Huh?
Now don't get me wrong, if I were a Hollywood executive I would jump at any opportunity to launch a potential franchise starring Charlize Theron. But the logic of this particular one eludes me.
There's a difference between a villain who solidly fulfills the function assigned to them within the context of one or more films, and a villain iconic enough to be worth exploring in his (or her!) own movie.
I thought the Cipher character was a positive addition to The Fate of the Furious, a touch of Oscar class added to the series that we also saw with the truly surprising appearance of Helen Mirren. I greeted her return to the franchise, albeit a brief one, in F9 with muted but identifiable pleasure.
But for a moment to talk about her being worthy of a spinoff in which we get some kind of back story on her?
Ridiculous.
The only thing that makes Cipher interesting as a Big Bad is that Theron is a compelling performer. That's not enough. We have not been given a script reason to care about a villain that was only introduced into the series in its eighth installment. She's not much more than "exceptionally clever villain who can make seemingly impossible things happen." Just because Theron gives her some pizzazz does not make her rise above her core function.
I wonder if this is part of this trend of excavating the back stories of particularly female villains, something Disney has done with Maleficent and Cruella. But at least in both of those instances, the character had been with us in the culture for 50+ years. We haven't even had Cipher for five.
Besides, do I really want to know why Cipher was "misunderstood"? I know it's this series' thing to reclaim characters who were originally introduced as villains, Jason Statham's Deckard Shaw being the prime example, but can't some characters just stay bad?
If they really want to spin off characters from this series, they should focus on Roman and Tej, the characters played by Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson. They have really good chemistry and are already kind of starring in their own buddy action comedies within this series. They could follow the Hobbes & Shaw model and just ditch the other side characters. They might have to come up with a better title that Fast & Furious Presents: Roman & Tej, but they still have quite a long time to work on that. (To be honest, this is probably something they are planning anyway. If I can think of it, obviously they can too.)
Of course, spinning off Roman and Tej does not address the likely desire to spin off a female character. And I suppose looking at it that way, a Cipher movie makes more sense. It seems true that F & F has not done a good enough job establishing a woman who would be worth spinning off. I mean, Michelle Rodriguez's Letty is cool, but no. Her value is too tied to that of Dom. The other choices are relative newcomer Nathalie Emmanuel, whose character is forgettable enough that I don't even remember when she joined the series, and Jordan Brewster's Mia Toretto, who is also a bit tied to Dom and also a bit lame. Plus, then they'd finally have to own up to the fact that the actor who plays her husband is dead. Just imagine if they'd left Gal Gadot's character alive, how much value she'd now have in a potential spinoff. But maybe she wouldn't have even gotten the Wonder Woman role if she were still committed to this series.
All those considerations notwithstanding, there's nothing that kills the head of steam of a cinematic universe more than spinoffs that fatally dilute the core product. Why do you think Star Wars has pulled back on its cinematic content? It's because they know we don't need a movie dedicated to the back story of Greedo.
And Cipher can't even carry Greedo's jock strap.
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