Dominic Toretto being played by a different actor than Vin Diesel probably could likely have seen the Fast & Furious series end with Furious 7. The journey of the Fast Saga has taken Vin Diesel's lead protagonist Dominic Toretto and his family across the world on adventures of bringing their street racing and heist skills up against terrorists and supervillains. After a truly remarkable if outright absurd run of vehicular heroics, the end of the Fast & Furious franchise is in sight with the planned two-part finale of Fast X and Fast & Furious 11, but an argument can be made that the series missed its best ending.
As a producer on the series since 2009's Fast & Furious, Vin Diesel has significant creative input to the Fast Saga in addition to his on-screen role as Dom. With the Fast & Furious movies achieving their then-biggest hit by far with the 2011 release of Fast Five, Universal Pictures clearly had a vested interest in continuing the franchise with its popularity having truly taken off. However, with that has come the clear pattern of Fast & Furious growing more comic book-like and getting more ridiculous in terms of their stories and action sequences, with an emphasis on Dom's invincibility that makes the ending of Furious 7 look retroactively passed by as a series finale.
The tragic death of Paul Walker in 2013 as Furious 7 was in production would lead to his character Brian O'Conner being retired from the Fast & Furious series. With Brian starting a family with Dom's sister Mia (Jordana Brewster), he and Dom Toretto part ways in Brian's emotional send-off, still one of the most warmly remembered moments of the Fast Saga. While having Vin Diesel as star and producer has kept the Fast & Furious movies going since Furious 7, the series could have - and arguably should have - been the final bow of the Fast & Furious series as a whole.
Fast & Furious Should've Ended After Furious 7
Despite Brian's retirement in Furious 7, F9 showed that Brian and Mia themselves still had a presence with Mia's fight heavy role in F9, Brian's absence being half-heartedly explained as him looking after his and Mia's kids. In F9, the arrival of Brian's car to the Toretto household barbecue at the end also had to work around not showing Brian himself, with only his car seen pulling into Dom's driveway. Furious 7 as the endpoint of the Fast Saga would have prevented such efforts to keep Brian somewhat present without appearing on-screen from being needed.
The final scene of Furious 7 itself is also both a heartfelt tribute to Paul Walker and a nostalgic culmination of the entire Fast Saga to that point. Set to Wiz Khalifa's and Charlie Puth's "See You Again", the ending of Furious 7 lovingly underscores Dom and Brian using their driver skills in one final street race in the unlikely tale of their friendship. Without Diesel's desire to keep the Fast Saga going after Furious 7, the film's ending probably would have been the conclusion of the series if a different actor were portraying Dom, and from a storytelling perspective, this would have been the right move.
Furious 7 ending the Fast & Furious series would not necessarily preclude further adventures with some of the franchise's characters. The spin-off Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw focused on Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) exemplifies such a possibility along those lines. Even in that event, the central timeline of the Fast & Furious movies rode right past what was its ideal ending in the heartwarming conclusion of Furious 7.
