Warning: This article contains spoilers.

22 years after the release of the original The Fast and the Furious, the franchise is still going strong, now producing movies with budgets almost ten times bigger. Whether it should’ve continued this long is up for debate, but the series seems to finally be drawing to a close. Fast X, the 11th installment in the Fast & Furious franchise sees Dom Toretto and his friends and family back on the road with a fresh(-ish) and intense villain hot on their heels. No special effects are spared as they travel from Rome to Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, and everywhere else.

It’s interesting how in the past couple of decades, Fast & Furious has shifted from street racing to stopping terrorism with advanced technology. In the beginning, it was about hijacking fancy cars, now it’s about stopping invasive satellites and diffusing high-tech bombs. Aimes, the new shifty leader of the Agency, is even kind of meta about this: he says Dom is outdated and that the world has moved on—fighter planes have been replaced by satellites and human spies by drones. This shift also means that the franchise doesn’t have the same appeal now as it did when it started with the focus solely on cars—for some, it feels like it’s just dragging on. Charlize Theron’s Cipher, a perfect example of the new era of “high-tech” villains, also returns in Fast X. She’s a unique Fast & Furious villain in the way that she’s a woman, but also because she remained undefeated for at least a movie (though the latter is now true of Dante as well). She’s capable and cold-hearted, and has somehow managed to escape Dom’s clutches several times. And yet, in just the first ten minutes of Fast X, she shows up at Dom’s doorstep bloody and bruised. Her defeat is uncharacteristic relative to the previous two films and feels like a lazy attempt at emphasizing Dante’s villainy.

Something very much characteristic in the movie is the concept of family, or as Dom says, “familia,” a third f-word of the Fast & Furious franchise. As more characters started showing up, it became interesting to see what a group, rather than two people, could accomplish. Yet, after a few movies of the more or less same group—minus a character who would be revived later—doing the same things, it’s hard to keep up. At this point, each new movie brings in a whole cast of famous actors, but most are given the tiniest roles. In Fast X, Brie Larson had an incredibly minor role and was constantly overshadowed by Dom and the main protagonists. There was barely any character development on her character’s part (whose name I already forgot), so it’s hard for viewers to think of her as part of the same family as Dom and Letty. And the film’s ending, the reappearance of Gisele, created mixed feelings. Although Gisele’s revival seems to be the most plausible because of the circumstances of her death, the familia has changed several times since her disappearance and the group’s dynamics are different. It doesn’t help that the ending was unexpected because, for the entirety of its screen time, Fast X had been consistently switching between scenes and sets of characters who would never all come together in one location.

A huge focal point for Fast X is the character of Dante Reyes, who, as the villain, calls forth some new topics. In a time like today, when people’s gender expression and sexuality are dissected and their freedom and safety threatened, what the media says really matters. The queer coding of Dante’s character is clear: he has a colorful taste in fashion (even more distinct because of the rest of the cast’s significant lack thereof), casually flirts with Dom, and paints the toenails of his dead henchmen, to name a few examples. And in a story about family and accepting everyone, it’s disappointing that the first remotely queer person is a villain. And queer coding villains is not always the best idea anyway, because it creates negative perceptions of queer attributes. At the same time, however, Dante doesn’t share the sly, sneaky personality that many other queer coded villains—like Jafar from Aladdin and Raoul Silva from Skyfall—tend to have. He has clear goals and motivations akin to those of a stereotypical action movie villain. In true Fast & Furious fashion, he’s retconned as the son of Hernan Reyes, the evil businessman who died tragically at the end of Fast Five. And so did Dante during that same scene; he explains in Fast X that he was legally dead for two minutes. After recovery, Dante dedicates years to stalking Dom and his friends, planning the perfect revenge. It’s fueled in part by the death of his dad, whom he loved but also recognized the flaws of, and the rest is pure nihilism; Dante is characterized by crazy stunts and threats that he actually follows through with. There has to be some way to top launching a car into space to stop a satellite (F9)—try blowing up the Vatican. No villain, even a Fast & Furious one, is that insane. Dante blows up cars, buildings, bridges, everything, simply because doesn’t care. Combine that with his flamboyant persona, and how he’s always ten steps ahead of the others, and you get a Joker-esque villain: giggly teenage girl one moment, raging madman the next. Overall, Dante is definitely more interesting and likable than any of the villains in the previous few movies.

Remember Dante blowing up the Vatican? Fast & Furious has a (often overlooked) thing with faith, the fourth f-word. In all of the movies, Dom carries with him a necklace with a cross pendant, a symbol of his religion and devotion to his familia. Several times in the movie, he tells his son that “nothing is impossible, you just have to have faith,” and accordingly, everything goes well. The theme is juxtaposed with madman Dante, whose name literally comes from a story about going into hell (Dante’s Inferno), who doesn’t care about blowing up a sacred institution, and who constantly mocks Dom’s beliefs, even calling him a saint at one point. But honestly, Dante might not be too far off; Dom and his found family can very much be compared to Jesus and his disciples—Aimes even goes as far as to call them “a cult with cars.” They go around the world, spreading the message of faith and family and heterosexuality.

Fast X is, honestly, a movie you can enjoy without having to use your brain. Its visuals and stunts are always impressive (but a bit unrealistic) and the plot, however repetitive and cliche it may be, stays engaging. Most of all, Jason Momoa’s performance as Dante Reyes adds a provocative twist and sudden unexpectedness that brings back the possibility that the audience may actually make it to the end of the Fast & Furious franchise.