Features Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Fan Theory Fixes Series’ Most Controversial Twist A new fan theory about the ending of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is gaining steam online. And it would fix what some consider to be the series' biggest mistake. By Tom Chapman | May 30, 2025 | | Photo: Paramount Pictures This article contains Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning spoilers. For now it looks like Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning really could be the end of the long-running spy series. While there’s plenty of talk about Tom Cruise hanging up his badge as the Impossible Missions Force’s Ethan Hunt or possibly handing over the baton to one of the many other unwilling recruits, there’s plenty of evidence that we’re not done yet. The critic scores and box office point to an appetite for Mission: Impossible 9, and now a popular online theory is taking off that a fan-favorite could soon be back in action. After Brian De Palma’s original Mission: ImpossibleRebecca Ferguson’s Isla Faust in 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning that sticks out more than most. Although Ilsa was seemingly killed by Esai Morales’ villainous Gabriel during a tense Venice action scene, the fact that her death seemed so sudden and was glossed over so quickly led many to believe she’d be back for The Final Reckoning. That’s sadly not the case, but what about in the franchise’s future? Previous outings have shown that Ethan’s dangerous career path affects his ability to hold down a relationship (Michelle Monaghan’s Julia in Mission: Impossible III). Additionally, the franchise is no stranger to bringing characters back from the dead (Jon Voight’s Jim Phelps in Mission: Impossible springs to mind). When both features are coupled with Ilsa’s somewhat underwhelming death, it’s no surprise that fans are clinging onto the idea she’ll return in the inevitable next movie. And during The Final Reckoning’s final scene, where Ethan splits from his team in London, eagle-eyed fans spotted him veering close to an unnamed woman who looks a lot like Ferguson’s dearly departed assassin. Some suggested it was Hayley Atwell’s Grace, but with her having already said her goodbyes and gone in a different direction, it clearly can’t be her. Supporters of the theory have latched onto footage of Ilsa from Fallout and compared it to the mysterious Final Reckoning woman. The stranger has a similar wavy hairstyle to Ilsa, and a choice in baggy clothes. It would also be a neat parallel of the pair parting ways and going in different directions (in London, no less) during Rogue Nation. Others have likened this theory to Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne meeting with Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle after he faked his death in The Dark Knight Rises. Given Ferguson’s raised profile in Silo and the Dune movies, landing her again would be a major coup, but what has the star herself said? Ferguson has previously explained why she felt the need to step away from Mission: Impossible, telling the Unwrapped podcast how it was more than just her three-movie deal being done: “Ilsa was becoming a team player. And we all can want different things, but for me, Ilsa was rogue. Ilsa was naughty. Ilsa was unpredictable. There was a lot of characters coming in, not leaving enough space for what she had been.” We previously said how Ilsa’s Dead Reckoning death effectively ‘fridged’ her character to catapult Ethan’s arc forward and leave more room for Grace to step up as a franchise lead. Most frustratingly, after becoming a mainstay of the previous two movies, she was forced to take a backseat in the first half of Dead Reckoning and given a quick demise that was barely referenced afterward. Going against the idea that we’ll see Ilsa again, Dead Reckoning’s Arabian-set opening already had Ethan help her fake her death. It’s true that we don’t see what happens to her body, but a double fake out might be even too much for a franchise that’s taught us to never trust what we see thanks to its mask technology and old-fashioned sleight of hand.  Another reason you shouldn’t start cheering Ilsa’s welcome return to Mission: Impossible is that McQuarrie might have shut down the theory before it even got to do the rounds. The issue of Ilsa’s absence has been a hotly contested one, especially considering Ferguson only appeared via archive footage without filming anything new. Despite the controversy, McQuarrie told theHappy Sad Confused podcast that “it’s the cost versus benefit. The death of essential characters has followed Ethan [Hunt] throughout every one of these movies. I don’t think up until that point a character that resonated so deeply with the audience had died.” While the director says he understands why some were dissatisfied with how it happened, he concluded, “Which is where I thought that wouldn’t motivate me to undo the one thing that gives Mission: Impossible teeth, which is ‘death is permanent’.” It’s no secret that the Mission: Impossible movies have tried their best to tie up loose ends. Thandiwe Newton denied rumors she was asked to reprise her role as Nyah Nordoff-Hall in Mission: Impossible III, Jeremy Renner recently told the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he turned down another chance to play William Brandt because he wanted to spend more time with his daughter, and Maggie Q told Yahoo in 2020 that she had to turn down two opportunities to reappear as Zhen Li due to filming commitments. Unfortunately for Faust fans, it sounds like McQuarrie thinks she got the ending he wanted. It might be hard to keep Ferguson’s return a secret if there’s another Mission: Impossible, and we’re still a long way from potentially seeing Isla Faust again. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!

