The Fast & Furious crew are about to face a new kind of villain, one they have never fought against before: a woman. Oh, and also a hacker. Cipher in The Fate of the Furious is the first female villain in the franchise, and boy is she evil. Despite the entire franchise being larger than life, is Cipher based on a real person? It turns out the Fate of the Furious hacker is just as fictional as Dom and his crew dropping cars out of planes and landing safely on the ground (see Furious 7). Yet the fact that the Fate of the Furious hacker isn't based on a real person doesn't make her any less terrifying.
In The Fate of the Furious, Cipher is introduced as the ultimate bad guy. Played by Charlize Theron, Cipher is the most calculating, intelligent, and scary villain ever to grace the Fast & Furious franchise. And that's not because she is based on a real person, but rather because of the actor that plays her. Fate screenwriter Chris Morgan worked closely with Theron to develop the perfect villain. "[Theron] was really attracted to the idea of someone who was rapacious, someone who was really logical, really thought out, a chess player who thinks 20 moves ahead and removes all emotion from the equation," Morgan said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "What she wanted to play was someone who sets out to break Dom with the thing that is his greatest strength."
Well, if the trailers are anything to go by, it looks like Theron got her wish. In Fate of the Furious, Cipher manipulates Dom into betraying his Fast & Furious family, and she seems to be the one pulling all the strings.
The threat Cipher brings to the world of Fast & Furious represents a very real fear of the risks of technological advancements. In the film, Cipher can hack into anything in the world — including cars. While it's true that anything with a digital system can be hacked, even cars, we have yet to witness a massive hacking attack like the ones Cipher executes in Fate of the Furious. Still, the possibility is pretty frightening, right?
So, to recap, Cipher is massively smart, capable of making our worst dreams come true, and she's got world domination as a major life goal. But, wait, it gets worse — massive spoilers ahead. In the film, Cipher reveals herself as the actual villain of the past two films, Fast & Furious 6 and Furious 7. It turns out that Cipher is actually the person who was trying to get her hands on the last two major electronic devices hunted in Fast & Furious 6 and Furious 7, she just hired others to do her dirty work. The Nightshade EMP of Fast & Furious 6 and the God's Eye software in Furious 7 were both technologies Cipher was after, and both were saved by Dom and his crew. In other words, she's had her eye on Dom for a while, and now that she has him in The Fate of the Furious, she's going to use him to her advantage.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Theron described Cipher as a character "coming in and taking what she wants." And, right now, she wants Dom. So, all things considered, fictional or not, Cipher isn't someone you want to cross.
