Deckard Shaw

"Dominic Toretto. You don't know me. You're about to."

- Deckard Shaw to Dominic Toretto and Deckard's famous quote.

Deckard Shaw is a recurring character in The Fast and the Furious franchise. He is the main antagonist of the 2015 global action blockbuster hit Furious 7, the seventh film in The Fast and the Furious franchise and a key yet background antagonist in both The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and Fast & Furious 6, and an anti-hero/supporting protagonist in The Fate of the Furious, the eighth film in the franchise. He is the older brother of Owen Shaw.

He was portrayed by the famous actor Jason Statham, who also played Ethan Greer in Cellular, Frank Martin in the Transporter trilogy, Chev Chelios in the Crank series, Lee Christmas in The Expendables series, an unnamed airport man in Collateral and Frankenstein/Jensen Ames in the Death Race series.

Early Life
Deckard Shaw was born on October 19th, 1973 in London, England. As the eldest brother of Owen Shaw, the two brothers grew up together and were close. When his younger brother started fighting with the toughest kids or stole from the corner shop, it was Deckard who finished the fight and took the blame for the thefts, enduring their father's belt as a result. He taught Owen that a man must have a code to live by. At some point, Deckard had an unnamed wife in which they were divorced.

Military Career
In 1993, at the age of 20, Deckard enlisted in the British Armed Forces. By 1995, he had obtained the rank of 2nd LT, and was promoted to LT by the next year. In 1999, he was promoted to Captain. Around this time, Deckard became an operative for clandestine operations. During his time in the military, Deckard developed a reputation of being a type of asset Hobbs claimed no government would ever admit to hiring, but they decided he was needed for the time being.

In 2000, he became Major in the Special Air Service, a position he spent the next eight years in until 2008. On June 19, 2007, he was made a recipient of the prestigious Victoria Cross Award due to risking his life on a mission on his country's behalf; however, Deckard chose to forfeit the award. Deckard began to earn a reputation, and an official story was created that stated that Deckard was an unstable military asset that no government would admit to hiring and that he was necessary evil at the time.

Becoming Mercenary
When he was no longer needed, his superiors sent a squad of men after him in order to kill him. However, his abilities were underestimated and Shaw escaped and fell off the grid. Like his younger brother Owen, he eventually became a mercenary for hire. However, the real story is Deckard had repeatedly made decisions that saved the lives of civilians and his team and he was a hero in every sense of the word. However, when a top secret black ops mission went bad, Deckard would take the blame and became a criminal to cover up England's involvement.

Fast & Furious 6
Deckard's appearance at the end of Fast & Furious 6 is a cameo, foreshadowing events that would occur in Furious 7. Rehashing events that occurred in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, the end of the film reveals that the driver of the Mercedes which ran Han Seoul-Oh's Mazda RX-7 VeilSide Fortune off the road in Tokyo was Deckard.

After Deckard steps out of his Mercedes, he throws the cross necklace that belonged to Dominic Toretto and Letty Ortiz beside Han's badly damaged RX-7, ignoring Sean Boswell and Neela who was watching him. The RX-7's leading fuel then ignites via the car's engine fire. As the car burns, Deckard called Dominic and warned him, "You don't know me. You're about to" as Han's car was destroyed in the explosion caused by the fire.

Furious 7
Following the events in London that resulted in Owen Shaw's hospitalization, Deckard caught wind of what happened to his brother. Heading for the Royal Defence Medical Centre where his brother was being treated, he attacked the armed personnel that were guarding the youngest Shaw. In Owen's hospital room, Deckard reflected on their childhood and realized that they couldn't outrun the past. He decided to take revenge in his brother's stead and even threatened to harm hospital staff if they did not look after his brother.

Leaving the hospital, Deckard heads for the Diplomatic Security Service Los Angeles office. At the office, Deckard observes the conversation between Luke Hobbs and Elena Neves. When Hobbs leaves his office, Shaw proceeds to hack Hobbs' computer and extracts information on the team responsible for harming his brother.

When Hobbs returns, Deckard and the DSS exchange blows when Shaw attempts to escape. Though he manages to hold his own, Shaw uses the appearance of Elena, attempting to act as Hobbs' backup, to detonate a bomb. He finds cover while Hobbs is forced out of the building with Elena by the explosion. With the information extracted from Hobbs' computer, Shaw headed for Tokyo.

He then delivered a bomb to Dominic from Tokyo, disguised as a package from Han. The moment he calls Dominic, Deckard triggers the bomb as he ran Han's RX-7 with the Mercedes, barely leaving Dominic, his sister Mia and Brian O'Conner enough time to escape before it detonates and destroys the Toretto House.

Deckard heads for Los Angeles and observes Han's funeral. Dominic takes notice of him and pursues him in his Plymouth Road Runner. Facing each other down in a game of chicken, they crash their cars into each other. They finally meet face to face and exchange words before Deckard pulls a weapon on Dominic.

Dominic is saved by the intervention of Frank Petty, whose men chase Shaw off, allowing him to escape. Deckard again tries to kill Dominic and his crew at the Caucasus Mountains during the rescue of a hacker named Ramsey. Though he is forced to break pursuit, Shaw observes the rest of the crew's rescue attempt until the arrival of Mose Jakande. Following Dominic's escape down a cliff in the modified Dodge Charger, Shaw approached Jakande and the two formed an alliance.

Shaw attempts to kill Dominic and Brian in Abu Dhabi, however, he fails when the two are able to escape by jumping the towers in the Lykan HyperSport.

Dominic, Brian and Petty locate Deckard in a remote factory using God's Eye, Ramsey's hacking device which can locate any individual on the globe.

However, Deckard reveals that he has allied himself with the terrorist Jakande in a surprise attack. In the ensuing battle, many of Petty's men are killed and Jakande manages to retrieve God's Eye. Dominic and Brian and an injured Petty escape. Deckard and Jakande later follow the crew back to Los Angeles.

Shaw goes after Dom and chases him to the roof of a parking garage. As they play another game of chicken, Shaw's vehicle is crushed by Dom's charger as he lifts up the front part of it. After that, the two engage in an epic one-on-one brawl on all over the roof of the parking garage. During the fight, Shaw manages to gain upper hand until Dom starts throwing around, until Shaw hits him with one of his metal sticks which they fought with at the start of the fight. When Jakande sees the two fighting on the parking garage from his helicopter, he believes that Shaw is no longer useful to him and destroys a part of the parking garage, which causes the roof to fracture. Dom, standing on the stable end of the roof, stomps on the roof, which causes the part Shaw was standing on to collapse beneath his feet. Shaw is injured by the collapsing level of a parking garage and survives the rest of the building's collapse. He is later taken into custody in a secret prison by Hobbs, who promised to "wait for him" on the other side of the prison if he ever escaped.

The Fate of the Furious
He reappears in the eighth movie from the franchise, still imprisoned. After Hobbs is betrayed by Dom and imprisoned for the theft of an EMP device in Berlin, he is brought to the very same prison Shaw is incarcerated in and is delivered to a cell. Annoyed, Hobbs realizes that Shaw is imprisoned in the cell next to his own and Shaw continuously mocks Hobbs, further fueling the rivalry between the two. After a breakout for Hobbs is instigated by the government agent Frank Petty, Shaw seizes the opportunity to open his own cell as well, freeing all inmates of the prison and causing a riot. During the chaos, Shaw attempts to escape but is pursued by Hobbs. Eventually, Hobbs catches up to Shaw but before the two can fight, they are stopped by Eric Reisner and a group of SWAT members who reveal that the entire riot was orchestrated by Petty.

To the surprise of Hobbs and the rest of the team, Petty later reveals that they are supposed to team up with Shaw in order to find the cyber-terrorist Cipher. Both Hobbs and Shaw are appalled by the thought of working together and the rest of the team also voice their hate for Shaw. Deckard himself makes clear that while he might be forced to work with Hobbs and the rest, he will never be part of their team. He also reveals that he hates Cipher because she was the one to corrupt his brother Owen and then left him for dead. Petty stops the argument between Hobbs and Shaw and orders them to work together. While the team is still coming together and trying to work out a way of finding Dom, they are being attacked when Cipher and her crew ironically attack the very building. After the government agents and the team have been desoriented by concussion grenades, Cipher recognizes Deckard and mocks Dom for already having been replaced. She also mocks Deckard, claiming that he made the wrong choice when she offered him to work for her. She adds that Owen seems to be the smarter one of the two Shaw brothers.

After Cipher and Dom have fled, Deckard tracks them down to New York City. There, they once more prepare to take down Cipher and find Dom. As they are passing time, Hobbs reads Shaw's military rap sheet and learns that Shaw was a hero during his time in the military. Hobbs offers to help Shaw with some repairs directly after, implying that he is beginning to think of Shaw more than just an enemy. However, they are not even close to becoming friends and although the two insult each other again, they laugh it off afterwards.

When they find out that Dom has trapped and is attacking the Russian Minister of Defense, the team sets out to stop him. The entire team confronts Dom after he obtained the Minister's suitcase. They pursue Dom in a car chase through Manhattan, attaching steel wire to his car to take him down. However, Dom manages to free himself from all the wires, causing all of their cars to crash. He attempts to escape on foot, but is pursued by Shaw. Eventually, Dom turns around, draws a gun on Shaw and shoots him in the chest twice, seemingly killing him. However, during the finale, it is revealed that Dom had previously made a deal with a New York crime lady who is revealed to be Shaw's mother. The two managed to fake Shaw's death and Magdalene reveals that they have to take down Cipher. She also tells Deckard that he has to take his little brother along.

Together with Owen, Deckard boards Cipher's untraceable plane in mid-air by jet-pack suits. While Cipher is dealing with problems on the ground, the Shaw brothers storm the plane, revealing themselves to Cipher who is shown to be stunned for the first time. She sends her security teams to the brothers' position, but Deckard and Owen manage to kill them. Owen heads to the cockpit to hold the pilot at gunpoint while Deckard frees Dom's son from Cipher, destroying any influence she has on Dom after reporting this to the latter. Deckard take the infant boy and put headphones with soothing music on his head in order to prevent him from noticing the chaos and death all around him.

Deckard eventually confronts Cipher. Cipher notes that Deckard is out of bullets, but Shaw replies that he does not need bullets to eliminate her. He vows to kill her for what she did, but Cipher claims that there is one flaw in his plan, Cipher is the only one with a parachute. With the press of a button, Cipher opens the plane's door and is sucked out immediately. Deckard, however, manages to get hold of both Dom's son and a handle, preventing himself from being sucked out of the plane. The doors are sealed moments later.

After the boy is safe and the team is back together, Deckard joins the celebrating family along with both Petty and Resiner in New York City. With their differences set aside, he is soon welcomed to Dom's family in the end, now being fully redeemed.

Personality
Like Dominic, Deckard values his family above all other things. Deckard is willing to make alliances with others in his line of work to achieve what he wants. Driven by revenge, he attacked Dominic Toretto and his crew with the intention of killing them all no matter the cost or collateral damage that was left behind.

Like his younger brother Owen, Deckard is a dirty combatant. When confronted with the likes of Dominic; who intended to fight him one-on-one, Deckard was willing to shoot Dominic. He takes pride in harming or killing others. He will not hide his involvement in the death of others even if it means making a point and baiting others out into the open. However, he is able to let his grudges go, such as when he begins working with Toretto's crew, and saves Toretto's son and settles his issues with Toretto afterwards, and is even present at their dinner table.

Abilities
Deckard Shaw is a former member of the United Kingdom Special Forces. He served as a Lieutenant in the Special Boat Service and as a Major in the Special Air Service. Trained in a variety of combat techniques, Deckard's abilities vary from the expert handling of firearms, explosives to hand-to-hand combat. Trained to operate as an assassin for the British government, Deckard presumably worked under clandestine parameters and carried out jobs as a "secret weapon". When he was deemed expendable by his government, Deckard went into business for himself as a mercenary for hire, like his brother Owen, who was also a former member of British Special Forces.