This article contains some Mission: Impossible – The Final reckoning spoilers. In the most recent and supposedly final Mission: Impossible film, Ethan Hunt receives his briefing on a VHS cassette tape. That is a marvelous wink to the era in whichMission: Impossible, but these films have remained consistently at the zenith of quality blockbuster cinema. And through it all remains Tom Cruise, running, gunning, and smoldering with his various, luxuriant haircuts. Indeed, the first M:I picture was also Cruise’s first as a producer, made under the banner of Cruise/Wagner productions. Perhaps for that reason, he has stayed committed to what was once viewed as simply a “television adaptation.” It might have begun as TV IP, but in Cruise’s hands it has become a cinematic magnum opus that sequel after sequel, and decade after decade, has blossomed into one of the most inventive and satisfying spectacles ever produced in the Hollywood system. The final decade of the series’ run in particular has been groundbreaking. After five movies with five very different directors, aesthetics, and sensibilities, Christopher McQuarrie stuck around—alongside stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood. Together with Cruise, they turned the series into an old-fashioned, in-camera spectacle that harkens back to the earliest days of cinema. In the process, Cruise has added another chapter to his career, that of an onscreen daredevil like Harold Lloyd or Douglas Fairbanks. It’s been an amazing run, and honestly it’s a bit arbitrary to quantify it with any sort of ranking. But if we were going to do such a thing, here is how it should go… 8. Mission: Impossible II (2000) It’s hardly controversial to put John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II dead last. From its overabundance of slow-mo action—complete with Woo’s signature flying doves—to its use of Limp Bizkit, and even that nonsensical plot about manmade viruses that still doesn’t feel timely on the other side of 2020, MI:-2 is a relic of late ‘90s Hollywood excess. On the one hand, it’s kind of marvelous that Cruise let Woo completely tear down and rebuild a successful franchise-starter in the Hong Kong filmmaker’s own image. On the other, it’s perhaps telling of where Cruise’s ego was at that time since Woo used this opportunity to transform the original all-American Ethan Hunt into a god of celluloid marble. And make no mistake, there is something godlike to how Woo’s camera fetishizes Cruise’s sunglasses and new, luxuriant mane of jet black hair during Hunt’s big introduction where he is seen free-climbing across a rock face without rope. It would come to work as metaphor for the rest of the movie where, despite ostensibly being the leader of a team, Ethan is mostly going it alone as he does ridiculous things like have a medieval duel against his evil doppelgänger (Dougray Scott), only both men now ride motorcycles instead of horses. The onscreen team, meanwhile, stares slack-jawed as Ethan finds his inner-Arnold Schwarzenegger and massacres entire scores of faceless mercenaries in multiple shootouts. While gunplay has always been an element of modern spy thrillers, the Mission: Impossible movies work best when the characters use their wits (and the stunt team’s ingenuity) to escape elaborate, tricky situations. So there’s something banal about the way M:I-2 resembles any other late ‘90s and early ‘00s actioner that might’ve starred Nicolas Cage or Bruce Willis. Technically the plot, which involves Ethan’s reluctance to send new flame Nyah Hall (Thandiwe Newton) into the lion’s den as an informant, has classical pedigree. The movie remakes Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) in all but name. However, the movie is so in love with its movie star deity that even the supposedly central romance is cast in ambivalent shadow. 7. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) Yes, we admit to also being surprised that what is allegedly intended to be the last Mission: Impossible movie is finishing near the very bottom of this list. Which is not to say that The Final Reckoning is a bad movie. It’s just a messy one—and disappointing too. Perhaps the expectations were too high for a film with “final” in the title. Also its reportedly eye-popping $400 million only fueled the hype. But whereas the three previous Mission films directed by Christopher McQuarrie, including Dead Reckoning, had a light playfulness about them, The Final Reckoning gets lost in its own self-importance and grandiosity. Once again we have a Mission flick determined to deify Ethan Hunt with McQuarrie’s “gambler” from the last couple movies taking on the imagery of the messiah. Now the AI fate of the world lies in his literal hands. This approach leads to many long expository sequences where characters blather endlessly about the