Why Mr. Nobody faked Han Lue’s death in F9. Han tragically died at the end of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift/Fast & Furious 6, but fans finally received justice for Han when he returned, alive and well, in F9. As it turns out, his death was a ruse meant to keep him hidden away for good reason. It was also a part of a larger mission meant to keep someone else safe.
Han (Sung Kang) was introduced into The Fast and the Furious franchise as Sean Boswell’s mentor. So beloved was the character that he wound up appearing in Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6, as well as in archival footage in Furious 7. While Han was initially believed to have been killed by Dominic Toretto’s (Vin Diesel) nemesis Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) in Tokyo, it was revealed in F9 that blowing up Han’s car with him still in it was all staged by Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell), absolving Shaw from the murder and reinstating Han as a rightful member of Dom’s crew in The Fast and the Furious saga.
Ahead of his false death, Han was recruited to work with Mr. Nobody’s covert operations team, which led him to take on a mission to retrieve a device dubbed Project Aries, which, when paired with its other half, could control the world’s nuclear weapons systems. By this point, Mr. Nobody knew that Jakob Toretto had gone rogue and was after Elle, the daughter of the Aries creators and whose DNA could unlock the device. And so Mr. Nobody helped Han fake his own death so that he could continue protecting Elle from Jakob and ensuring that Aries could never be activated. Using advanced technology and some trickery, Mr. Nobody made it look like Han was stuck in his car when it went up in flames, but it was actually a hologram of the beloved street racer all along.
F9 jumps through a few hoops to make Han’s staged death make sense, which was made more complicated with Shaw’s involvement. It also retconned timeline a bit by bringing him back into the story. He and Mr. Nobody managed to fool everyone by faking Han’s death and it is strange to think no one bothered to check the reports about the scene of the crime. However, in some ways, his leave of absence made the reunion between Han and his crew all the more worth it. Meanwhile, the explanation of Han’s death, while somewhat flimsy, at least brought the character back into the thick of the action and it was also the only way that would allow him to continue living his life undisturbed.
If Shaw and Jakob believed him to be dead, there would be no reason they would go looking for him or Elle. What’s more, Mr. Nobody faking Han’s death set the stage for Han going after Shaw in the F9 post-credits scene. Now that Han no longer has to be in hiding and the satellite that would’ve officially launched Aries destroyed, he can seek revenge on Shaw for trying to kill him in the first place. Time will tell what will happen, but Han is officially back and there's a lot of potential left to tell more of his story.
