When Does Hobbs & Shaw Take Place in the Fast & Furious Timeline?

The gradual evolution of the Fast & Furious franchise (sometimes known as the Fast Saga) has been interesting — to say the least. What began as the simple tale of an FBI agent (Paul Walker's Brian O'Conner) infiltrating a gang of street-racing thieves in Los Angeles and finding common ground with its members has somehow exploded into an action/espionage/sci-fi extravaganza set all over the world.

You won't hear us complaining, though; half the fun of this series is tuning in to see how the latest installment will top what came before. Aside from upping the ante with each film, another celebrated tradition of the Fast Saga is to reform villains and adversaries into members of the expanding Toretto family of good guys. Two of the most notable characters to undergo such a transformation are DSS operative Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and revenge-seeking brother Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), who became such popular F&F staples that they ultimately took center stage in 2019's Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (now streaming on Peacock), their very own spinoff movie helmed by director David Leitch (a founding creator of the John Wick IP).

When exactly does Hobbs & Shaw take place in the Fast Saga timeline?

Hobbs, of course, made his debut in Fast Five (2011), tracking Dom and the team to Rio de Janeiro. He became a fully participating ally in Fast & Furious 6 (2013) when our heroes battled Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), whose defeat triggered Deckard's rampage in Furious 7 (2015). Interestingly, his campaign of vengeance began with the supposed death of Han (Sung Kang) in Japan, effectively retroactively turning Tokyo Drift into a stealth prequel of sorts. Hobbs and Shaw began their iconic love/hate dynamic in The Fate of the Furious (2017) after the two characters entered into a tenuous alliance to escape the bowels of a maximum security prison.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw most likely takes place between the events of The Fate of the Furious and F9 (2021), though Collider does make a strong case for placing it after F9. Half buddy comedy and half Mission: Impossible-inspired blockbuster, the film follows the titular duo as they're forced to reluctantly team up in order to stop a deadly virus from falling into the hands of Brixton (Idris Elba), the sociopathic, cybernetic proxy of a tech-driven death cult obsessed with perfecting the human race.

"The Fast films are very large ensemble pieces with a lot of actors, so we don't have a lot of time with each individual character," the project's co-writer Chris Morgan told SYFY WIRE on the world premiere red carpet. "[You don't] get to know what they're thinking, what's running them, what's driving them, what's their backstory, where do they come from? The purpose of the spinoff is to focus a little more on a couple characters and get a little more under their skin."

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw is now streaming on Peacock alongside Furious 7, The Fate of the Furious, F9, and Fast X.