motivations of an abstract artificial intelligence. Meanwhile far too little time is spent on the sweet spot for this series: Cruise’s chemistry with co-stars when he isn’t hanging from some death-defying height. In fact, Ethan goes it pretty much alone in this one, staring down generals, submarine captains, and American presidents—fools all to think for one instance Ethan isn’t the guy sent to redeem them for their sins. The action sequences are still jaw-dropping when they finally come, and it is always good to see co-stars Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, and an all too briefly used Ving Rhames again, but this feels less like a finale than a breaking point. If Mission does come back, it will have to be as something wildly different (and presumably less expensive). 6. Mission: Impossible III (2006) Before he transformed Star Trek and Star Wars into remarkably similar franchises, writer-director J.J. Abrams made his big screen debut by doing much the same to the Mission: Impossible franchise. With his emphasis on extreme close-ups, heavy expository dialogue dumps, and intentionally vague motivations for his villains that seem to always have something to do with the War on Terror, Abrams remade the M:I franchise in the image of his TV shows, particularly Alias. This included turning Woo’s Übermensch from the last movie into the kind of suburban everyman who scores well with the Nielsen ratings and who has a sweet girl-next-door fiancée (Michelle Monaghan). Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Your mileage may vary with this approach, but personally we found M:I-3 to be too much of a piece with mid-2000s television and lacking in a certain degree of movie magic. With that said, the movie has two fantastic aces up its sleeve. The first and most significant is a deliciously boorish performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the franchise’s scariest villain. Abrams’ signature monologues have never been more chilling as when Hoffman cuts through Cruise’s matinee heroics like a knife and unsettles the protagonist and the audience with an unblinking declaration of ill-intent. Perhaps more impressively, during one of the franchise’s famed “mask” sequences where Ethan disguises himself as Hoffman’s baddie, the character actor subtly and convincingly mimics Cruise’s leading man charisma. That, plus introducing fan favorite Simon Pegg as Benji to the series (if in little more than a cameo), makes the movie worth a watch if not a regular revisit. According to more than a few critics in 2023, the then-newest installment in the series was also the best one. I respectfully disagree. The first half of writer-director Christopher McQuarrie and Cruise’s Dead Reckoning In terms of old school spectacle and breakneck pacing, Dead Reckoning is easily the most entertaining action movie of summer 2023’s offerings. However, when compared to the best entries in the M:I franchise, Dead Reckoning leaves something be desired. While McQuarrie’s counterintuitive instinct to script the scenes after designing the set pieces, and essentially make it up as they went along, paid off in dividends in Fallout, the narrative of Dead Reckoning’s first half is shaggy and muddled. The second act is especially disjointed when the film arrives in Venice, and the actors seem as uncertain as the script is over what exactly the film’s nefarious A.I. villain, codename: “The Entity,” wants. That this is the portion of the film which also thanklessly kills off fan favorite Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) does the movie no favors. Elsewhere in the film, Hayley Atwell proves a fantastic addition in her own right as Grace—essentially a civilian and audience surrogate who gets wrapped up in the M:I series’ craziness long enough to stare at Cruise in incredulity—but the inference that she is here to simply interchangeably replace Ilsa gives the film a sour subtext. Still, Atwell’s Grace is great, Cruise’s Ethan is as mad as ever with his stunts, and even as the rest of the ensemble feels underutilized, seeing the team back together makes this a good time—while the unexpected return of Henry Czerny as Eugene Kittridge is downright great. 4. