What Happened To Leon in Fast and Furious? Did He Leave?

What Happened To Leon in Fast and Furious? Did He Leave?

“I don’t have friends, I got family.”

Over the course of seven (soon-to-be eight) Fast & Furious movies, we’ve learned a lot, like how cars can fly and Ja Rule missed out on a lot of money. But the main lesson is that family is everything. But what happens when a family member vanishes and is never heard from again?

“I get asked on a weekly basis by fans of my work and fans of Fast & Furious, ‘What happened to Leon?'” says Johnny Strong. “If you watch the film and you understand the characters, it would be understandable that he would disappear and move on, just as he showed up.”

As the series progressed, Dom’s group of friends grew, with new faces like Roman Pearce (Tyrese), Tej Parker (Ludacris), and Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson). But in the beginning, there was the original five: Dom (Vin Diesel), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), Vince (Matt Schulze), Jesse (Chad Lindberg), and Leon (Strong).

Now, only two of them are left, with Dom and Letty still at the core of the team, while Jesse died in The Fast and the Furious, Vince came back for redemption in Fast Five, but also died. As for Leon, no one really knows what happened to him—not even Johnny Strong.

If you’re not a big Fast & Furious fan, you might be wondering, “Who is Leon?” Even Strong didn’t know much about his character, calling him a “lost loner type.” Leon only appeared once and didn’t reveal much, except that he wore generic basketball jerseys and yelled at pizza delivery guys.

It wasn’t until Strong watched the movie that he found out a little about his character’s backstory when Mia (Jordana Brewster) tells Brian (Paul Walker) that Leon “just showed up one night and never ever left.”

By the end of the movie, though, he had left

After their big final heist failed, a job that Strong says Leon wasn’t keen on, he was last seen driving Dom, Mia, and a hurt Letty away. Right before Jesse’s death, Dom told Brian that Leon and Letty are “long gone.”

While Rodriguez took a break from 2 Fast 2 Furious and Tokyo Drift, she returned later, despite a presumed death along the way. Seven movies later, Leon still hasn’t shown up.

What Happened To Leon in Fast and Furious? Did He Leave?

“As the film moves forward, towards the end, there’s a scene where Leon expresses his disapproval and is shut down by Dom, which shows that at this point, Leon is starting to question his leader and Dom is losing control over his team and mission,” theorizes Strong.

“After that, Jesse is killed, Letty and Vince almost die, so I think it’s clear that Leon had enough of the situation. The danger had become too much and he didn’t want anything more to do with the gang.”

Before Fast & Furious became a billion-dollar franchise, it was a street racing movie called Redline. After working with Sylvester Stallone on Get Carter, Strong got the role of Leon, which was originally written as a darker version of the character that made it to the screen.

“One of the things I liked is that it was this small, gritty film about underground racers doing heists in the middle of the night,” Strong shares. “Looking back, nobody knew what it was going to turn into, and if they say they did, they’re lying to you.”

While his original castmates like Diesel and Rodriguez have connected their careers to the series, Strong’s time with Fast was pretty much over as soon as he finished filming The Fast and the Furious.

He missed the premiere because he was in Morocco for Black Hawk Down, and he finally saw it after returning to the U.S., which was the only time he would watch any of the films in the series.

As fans have watched the franchise evolve from street racing in L.A. to cars jumping through buildings in Abu Dhabi, Strong misses the more realistic and believable stakes of the first film. “Based on the new movie trailers, where you’ve got a guy grabbing a torpedo being shot from a submarine… For me, it’s kind of jumped the shark a bit,” he says.

What Happened To Leon in Fast and Furious? Did He Leave?

Strong has focused on music and behind-the-scenes filmmaking

He often scores the projects he acts in, like the recent post-apocalyptic thriller Daylight’s End. While he says he hasn’t had the chance to revisit the Fast franchise, Strong would be open to returning, but only under certain conditions.

“It would have to be the right situation and it would have to make sense character and story-wise,” says Strong, suggesting that Leon could either be an enemy to his old friends or appear to help them when things seem hopeless.

“I would hope if I was involved that it would go back to the gritty beginnings of the franchise. They might not be open to it, but if it’s just something for me to collect a big check and do it just to do it, then I’m not really interested.”

Seemingly fine with the idea of never bringing back Leon, Strong feels that the character’s unknown fate adds to the mystery and fascination, comparing it to the cult following of Star Wars’ Boba Fett.

“I love knowing that Leon is out there in that Fast & Furious universe somewhere,” he says. “Because there’s no resolution to him, that’s what keeps the spirit alive. I think it’s awesome that fans still talk about a character who was probably in the movie for a total of five minutes.”