Jordana Brewster's Mia Toretto would have been absent from Fast and Furious 10 had it not been for Vin Diesel's intervention. Now officially titled Fast X, the tenth Fast and Furious film was originally going to be helmed by Justin Linn and will be the first of a two-part story to bring the saga to an end. In addition to the well-known family of pilots, Fast 10 will also see Jason Momoa, Brie Larson, and The Suicide Squad's breakout star Daniela Melchior.
So many additions to an already large cast could have meant Mia Toretto's absence from Fast X. In one of his now traditional Instagram posts about the making of Fast X, Vin Diesel mentioned how the first draft for Fast and Furious 10 left him disappointed because it excluded Mia Toretto. Diesel reinforced how much the character means to the franchise and revealed that even his daughter said: "NO MIA NO FAST 10".
It is shocking that a script for the penultimate Fast and Furious movie that did not involve Mia was even considered. Not only is Jordana Brewster an essential part of the franchise, but Mia has also been at the center of Fast and Furious's main storylines since the beginning. Had it not been for the sandwich Brian ordered for Mia in the first Fast and Furious movie, O'Conner would never have joined the Toretto family. She was always by her brother's side, and for a long time, she was the only family Toretto had. For a saga whose theme of family is so important, leaving Mia out of the conclusion of Fast and Furious would be inconsistent. More than that, after Paul Walker's passing, Mia became Fast and Furious's only possible connection to Brian. The bittersweet moments in which Mia mentions her husband back home are the only way the franchise has found to keep Brian a part of the films, something that would be lost with Mia's absence in Fast X. While Fast and Furious grew to have an ensemble cast of fan-favorite drivers, Brian, Dominic Toretto, Letty, and Mia are the ones with which the Fast and Furious saga began – and thus should not be ignored by the final films.
Granted, How the Fast and Furious movies utilized Mia was never a constant. She was involved in the action towards the end of The Fast and the Furious (2001) but returned with not much involvement in Fast & Furious (2009)'s main plot line. In Fast Five, much of the film's emotional stakes revolved around Mia, as Brian and Dom found out in Rio that she was pregnant. Both in Fast & Furious 6 and Fast 7, Mia's role was restricted to keeping herself hidden from the villains, and in The Fate of the Furious, she was not in the film at all. F9 fixed that by bringing Mia back, despite the impossibility of having Brian. Mia was not only important to Jakob Toretto's F9 story, but also part of the action in that film. Ignoring Mia in Fast X would be a regression, and an even bigger issue considering that the movie will set up the ending of Fast and Furious.
Fast X and the sequel Fast 11 will have the mission to conclude one of the most successful franchises in Hollywood history, and it cannot do that by ignoring a character as crucial to the saga as Mia. Jordana Brewster's character may not have always been the focus of the story, but she is one of the original characters that Fast and Furious has been following for the last twenty years. It remains to be seen what the extent of Mia's role in Fast and Furious 10 will be.
