As the franchise began to grow unwieldy with its desperation to wrangle so many disparate parts together into a semi-cohesive “mythology,” Fast & Furious was always going to end up tying itself in knots, but not a single one of the many installments suffered as badly from being put through the canonical wringer as Tokyo Drift.
Not that it was a devastating blow when the third entry remains the lowest-grossing of The Fast Saga by far, although it did end up as one of the most influential by debuting Justin Lin behind the camera and introducing Sung Kang’s Han into the mix. However, the latter’s return in Fast Five necessitated a retconning of his death that placed Tokyo Drift as a prequel that unfolds between the sixth and seventh movies.
Looking at it through the current lens of the high-octane blockbuster series, though, its tangential nature has basically made it a spin-off at this point. Vin Diesel made a quick cameo appearance to tie it to the mainline films, but apart from a gratuitous cameo made by Lucas Black’s Sean Boswell and his cohorts in F9, it’s basically become The Incredible Hulk of the Fast & Furious universe.
Fast X making waves in theaters and expanding the dreaded “lore” even further has at least propelled it to fresh heights on streaming, to be fair, with FlixPatrol outing Tokyo Drift as one of the biggest hits on the iTunes global charts. It might not be the best or most important Fast flick, but for a lot of people it’s their undoubted favorite.