I watched Furious 6

Do not say that you did not anticipate this!

In the previous film, our heroes passed from the mortal world to the land of youth (or variously, Avalon, Faerie, Tír na nÓg, or Hy Brasil) after passing a series of trials by the supernatural being known as “Hobbs”. We meet the heroes again at the start of the film, living lives that match their fondest wishes. Brian is living in a beautiful house with Mia and their new baby. Roman is flying around in a personal jet full of beautiful women. Tej has wonderful cars and can make ATMs shower people with money. I’m sure there are flagons that magically refill themselves with mead and plenty of boars to hunt in the forests as well.

Dom though, is living with the beautiful Elena (who is one of Hobbs’s people) and Dom knows that at some level the magical world they are in is not the true world. Hobbs intervenes by tempting Dom with the soul of Dom’s long dead wife Letty. If you recall, this longer cycle of myth was precipitated by the death of Letty in the fourth tale of Dom’s legendary band.

To bring Letty back from the land of the dead, Dom must complete a task for the demi-god Hobbs: defeat one of Hobbs’s own kind, a monster known as Owen Shaw. Oh! ‘Shaw’ I say excited to know that means Jason Statham but no, it is Luke Evans aka Bard the Bowman aka ‘Is that Orlando Bloom? No, it’s that other guy‘. Of course, you can’t just travel from faerie to the mundane world in a jet or a car, you must pass through one of the soft places in the world. The band had done this originally through the cognate land of Brasil but to return back they must pass through a different doorway and where better than London to make the leap. That city has always been close to Faerie.

Where does Faerie London end and mundane London begin? The film only gives a few clues. The band have many high speed car chases and one high speed car race through the streets of central London, so those parts are obviously in the magical fantasy London rather than the real one.

Letty we discover is under a geas or an enchantment and is now a servant and charioteer for the monstrous Luke Shaw. Dom faces her in a series of battles and contests to win back her soul from Luke Shaw.

Eventually, with the intercession of Hobbs, the whole band (except for Mia, Elena and Mia & Brian’s son, who stay in Faerie for safety) confront Luke Shaw and his band in Spain.

Then we get the high speed car chase with a tank.

That chase alone deserves a long write-up but I lack the poetic skills to sing of the high deeds that were done upon that stretch of road. They included a mighty salmon-leap by Cú Chulainn, (sorry I mean Dominic Toretto) to rescue Letty from falling from a high place.

Defeated and now bereft of his tank, Luke Shaw uses his magics to send his servants to kidnap Mia, Elena and baby-Brian (Elena, being magical, spirits the baby away but Mia is captured). Letty’s curse is partially lifted and she sees that Dom is the man she should love and pledges her spear and chariot to him and his band of heroes.

Hobbs realises that he must release Luke Shaw from imprisonment to rescue Mia. The band must now chase Luke Shaw’s cargo plane using their cars and Chekov’s pneumatic steel cable harpoon guns (a common trope in Gaelic myth, honest).

Ah, but there is a price for bringing back a soul from the land of the dead. It will be a heavy price indeed!

Han, you will recall, has been cursed with a death foretold (film 3). His fate is such that if he returns to his mundane life in Tokyo then he will die in fire. Yet he has also pledged his love to Giselle (Gal Gadot) and with a return to the mundane world imminent he proposes that they both return to Tokyo once they have defeated Luke Shaw. Thus the fate of both Han and Giselle is sealed!

Dom’s band destroy Luke Shaw’s plane and Dom walks out alive from the burning wreckage. But Giselle has died! A life for a life! What cruel irony! Dom and Letty are re-united but Han is bereft!

With Luke Shaw defeated, Manannán mac Lir — sorry, I mean Hobbs (the idea of Dwayne Johnson playing a sea-bound demi-god/culture hero of an island people is obviously ridiculous) — asks Dom what rewards he would like and offers him all the riches of Hy Brasil. This is a faint, because Hobbs has always known what the real stakes where. Instead Dom offers Hobbs a number — the street address of his original home, from which he was banished because of his many audacious cattle raids, I mean truck hi-jackings. Hobbs, who has already engineered the return of the band to the mundane world through the trial of capturing Luke Shaw, with a wave of his cloak returns the band to the real world of Los Angeles.

You all know the ending of the The Sick-Bed of Cú Chulainn but I’ll quote Wikipedia anyway:

“After much discussion both women recognize the other’s unselfish love, and request that Cú Chulainn take the other. Fand decides that since she already has a husband, Manannán mac Lir, Emer should stay with Cú Chulainn so she will not be left alone.”

And so the story ends. The monstrous Luke Shaw is defeated and Dom’s band of heroes have returned to the real world. Dom is in his hall with his wife and kinsmen by his side.

Ah but fate is not so simple. Giselle’s death was in exchange for Letty’s soul. Han still owes a debt to The Morrígan, goddess of battle and fate. In the mid-credits we return to prophetic third film and see the car chase again from new eyes. ‘Twas no accident when Han’s car was hit! Han dies as fate had always decreed but we now see the agent of his death! The ancient Brythonic deity of destruction known as JASON STATHAM!

Thus ends the sixth tale of Dom and his Valorous Band. They have returned but not unscathed to the lands of their clan in hope they may live once again the life of cattle raids and chariot races. But a dark and vengeful god has crossed between the worlds to find them.