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011) There are many fans who will tell you that the Mission: Impossible franchise as we know it really started with this Brad Bird entry at the beginning of the 2010s, and it’s easy to see why. As the first installment made with a newly chastened Cruise—who Paramount Pictures had just spent years trying to fire from the series—it’s also the installment where the movie star remade his persona as a modern day Douglas Fairbanks. Here he becomes the guy you could count on to commit the most absurdly dangerous and ridiculous stunts for our entertainment. What a mensch. And in terms of set pieces, nothing in the series may top this movie’s second act where Cruise is asked to become a real-life Spider-Man and wall-crawl—as well as swing and skip—along the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It’s a genuine showstopper that looms over the rest of the movie. Not that there isn’t a lot to enjoy elsewhere as Bird brings a slightly more sci-fi and cartoonish cheek to the proceedings with amusing gadgets like those aforementioned “blue means glue” Spidey gloves. Even more amusingly, the damn things never seem to work properly. This is also the first Mission: Impossible movie where the whole team feels vital to the success of the adventure, including a now proper sidekick in the returning Pegg and some solid support from Paula Patton and Jeremy Renner. For a certain breed of fan that makes this the best, but we would argue the team dynamics were fleshed out a little better down the road, and in movies that have more than one stunning set piece to their name. 3. Mission: Impossible (1996) The last four entries of the series have been so good that it’s become common for folks to overlook the movie that started it all, Brian De Palma’s endlessly stylish Mission: Impossible. That’s a shame since there’s something admirably blasphemous to this day about a movie that would take an ancient pop culture property and throw the fundamentals out the window. In this case, that meant turning the original show’s hero, Jim Phelps (played by Jon Voight here), into the villain while completely rewriting the rulebook about what the concept of “Mission: Impossible” is. It’s the bold kind of creative move studios would never dare make now, but that’s what opened up the space to transform a novelty of ‘60s spymania TV into a ‘90s action classic, complete with heavy emphasis on techno espionage babble and post-Cold War politics. The movie can at times appear dated given the emphasis on floppy disks and AOL email accounts, but it’s also got a brisk energy that never goes out of style thanks to De Palma’s ability to frame a knotty script by David Koepp and Robert Towne (the latter of whom penned Chinatown) into a breathlessly paced thriller filled with paranoia, double crosses, femme fatales, and horrifying dream sequences. In other words, it’s a De Palma special! The filmmaker and Cruise also craft a series of set pieces that would become the series’ defining trademark. The finale with a fistfight atop a speeding train beneath the English Channel is great, but the quiet as a church mouse midpoint where Cruise’s hero dangles over the pressure-sensitive floor of a CIA vault—and with a drop of sweat dripping just out of reach!—is the stuff of popcorn myth. It’s how M:I also became as much a great heist series as shoot ‘em up. Plus, this movie gave us Ving Rhames’ stealth MVP hacker, Luther Stickell. 2. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) In retrospect there is something faintly low-key about Rogue Nation, as ludicrous as that might be to say about a movie that begins with its star literally clinging for dear life to the outside of a plane at take off. Yet given how grand newcomer director Christopher McQuarrie would take things in the following three Mission films, his more restrained first iteration seems charmingly small scale in comparison. Even so, it remains an action marvel in its own right, as well as the most balanced and well-structured adventure in the series. It’s the one where the project of making Ethan Hunt a tangible character began. Rightly assessing Ethan to be a “gambler” based on his inconsistent yet continuously deranged earlier appearances, McQuarrie spins a web where Hunt’s dicey lifestyle comes back to haunt him when facing a villain who turns those showboat instincts in on themselves, and which pairs Ethan for the first time against the best supporting character in the series, Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust. There’s a reason Ferguson’s MI6 double (triple, quadruple?) agent was the first leading lady in the series to become a recurring character. She gives a star-making turn as a woman who is in every way Ethan’s equal while keeping him and the audience on their toes. She, alongside a returning Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames, solidify the definitive Mission team, all while McQuarrie crafts elegant set pieces with classical flair, including a night at the opera that homages and one-ups Alfred Hitchcock’s influential sequence from The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), as well as a Casablanca chase between Ethan and Ilsa that’s the best motorcycle sequence in the series (if only they stopped by Rick’s). Also McQuarrie’s script ultimately figures out who Ethan Hunt truly is by letting all those around him realize he’s a madman. And Alec Baldwin’s Alan Hunley gets this gem of a line to sums the series up in total: “Hunt is uniquely trained and highly motivated, a specialist without equal, immune to any countermeasures. There is no secret he cannot extract, no security he cannot breach, no person he cannot become. He has most likely anticipated this very conversation and is waiting to strike in whatever direction we move. Sir, Hunt is the living manifestation of destiny—and he has made you his mission.” 