Is Mad Max in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga? (Furiosa's Mad Max cameo explained)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is out now in theaters, and it's an adrenaline-fueled ride which fills in all the blanks in the tumultuous life of Imperator Furiosa, the badass road warrior played by Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road and by Anya Taylor-Joy in the new film. As is the case with all the Mad Max movies, Furiosa is very different from the rest of the series. It's longer and more sprawling, with a much greater sense of geography and the passage of time. Then there's the fact that this is the only Mad Max movie that doesn't feature Mad Max. Max has been a roving wanderer who comes into the lives of various Wasteland inhabitants through the franchise, but this is the first time he's truly sat on the sidelines.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't expect to see Max at all in Furiosa. You may be wondering: does Max appear in the new movie? The answer to this is yes, Max does show up for a very brief cameo. SPOILERS ahead for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.

Where is Mad Max in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga?

Max appears deep into Furiosa, after the ambush at the Bullet Farm and Furiosa losing her arm during her escape from Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). As Furiosa stumbled through the desert back toward the Citadel, a figure in dark leather clothing stands on a cliff overlooking the landscape beside Mad Max's visually iconic Pursuit vehicle. That figure is Max, played in Furiosa by Jacob Tomuri, who served as Tom Hardy's stunt double in Fury Road.

The shot of Max on the cliff is a very close approximation to the opening scene of Fury Road, where he's similarly standing on an overlook before he's ambushed and captured by Immortan Joe's raiders. Despite that, the Max cameo in Furiosa is not the same scene as the one which begins Fury Road; there's a significant amount of time that still needs to pass from that point in Furiosa's life, to the point where she later helps Immortan Joe's wives escape in Fury Road. This Max cameo serves as more of a stylistic bridge to Fury Road than a literal one, while also showing how Max has been lurking around this part of the Wasteland for years before he was captured and taken to the Citadel.

That's not to say that we won't see more of this part of Max's life. Director George Miller has said that he already has another prequel plotted out, with the working title Max in the Wasteland, which would show what was going on in Max's life before he crossed paths with Furiosa in Fury Road. Hopefully Miller gets the chance to make that movie, so we can see how Max ended up on that overlook.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is playing now in theaters.

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