When The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was released in summer 2006, it was pretty much immediately dismissed as a joke. There was no Paul Walker. There was no Vin Diesel (apart from a brief cameo audiences didn’t know about beforehand). Instead, we got a mid-20s Lucas Black ridiculously playing a high-school student in a story that left the U.S. muscle-car scene behind in favor of some weird Japanese street racing in parking garages. Universal almost released it direct-to-video. Once it did hit theaters, it was savaged by critics, opened third at the box office behind Cars and Nacho Libre (ouch), and crawled to $62 million domestically. So, basically, a total disaster.

Well, except for the fact that Tokyo Drift completely rules, and, without it, the Fast & Furious franchise we know and love today would not exist. Don’t believe me? Consider the evidence. Just for starters, Tokyo Drift is where director Justin Lin boarded the series, and it was immediately clear he seemed born for the job. Drift may feature a goofy plot involving teenaged grudges and Yakuza mob shenanigans, but its racing scenes hum with a thrilling intensity. Past that, the movie just feels cool – like you’re entering an alluring, neon-lit world that really exists just a few streets over, if only you were hip enough to join it.

Universal, realizing they had a filmmaker who clearly understood how to make these things work, decided to bring Lin back for film four. He remained behind the steering wheel for the next three globe-spanning installments – Fast & Furious, Fast Five, and Fast & Furious 6 – where the series grew from a guilty pleasure about street racers stealing DVD players into the worldwide box office behemoth it is today. Each one featured Lin refining and expanding his action chops as the set pieces got bigger and more mind-blowing.

And Lin wasn’t the only long-time Fast & Furious crew member to make his debut on Tokyo Drift. Writer Chris Morgan joined the series with that installment and would go on to chart the narrative course for the entire saga, writing every subsequent mainline F&F installment through part eight (The Fate of the Furious), as well as the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff. Additionally, composer Brian Tyler boarded the franchise with Tokyo Drift, providing the film with a propulsive mix of hip-hop and rock. Tyler would come back to drop the beat for four more installments.

We also, of course, need to talk about Han – the cool-as-a-cucumber sideman played by Sung Kang who never stops munching on snacks and makes every single scene he’s in better. A friend of Lin’s who had appeared in the director’s 2002 crime thriller, Better Luck Tomorrow, Kang exuded effortless cool in Tokyo Drift. Despite the fact that his character gets killed off, he became such an entrenched part of the Fast & Furious universe that the next three sequels in the series were slyly constructed as Drift prequels just so Han could continue to show up in them. (Never you mind that it doesn’t make a lick of sense, especially when you see the technology continue to advance from Tokyo Drift’s flip phones.)

Lin may have been the driving force that kept Han around, but the fanbase ended up loving the guy, and you could argue that he’s a big reason the Fast and Furious cast has grown as much as it has. Diesel has always been the franchise’s biggest star (apologies to Dwayne Johnson), and Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster have had significant presences since the beginning. (Walker tragically died in an unrelated car accident while Furious 7 was in production.) But the audience’s enthusiasm for Han, a character at the fringes, may have been an impetus to really go all-in on a deep roster, as the franchise continued to expand and bring back past cast members. At this point, you only need to drop their character names – Roman, Tej, Gisele, Elena, the list goes on – and fans of the series will nod and smile accordingly.

Oh, and speaking of Diesel, he does end up showing up in Tokyo Drift – the actor agreed to a fun little cameo as Dom Toretto in the film’s closing moments as part of a trade-off with Universal to get the rights to Pitch Black and his Riddick character. But it must have rejuvenated his passion for the series, as just three years later Diesel used Drift’s creative team to relaunch the series with the original cast in Fast & Furious. You see what I’m saying now? It’s highly possible none of this happens without Lucas Black’s adventures in Tokyo!

Or continues to happen, for that matter. After taking a couple of films off, Lin is back in the director’s chair for the upcoming F9: The Fast Saga. Tyler is returning to score. And, lo and behold, even Han is back, despite definitely dying at the end of Tokyo Drift, which was retconned at the end of Fast & Furious 6 to make villain-turned-reluctant-good-guy Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) responsible for his demise. The acceptance of Shaw into Dom’s extended family has never sat quite right with Fast & Furious superfans, who started the only somewhat tongue-in-cheek #JusticeForHan hashtag campaign a few years back. One thing you can’t say about this franchise is that it doesn’t give the fans exactly what they want, and the “Justice is Coming” tagline at the end of the film’s trailer served as a knowing wink to those who have become obsessed with the series’ relentless melodrama.

So Han is alive – unless Kang is playing Han’s twin, which sounds unlikely but you never know with these movies -- and we’ve all been waiting since the COVID pandemic delayed the film from its release date to learn exactly how. Hopefully we’ll find out on June 25, when the film is currently slated to open. While you wait, there are certainly worse things you could do than give Tokyo Drift another watch. It’s an enjoyable and underrated entry in the F&F franchise from back when these films were just a bit more grounded. And, it would help chart the course for all the endlessly entertaining sequels to come.