1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) If one were to rank these movies simply by virtue of set pieces and stunts, pound for pound it’s impossible to top Mission: Impossible – Fallout (forgive the pun). A virtuoso showcase in action movie bliss, there are too many giddy mic drop moments to list, but among our favorites are: Tom Cruise doing a real HALO jump out of a plane at 25,000 feet and which was captured by camera operator Craig O’Brien, who had an IMAX camera strapped to his head; the extended fight sequence between Cruise, Henry Cavill, and Liam Yang in a bathroom where the music completely drops out so we can hear every punch, kick, and that surreal moment where Cavill needs to reload his biceps like they’re shotguns; and did you see Cruise’s ankle bend the wrong way in that building to building jump?! For action junkies, there was no better adrenaline kick out of Hollywood in the 2010s than this flick, and that is in large part a credit to writer-director Christopher McQuarrie. As the first filmmaker to helm more than one M:I movie, McQuarrie had the seemingly counterintuitive innovation to meticulously hammer out all of the above action sequences as well as others—such as a motorcycle chase across the cobblestones of Paris and a helicopter climax where Cruise is really flying his chopper at low altitudes—with stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood and Cruise, and then retroactively pen a surprisingly tight and satisfying screenplay that continues to deconstruct the Ethan Hunt archetype into a man of flesh and blood. McQuarrie also reunites all the best supporting players in the series—Rhames, Pegg, and his own additions of Rebecca Ferguson as the ambiguous Ilsa Faust and Sean Harris as the dastardly Solomon Lane—into a yarn that is as zippy and sharp as you might expect from the screenwriter of The Usual Suspects, but which lets each action sequence unfurl with all the pageantry of an old school Gene Kelly musical number. Many will call this the best Mission: Impossible movie, and we won’t quibble the point.

Let's make this simple: You want to know if there are any post- or mid-credits scenes in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. The answer is no, there are none.Full spoilers follow.It's been one wild, stunt-filled ride over the past 29 years, but every mission must come to an end eventually. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is apparently the final entry in this long-running series, as Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt confronts his most daring and high-stakes mission yet.Now that The Final Reckoning is in theaters, we’re here to break down the ending to this epic blockbuster. Who lives? Who dies? Is this really the end of the road for Ethan and his team, or could the franchise return? Read on to learn more.Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning GalleryMission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning’s Ending ExplainedThe Mission: Impossible series has always been about the IMF racing against the clock to prevent various villains from unleashing global catastrophes, but the deck is really stacked against Ethan and his team in the eighth and final movie. While Ethan stopped Esai Morales’ Gabriel in the short term in 2023’s Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, there’s still the little problem of the hyper-advanced AI known as “The Entity” worming its way into every computer system across the globe. The situation is immediately dire in The Final Reckoning, with The Entity systematically taking over the nuclear stockpiles of every nation on Earth and Angela Bassett’s President Sloane forced to choose whether to unleash a preemptive strike on those nations. The Final Reckoning only further cements its dark, foreboding tone when Ving Rhames’ Luther Stickell becomes an early casualty in the conflict with Gabriel, which allows Gabriel to take possession of Luther’s Poison Pill device. Even after Ethan defies the odds and retrieves The Entity’s source code from the sunken Sevastopol submarine, he knows that the code is useless unless he can combine it with the Poison Pill. One way or another, all roads lead to Gabriel.As this conflict unfolds, The Final Reckoning introduces some fun and unexpected callbacks to previous Mission: Impossible films. For example, we learn that The Entity