Cipher Fast and Furious: Who She Is and What Happened to Her

Cipher is a cyberterrorist who forces Dominic Toretto to work for her in The Fate of the Furious (2017), directed by F. Gary Gray. Charlize Theron is credited in the role, billed seventh in that film.

The story starts in Havana, where Dom and Letty Ortiz are on their honeymoon. Dom wins a street race to clear his cousin Fernando's debt to a local loan shark, and soon after, Cipher shows Dominic Toretto that she holds Elena Neves and their baby son. From there, Dom turns on his crew and helps her steal dangerous technology, which leaves his friends confused and hunted.

Cipher returns in F9 (2021), directed by Justin Lin, and in Fast X (2023), directed by Louis Leterrier. For the wider cast, see our Fast and Furious characters page.

Cipher goes from mastermind in The Fate of the Furious (2017) to wounded captive in Fast X (2023), surviving every film.

In The Fate of the Furious, she controls Dominic Toretto by showing him that she holds his former partner, agent Elena Neves, and their baby son. Dom then betrays his team and helps her steal an EMP device in Berlin, and he later takes the God's Eye surveillance program as well. In New York he steals a nuclear launch case, and her enforcer Connor Rhodes kills Elena in front of him. Cipher then uses the EMP device to seize a Russian nuclear submarine and tries to start a nuclear war.

The team stops the submarine's weapons and blocks its way out across a frozen sea. Dom turns on Cipher during the fight on her plane and kills Rhodes. She fires a homing missile at his Charger, Dom lures it into the submarine, and the submarine is destroyed. Cipher escapes by parachute.

In F9, her plane is hit and she is taken. Otto, the wealthy backer of Jakob Toretto, later joins forces with her, and her drone strike ends up killing him. In Fast X, a wounded Cipher turns up at Dom's home and warns him that Dante Reyes has turned her people against her. Cipher is later held at a secret facility, which Letty Ortiz and Cipher work out is in Antarctica.

Cipher's defining relationship is with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel), who works for her only because she holds Elena Neves and their baby son. That leverage sets the film's plot, because it makes Dom's betrayal of his crew a matter of coercion.

Her enforcer is Connor Rhodes (Kristofer Hivju), who kills Elena in front of Dom and is later killed by Dom during the fight on Cipher's plane. On the other side, the intelligence operative Mr. Nobody frees Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw from prison so they can track down Dom and Cipher. Deckard Shaw later hands Dominic Toretto's son Brian back and is welcomed into the family.

After The Fate of the Furious, her relationships shift. In F9, Dominic Toretto's estranged brother Jakob Toretto is working with the people behind the attack on her plane, and she ends up working with Otto. In Fast X she shares a captive's fate with Letty Ortiz (Michelle Rodriguez), and Dante Reyes is her most dangerous enemy because he has turned her own people against her. Gisele Yashar ends up as her rescuer.

Cipher is not dead: she is alive at the end of Fast X (2023), where Gisele Yashar rescues her and Letty Ortiz from a secret facility in Antarctica. That is her latest appearance in the saga.

Before that, she survived the destruction of the submarine in The Fate of the Furious by escaping with a parachute, so she remained a threat. She survived F9 as well, and in Fast X she is wounded and then held captive. Gisele, who was thought dead, emerges from a submarine in Antarctica and frees both Cipher and Letty Ortiz.

No source confirms whether Cipher returns in the next film. For the latest on that story, see Fast Forever.

The best Cipher moment is the finale of The Fate of the Furious, where Dominic Toretto lures her homing missile into the submarine. The set piece works because it is a clean mechanical trick: the missile only needs to follow a car, so whoever drives the Charger decides where the missile ends up. Dom turns on Cipher during the fight on her plane, kills Connor Rhodes, then uses the car as bait and the submarine as the target. Cipher parachutes out, which is why the scene resolves the weapon but not the villain.

The second pick is the build of her plan, because it plays like a heist with the steps in order. The EMP device in Berlin comes first, then God's Eye, then the nuclear launch case in New York, and finally the Russian submarine, which she seizes with the EMP device. Compare Fast Five, where Dom's crew assembles for a single vault job and the plan is the pleasure. Here the crew is split, and Dom is working the heist for the other side. The shoot reflects that scale: production reports from Screen Global Production and the Motion Picture Association describe filming in Cuba, Iceland, Atlanta, Cleveland and New York, including a chase through the Flatiron and Times Square area. The film had a $250 million budget.

The third is her arrival at Dom's home in Fast X, wounded and warning him that Dante Reyes is hunting them. She is standing in front of the man she once forced to betray his family. It is a small scene after the big ones, and it shows how far the saga has moved her. Her F9 role is the reverse of this: there her plane is hit and she is taken, and her drone strike kills Otto. In the Fast & Furious 6 finale, by contrast, the crew tethers a cargo plane to stop it. Cipher's plane fight is a one-on-one betrayal, not a crew stunt.