Things get pretty dark in The Fate Of The Furious, and that's all because of Charlize Theron's Cipher, a high tech terrorist not even hacktivist group Anonymous will touch. She's known as the "Boogeyman" since she has no digital identity and is able to move around the planet without anyone knowing. In Fate Of The Furious, Cipher is looking to start World War III with a little help from Dominic Toretto, who's turned against his family for reasons I won't spoil here. Theron's Cipher is the most psychotic of any Fast and Furious baddie and certainly makes things hard for Dom and his gang, but will Theron be back for more Fast and Furious movies?
Warning, if you haven't seen Fate Of The Furious, turn back now, because there are major spoilers ahead. At the end of the movie, Cipher's hopes for world domination are dashed. Did you really think Dom was going to help her destroy the earth? But, she does get away, jumping out of a plane in the middle of who knows where with nothing more than a parachute, and this badass move leaves her story open-ended in a series that likes to tie up loose ends. The villains of this franchise don't get away, they get brought to justice. And if they do get out of jail, they more often than not end up switching teams. Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw was the bad guy in Furious 7, but in the latest film he gets a chance to redeem himself, for instance. For now, though, Cipher isn't on that path to redemption, and it's unclear what her path actually is.
When Fate Of The Furious is all said and done, no one really knows what Cipher's motives are. She steals an EMP and Russia's nuclear codes before attempting to hijack a submarine filled with nukes, but she never really lets us know why exactly she's doing this. All she tells Dom is that she wants to make people "accountable." For what? That's still the question, and it's one I can't imagine the series won't eventually answer being that a villain's motive is a pretty important plot point. Especially, being that Fate build Theron's character to be a pretty supreme baddie. She's smarter, more unhinged, and far more lethal than the bad guys they’ve had before. She's also been lurking around for years without anyone else knowing.
Knowing the series, it's a good guess that Cipher's reason for doing all this has something to do with family. Especially, since one of the things we do know about her is she's very willing to take advantage of other people's loved ones. In Fate Of The Furious, it's revealed that Cipher enlisted Deckard Shaw's brother Owen — the villain in Furious 6 — to help her steal the parts she needs to build a weapon of mass destruction. Staying consistent, she uses Dom's family against him to force him into helping her. My guess is that she lost hers in an act of war that went unreported. Someone she loves was collateral damage, and now the world must pay.
Vin Diesel recently announced that Fate Of The Furious is the beginning of a new trilogy, which means Theron's anti-climatic ending leaves room for her to return in at least one of the next two movies, which already have 2019 and 2021 release dates. In an interview with Slash Film, the film's writer, Chris Morgan, said they are still working out the details of the final Fast and the Furious films, but "the things we set up in eight, we’re going to pay off in the trilogy." Being that the film sets up Cipher's plan without going too much into her past, I'd like to assume she will be back wreaking havoc again.
For now, Theron is keeping quiet about her Fast and the Furious future and no one else involved with the film seems to be discussing Cipher's whereabouts. Especially not Diesel, who thinks the questions you're left with at the end of Fate Of The Furious are way more interesting than any answers he could give. "To say that family is back together is assumed. There are a lot of layers going on," Diesel recently told USA Today about Fate's ending. "I want people to walk out of there with questions. The more questions, the greater the appetite is for the next chapter." Right now, we're hungry for more Cipher.
