flush with cash, Brian and his now-pregnant lover Mia head off to a tropical paradise where Dom drops by for a visit. (Han and Gisele, meanwhile, take their partnership to the next level in Europe.) But back in the U.S., Monica Fuentes turns up at Luke’s office bearing evidence that Letty isn’t as dead as everyone assumed.

Fast & Furious 6

-Hobbs pulls Dom and the gang out of their post-Rio retirement to employ their special set of skills in stopping the reign of terror propagated by rogue British Special Forces officer, Owen Shaw (Luke Shaw), whose ranks of vehicular soldiers include an amnesia-stricken Letty.

-The group stops Shaw, but the price includes Gisele’s life. Dom and Letty, and Brian and Mia (plus their infant son, Jack) return to America and settle down in their old L.A. neighborhood for the first time since the original Fast and the Furious.

-Meanwhile, a grief-stricken Han heads to Tokyo, where he’s in mid-chase when his ride is viciously T-boned by an oncoming car driven by…Shaw’s brother (Jason Statham).

Jason Statham in ‘Furious 7’ (Universal Pictures)

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

-Rebellious Arizona teenager and gearhead, Sean (Lucas Black) is sent to Tokyo to live with his military father after getting involved in one joyride too many. He soon falls into the city’s “drift racing” scene, learning the ropes of drifting from Dom’s old pal, Han.

-Midway through the movie, Han is killed in the aforementioned car chase that we see at the end of Fast & Furious 6. The identity of the other driver isn’t revealed at that point, but there’s no doubt that Han is pushing up the daisies after his car explodes.

-As the film ends, Sean is preparing to prove his drifting skills against a new challenger: Dom. The two pay homage to their fallen mutual friend and gun their engines…racing off, we assume, into Furious 7.

Watch a behind-the-scenes feature from ‘Furious 7′: