Cipher (Charlize Theron) both compliments and snipes at Jakob (John Cena) in F9: The Fast Saga when she says that maybe she should’ve hired him to do her bidding instead of going after his brother, Dom (Vin Diesel) – but the question is, why didn’t she? The Fast & Furious franchise, timeline, and connections between characters are complicated, to say the least. Not only are the films out of order, but Fast & Furious also retconned the sixth and seventh films to have the villains be Cipher’s agents.
Fast & Furious 6 brought back Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty Ortiz, who was revealed to be working for the villain Owen Shaw (Luke Evans) – only for the team to find out two films later that Owen was actually a mercenary for Cipher. And while Owen’s brother, Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), was the main villain in the following installment, Furious 7, that sequel also included another mercenary of Cipher’s: Mose Jakande (Djimon Hounsou). Aside from them all being connected to Cipher, the other thing they have in common is that they were all defeated by Dom and his crew.
Cipher likely never wanted to recruit Dom, but once he and his family took out two of her most loyal mercenaries and ruined her plans by taking God’s Eye, she might’ve figured that he was her best shot at accomplishing her plans. Jakob, though a former agent of Mr. Nobody’s, wasn’t on her list of potential candidates because he was only tangentially connected to her schemes. If Dom hadn’t succeeded in Fast & Furious 6 and Furious 7, then perhaps Jakob’s name could’ve turned up. But, again, it was because Dom was successful in beating her that she found and coerced him into helping her.
![Why Cipher Never Hired Jakob](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/John-Cena-and-Charlize-Theron-in-F9-Fast-and-Furious-9.jpeg)
Furthermore, there’s precedent for Cipher going after the older brother first. In The Fate of the Furious, Deckard mentioned that Cipher originally tried to recruit him, and when he turned her down, she went after his younger brother, Owen; it’s why he willingly signed up to fight her with Dom’s crew. It might’ve been the same case with the Torettos, but Dom reluctantly – and temporarily – aligned with Cipher in order to keep his son safe. If he managed to get away or if he died, she might’ve gone to Jakob next.
Another reason Cipher didn’t recruit Jakob can be tied to his past. When they first meet onscreen, Cipher tries to goad Jakob. He remarks that she must’ve read his psych evaluation when she talks about him spending his entire life trying to be better than his brother, but she retorts that she read his “second-grade report card.” For someone that thorough, she may not have wanted someone as volatile as Jakob, no matter how skilled he actually was. If he really went through life trying to one-up someone, why would she go after him instead of the seemingly better person?