With every new entry in The Fast Saga comes a new antagonist for the heroes to battle against. While Fast & Furious 9 - officially titled as F9 - will be bringing back the same main antagonist from the previous installment, we’ll also be getting John Cena’s Jakob as a new villain.
Although every antagonist has had a list of feats due to their destructive capabilities, not all of them can be considered intelligent. Quite a few of them relied on their henchmen to get the job done, while others were smart enough to be a threat all on their own. Here’s every villain we’ve seen so far, ranked by intelligence.
Johnny Tran
Being the first villain in the series, Johnny Tran didn’t have a chance to show off his clever side, since the films at the time were strictly about racing rather than the plethora of tropes they’ve paraded in at this point. Still, Tran was nothing special.
That would be because Tran was a reactive person who was quick to jump to conclusions and let his anger do the talking without considering repercussions. It was this attitude that eventually got him killed.
Takashi
Being a punk rich kid, there was more vanity seeping out of Takashi than any other villain in the series. Other than that, Takashi didn’t possess much save for his connections with the mob, granting him access to goons for hire.
His pride proved to be his downfall in the end, and the one accomplishment he had, Han’s demise, was eventually revealed to be Deckard Shaw’s doing, meaning Takashi never had any smarts of his own.
Carter Verone
If we were ranking based on the level of brutality, then Verone would probably have been near the top. However, he didn’t really do anything overtly smart, and was instead made to look like an average, foolish tough with some disposable goons to spare.
Verone also lacked a proper characterization, as all we really know of him is that he had a taste for violence, but wasn’t capable of coming up with plans on the fly or outsmarting a couple of hooligans.
Mose Jakande
Jakande did have the attitude of a bad guy, with him favoring the double-cross method once he found his allies no longer useful. He was also resourceful enough to know who to align with and what technology to pursue.
He didn’t come across as too smart, though, as Jakande didn’t have a game plan to set in motion against the heroes and had to rely heavily on Deckard Shaw to get the job done. It takes more than just heavy machinery to win, and Jakande just didn’t have the brains to pull off running away with the God’s Eye.
Hernan Reyes
To his credit, Reyes was a devious and cunning individual when it came to the matter of conducting criminal activities. He managed to devise ways to have the authorities in his pocket and kept his secret stash of riches secure.
However, he was a dummy where confronting actual threats was concerned, as evidenced by Reyes looking totally out of his element when battling the heroes. He was relegated to barking orders no-one would listen to, and was easily defeated due to a lack of strategy.
Brixton Lore
A man who survived his “death” at the hands of Deckard Shaw, Brixton Lore was one villain whose intelligence oddly enough was bolstered by his sheer strength. Of course, the cybernetic enhancements in his body helped quite a bit as well.
Lore’s grasp over technology and the media meant he manipulated events to fit his needs, and it required both Hobbs and Shaw working together to put him down. His overt reliance on Eteon to make decisions lowers his independent thinking capacity, though.
Arturo Braga
Coming from a rough childhood, Braga had the wits to be able to rise up the ranks and begin his own drug cartel, from which he controlled a large share in the market. He was duplicitous enough to be around his men without them even knowing he was their leader.
For the majority of Fast & Furious, Braga was able to fool the heroes into trusting him to be someone else, so he had the drop on them. This makes him one of the more cunning villains, although he lacked the talent to be able to inflict damage on his own and has to rely on his right-hand man.
Deckard Shaw
Capable of completing feats that would put even Superman to shame, Deckard Shaw was the stuff of nightmares for the heroes in Furious 7, where his pursuit of them knew no bounds. While he was mainly a destructive individual, his Special Ops experience meant he had the cunning to slip through the cracks and be invisible in plain sight.
However, he misses out on the top spot due to his preference to confront the main characters head-on rather than employ his smarts and take them out silently. Still, you have to give credit to his intelligence in the matter of him fooling every obstacle in his way and conducting strategies that could take out small armies.
Owen Shaw
While his brother was easily a bigger threat when it came to combat, Owen Shaw was a scarier prospect in some ways due to him almost always being two steps ahead of the rest. His demeanor, where he never lost his cool, allowed him to read every situation he was in.
While his lack of respect for his team was what led to his downfall, he also commanded them in such a way that they could fool the likes of Luke Hobbs every step of the way. He combined his intelligence with extreme unpredictability, making his moves near impossible to estimate.
Cipher
Being the one to orchestrate the events of the series at large from the shadows, Cipher proved to be the brains behind all the actions of the majority of antagonists in the series. Despite never engaging in combat herself, Cipher’s threat is such that she is easily the most diabolical of them all.
Out of every other The Fast Saga villain, Cipher has been the one to be able to escape due to her quick wit. She still retains the control she has on people, being the one to manipulate Dom’s brother against him, after previously controlling Dom himself through her ability to gain leverage over her opponents. It also helps that she’s a master of disguises, and can go around with even the best out there being completely unaware of her presence.
