Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham won’t be seen in Fast & Furious 9 after headlining Hobbs & Shaw, but it’s not like the cast of the film will be lacking star power. Vin Diesel will be back in the lead and will be joined by all the usual suspects. We’ve also got newcomers John Cena and Michael Rooker to look forward to. But another much-loved actor of the series has been the source of much speculation lately: Paul Walker, who played Brian O’Conner across several movies in the franchise before his tragic death back in 2013.

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Despite this, Furious 7 still featured him thanks to a very impressive CGI recreation of Walker done by WETA Digital along with his two brothers Caleb and Cody, who helped out as on-set stand-ins. The whole thing was generally deemed a success, too, tastefully giving the character a finale while respecting Walker’s memory. And while we’d assumed that when he drove off into the sunset at the end of the movie that would be the last we saw of him, there’ve been persistent rumors that Brian will return for Fast & Furious 9.

But how will he be involved and what role could he have? Well, the folks at ScreenRant have put together an interesting piece that looks at this very question. Although they believe he’ll be back in Fast & Furious 10 rather than the ninth installment, they still make some intriguing points, starting with the fact that “to wrap up the Fast & the Furious franchise without one of its two original lead stars, even in a brief cameo, would be tantamount to not including Anakin Skywalker in the chorus of Jedi voices in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” And that’s certainly true.

Furthermore, the outlet goes on to explain the following about how the cameo could work, saying:

When this new trilogy-within-a-franchise reaches its climax, it can be expected that Dom and both his real and extended surrogate familia will be celebrating their final victory with a classic Toretto cookout. Who better to appear at the BBQ and raise a beer to the family than Brian O’ Conner?

Dominic Toretto’s main motto in life is that family is the most important thing, so much so that the appearance of a son forced him to stop living his life “a quarter mile at a time.” Brian is such a massive part of Dom’s family, to the point of being married to and having a child with Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster). Reports have confirmed that Mia is coming back for Fast & Furious 10, so a perfect bow on her cameo would be to have her appear side-by-side with husband Brian.

We wholeheartedly agree with all that and though Universal has been keeping quiet on whether Brian will return in Fast & Furious 9 or its sequel, if he’ll even return at all, we’d be shocked if we don’t see the character again. Like ScreenRant says, it’d just feel wrong to wrap things up without him and we can only hope that he’ll be back in one of the next two installments.