has its roots in the Rabbit’s Foot, the MacGuffin device from 2006’s Mission: Impossible III. Ethan’s team also reunites with former CIA analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), the man who almost walked in on Ethan during his tense wire-hacking mission from the original film. Meanwhile, Shea Whigham’s Jasper Briggs is revealed to be the son of Jon Voight’s Jim Phelps, the IMF leader from the original film. No wonder he seems to bear such a personal grudge toward Ethan. Ethan and Gabriel’s paths do ultimately converge in South Africa, at a digital bunker where The Entity plans to retreat before unleashing a nuclear holocaust. Ethan’s plan is to retrieve the Poison Pill and combine it with the source code module, tricking The Entity into isolating itself on a holographic drive that Hayley Atwell’s Grace can then pickpocket. Predictably, things go haywire with the arrival of CIA Director Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and his team, and Simon Pegg’s Benji is shot in the ensuing chaos. As Ethan and Gabriel battle it out aboard two dueling planes, the clock steadily ticks down to nuclear armageddon. President Sloane is forced to make her choice, and she chooses to trust Ethan and pull the US’s nuclear arsenal offline rather than allow The Entity to take control. Ethan finally outwits Gabriel, and the latter’s defiant villain speech is cut short when he bashes his head into the tail of his plane. Ethan parachutes to safety and combines the module with the Poison Pill. Grace performs the impossible feat of snatching the drive at just the right moment, trapping The Entity in its tiny prison. Once again, Ethan and the IMF have saved the world from ruin, even if few people will ever know the full truth. Even more impressive, they do so without any further casualties. Benji survives his near-fatal gunshot wound, meaning Luther is the only IMF member to die in The Final Reckoning. Ethan and his team reunite one last time in London’s Trafalgar Square, where Grace hands Ethan the briefcase containing The Entity. After exchanging solemn nods, they all go their separate ways. Thus ends their latest, and apparently last, impossible mission.PlayDoes The Final Reckoning Have a Post-Credits Scene?As mentioned above, the eighth and final (for now?) Mission: Impossible movie has no mid- or post-credits scenes. You're free to leave once the credits start rolling. Though, as always, it never hurts to stick around and show some appreciation for all the cast and crew who made those death-defying stunts happen. The lack of a post-credits scene isn't necessarily that surprising, given that they've never really been a thing with this particular Hollywood franchise. Still, with this supposedly being the last entry in the series, you might think Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie would want to give fans one last nod before sending Ethan Hunt off into the sunset. As much as this is billed as the conclusion of the series, The Final Reckoning certainly leaves the door open for more. A post-credits scene could have hinted at what’s next for the victorious Ethan. But that does raise an important question. Is this really the end? Let’s explore what we know.Is This Really the End of the Mission: Impossible Series? Paramount has definitely marketed The Final Reckoning as the conclusion to the Mission: Impossible saga. It’s right there in the name. This film is meant to cap off a 29-year journey and chronicle Ethan Hunt’s final and most desperate mission.But how final is this film, really? It certainly wraps up on a pretty open-ended note. Ethan is still alive, having somehow survived diving to loot a sunken submarine in the frigid Arctic Ocean. Luther may have perished heroically, but the rest of the IMF is alive, too (even Benji, who was touch-and-go there for a bit). That’s honestly one of the criticisms that can be leveled at The Final Reckoning. Even in this supposedly final outing, the film seems reluctant to break too many of its toys or veer outside the standard formula. Anyone expecting to see Cruise’s iconic hero finally bite off more than he can chew and meet his end will come away disappointed.Given the way The Final Reckoning ends, there’s nothing stopping Paramount from greenlighting another sequel featuring this revamped cast, with Cruise’s Ethan being joined by Atwell’s Grace, Pegg’s Benji, Pom Klementieff’s Paris, and Greg Tarzan Davis’ Theo Degas. The studio certainly seems to be leaving that door open, whether or not they choose to walk through it.It may all come down to a question of money. The Mission: Impossible franchise has certainly raked in the cash for Paramount over the years, but these movies are also insanely expensive to produce. Stunts this epic and stars this famous don’t come cheap. Case in point: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One