Indicated by his Special Forces background, Deckard is an extremely lethal fighter and skilled martial artist. Deckard’s weapons training from his SBS and SAS background and skilled with melee weapons makes him a formidable opponent. Deckard's physical strength and his abilities allowed him to maintain and often surpass opponents both in agility and physicality.

When he engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Hobbs at the DSS headquarters, he was able to hold his own despite Hobbs’ physical stature, using his martial arts prowess to counter the man's strength, tackling him through a glass wall and rebounded quick enough to out-brawl the man. He was tossed through a table though, having to use a knife to gain an advantage.

He can take on multiple opponents, armed or otherwise and often come out of the fight as the victor. Dominic is one of the few opponents with whom he fought that met him on an equal level of physical prowess and strength, to the point where Deckard had to resort underhanded methods to fight him off.

He did have an edge when they fought with wrenches in melee combat, forcing Dominic to use his strength to throw him on top of a car. Regardless, he displayed great endurance, recovering from such in seconds, proceeding to out-brawl Dominic and kick him to the floor. He also displayed similar endurance in his fight with Hobbs, recovering from being slammed in to a table fast enough to then disorient him by hitting him with a strip light.

Deckard is also adapted with explosives. He entered Royal Defence Medical Centre and created a sustainable amount of damage with explosives used to take out several armed police officers and hospital personnel. When fighting Hobbs, he used a military grade explosive to destroy the upper levels of the DSS headquarters. He was also able to mail a packaged bomb from Tokyo to Los Angeles that destroyed the Toretto house.

Deckard is a highly skilled driver and extremely proficient in driving various cars. Like Dominic, he is skilled in cornering and drifting. He survived the first head-on collision with Dominic in an underground tunnel with a Maserati (with reinforced chassis) which causes the vehicles of both drivers to be damaged. He survives the second head-on collision on the rooftop of a parking garage with an Aston Martin and recovered quickly enough to face Dominic in hand-to-hand combat shortly after.

He also managed to perfectly time crashing his car into Han's to cause him death, seemingly unfazed by that collision as well. In the Caucasus Mountains in Azerbaijan, he pursues and attacks Dominic with a Fast Attack Vehicle and tries to push his car off a cliff by ramming him repeatedly until Roman appeared and knocks Deckard's vehicle down a hill.

Quotes
"Dominic Toretto, you don't know me, but you're about to."

- Shaw's most famous line - calling Dom after killing Han.

"You thought this was gonna be a street fight?"

- Shaw saying to Dom if he thinks their first fight will be a street fight, he will win.

"They say if you want to glimpse the future, just look behind you. I used to think that was bollocks. But now I realize you can't outrun the past. When we were kids, you'd start fights with the toughest bastards in the yard. But I was the one who had to step in and finish them. You'd steal from the corner shop, but it was me who'd brave the old man's belt. I'd hoped you'd outgrown it. That playing the gangster made you harder, smarter, better. But deep down, I guess I always knew you'd end up like this, despite everything I did teach you. Still, you're my flesh and blood. So you remain my cross to bear. Rest now, little brother, while I settle your one last score."

- Shaw's speech to his brother Owen Shaw.

"I'm here for the team that crippled my brother."

- Deckard explains why he wants to kill Toretto and his crew after he broke into the DSS office.

"Let’s get one thing clear. I ain’t on your team. I don’t care about you, your crew, or your little family. I’m here for Cipher."

- Deckard explains the situation to Letty and Dom’s crew

Trivia

 * Firstly, when the casting ended, Universal Pictures had published that Statham's role of the main antagonist will be Ian Shaw, but it was officially changed to Deckard Shaw.
 * Jason Statham's appearance at the end of Fast & Furious 6 makes him the key antagonist, although his appearance is an non-credited cameo.
 * Deckard being the driver of the Mercedes and responsible for Han's death in Tokyo Drift is a minor retcon. Close inspection in Tokyo Drift sees passersby tending to the driver of the vehicle (although the driver isn't seen), but in Fast & Furious 6 he exits the vehicle and walks away.
 * Deckard Shaw is the first villain in The Fast and the Furious franchise to have a chance of redemption while other villains from the franchise did not have a chance of redemption (his brother also redeemed but with anti-hero qualities now).