grossed an impressive $571 million worldwide, yet the film is still considered to be a box office failure because of its massive budget (which was inflated by complications stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic). PlayThe Final Reckoning’s budget is reported to be as high as $400 million even before marketing, meaning it needs to gross way more than its predecessor to break even. That may be too much to hope for in a summer movie season as crowded as this one. That’s to say nothing of the fact that audiences are proving ever more fickle in the age of endless streaming options.Given the astronomical cost of making Mission: Impossible movies, Paramount may be happy to close the door on the franchise and focus on the more profitable Top Gun series. The ROI simply isn’t there any longer.That said, we could see Paramount pivoting in a slightly different direction with Mission: Impossible. Perhaps Cruise’s character could become more of a supporting player, with a new generation of heroic IMF agents taking center stage. That formula certainly worked for 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick. At one point, rumors even suggested that Maverick star Glen Powell was being eyed to become the new face of the M:I franchise, though Powell himself has denied this. At the very least, we know director Christopher McQuarrie has explored the idea of further sequels beyond The Final Reckoning. But if the studio ever does greenlight them, we suspect the goal will be to pivot to smaller, cheaper spinoffs with less emphasis on Cruise. It’s not as if Cruise is getting any younger, and at some point, Ethan Hunt needs to be allowed to retire for real. How many times can one guy save the world before it’s enough? In IGN's Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review, Clint Gage gave the film a 6 out of 10, writing, "While its action is reliably thrilling and a few of its most exciting sequences are sure to hold up through the years, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning tries to deal with no less than the end of every living thing on the planet – and suffers because of it. The somber tone and melodramatic dialogue miss the mark of what’s made this franchise so much fun for 30 years, but the door is left open for more impossible missions and the hope that this self-serious reckoning isn’t actually final." PlayFor more on the series, check out our ranking of the Mission: Impossible movies from worst to best.Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket byfollowing @jschedeen on BlueSky.

On May 23, the final installment of the Mission: Impossible saga is set to come to an end with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Known for its vicious villains, the franchise sports its Biggest Bad yet: an AI known as The Entity that's bent on wiping humans off the planet. Mashable Senior Creative Producer Mark Stetson sat down with the cast (Simon Pegg, Angela Bassett, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, and Greg Tarzan Davis) to discuss the film's themes of humanity and friendship and its exploration of the future of AI. First, Simon Pegg, who has played Benji Dunn since Mission: Impossible III — when we first get a hint of The Entity's existence — helped break down the origins of this Big Bad. "Yeah, I mean, the Entity was around in its nascent form a long time ago. It was a malicious code, basically, which itself evolved into what we are up against in Dead Reckoning, in The Final Reckoning. And I love the idea that McQ [Director Christopher McQuarrie] looked back into the past to see where things may have started, where the rumblings of the Entity may have begun. And further back as well, to, obviously, when Bill Donloe was exiled to Alaska."Hayley Atwell, first appearing in the franchise as Grace in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, goes on to discuss film's theme of friendship and humanity in the face of its AI villain. "I feel like the core theme of this film is friendship. So that, of course, the anti-God and and the Entity...is the sort of the villain...the thing that sets up the stakes. But really it's a film about a team coming together and sacrificing personal ambition for the sake of the good of all people. And it's a triumph of the human spirit... It's so, so beautiful and so heartfelt."Finally, Angela Bassett ties the interview up in a really nice bow when asked why it's important to prioritize humanity: "I mean, what do we have left without it? You know, we have to. We're made to be in communion with one another... So even though it's a great tool...we need to keep [AI] in its lane and [make sure] it's [a] benefit to us, not to the detriment of us."Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens exclusively in theaters on May 23.

This article contains Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning spoilers. Before Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning earned its latest title, it was previously called Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2. Considering Part 1’s muted box office reception in 2023 (back when it had the unenviable task of opening sans IMAX screens a week before Barbenheimer), Paramount was probably wise to change it. And yet, as late as November of last year, the still untitled Mission: Impossible 8 was apparently at the center of competing marketing visions between the studio and its star/producer/living manifestation of destiny: Tom Cruise. According to a THRFinal Reckoning moniker that came to pass, plus all the callbacks and cameos that were spoiled in the film before release (I for one wish I hadn’t known that Rolfe Saxon’s delightful reprisal of the CIA analyst who had the worst day of his life in the original 1996 Mission: Impossible was returning). Yet while the film put “final” in the title, and the word was dropped heavily throughout the script—including by Shea Wingham when he promised Ethan Hunt that they were going to have “a reckoning”—the creative loggerheads over whether this really was the end seems to have bedeviled M:I8 all the way to the closing sequence. For deep in London’s busy Trafalgar Square, a retinue of familiar faces gather in the crowds beneath Nelson’s Column. Cruise’s Ethan is there, of course, as is Hayley Atwell’s Grace and Simon Pegg’s Benji. Even Pom Klementieff seems locked in as a permanent IMF fixture, which is impressive since canonically she was trying to kill all these folks only a month earlier. In many ways it gives closure to the adventure we just watched… but only to a point. In fact, like so much else of The Final Reckoning, the ending feels like a variation of scenes we’ve already seen in this series, such as the surviving members of the team gathering for a victory drink in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, or having a celebratory stroll through the London evening streets (which is the original deleted ending to Mission: Impossible – Fallout). Ultimately much of Final Reckoning feels like a retread of something the series has done relatively recently, and often better, including an ending that refuses to say goodbye to anyone—except maybe Ving Rhames’ fan favorite Luther, who like Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa in the last movie discovered that the only way for their actor to retire from the series was by being killed off by a pretty underwhelming villain named Gabriel (Esai Morales). Otherwise though, this is the conclusion of almost any other Mission flick, and one that feels faintly tinkered with. It is easy to speculate, for instance, whether that scene was a reshoot since none of the stars are seen in the same shot together. Even the setting beneath Nelson’s Column looks like an untied thread after we previously spied the statue of Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson at the beginning of the film right before our first shot of Ethan in London. The historical Nelson died ostensibly saving the world (at least from the British perspective) at the Battle of Trafalgar where he led the Royal Navy in a rout of Napoleon Bonaparte’s ships, cementing British supremacy of the seas for the next hundred years. The subtext of beginning the movie with Nelson, therefore, would seem to be that we were about to see another great man give his life to save the world from a megalomaniac. Instead Ethan not only survived The Final Reckoning, but pretty much went through the exact same ending he experienced in Mission: Impossible – Fallout where Cruise’s hero was forced to commandeer one flying contraption (a biplane now instead of a helicopter) in order to hijack another with his enemy, all so he can snap some MacGuffin into place at a great height while the rest of the team disarms the proverbial ticking bomb that is about to destroy the world. This in no way is meant to undercut the pure spectacle thrill of The Final Reckoning’s climax. Seeing Tom Cruise cling from a biplane that is doing barrel rolls in IMAX is worth the price of admission alone. However, the repetitive nature of it suspiciously resembles a compromise. The Mission films during Christopher McQuarrie’s superb tenure as writer-director—beginning with Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation 10 years ago—are famous for their playing the story by ear on the set. Yet despite Dead Reckoning and even the first act of Final Reckoning inserting some pretty major setups meant to confront Ethan’s past (including with the man who apparently killed a great love of his life 35 years ago and sent him into the IMF) nothing significantly is resolved. We never learn exactly who Ethan was before the IMF, what Gabriel meant to him, or how much this film is about him living with the losses of Ilsa and Luther. Furthermore, even Shea Wigham’s threat that they would have “a reckoning” when this is all over—which comes after the limp reveal that Agent Briggs is actually Jim Phelps Jr.—culminates in nothing more than a handshake and hug. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! The ending of “the Final Reckoning” is treated like an afterthought. In one sense, this is no dealbreaker. Even the best Mission films, which I count Cruise and McQ’s partnership on Fallout and Rogue Nation as the pinnacle of, have never been “plot movies.” With the exception of maybe the first film’s techno thriller elements, every M:I flick is about the spectacle and/or the fun of the team dynamics. They are affirmations of Cruise’s movie stardom achieving an almost religious apotheosis. Yet by marketing the eighth film as the last one, Final Reckoning set expectations its star clearly had no intention of meeting. In retrospect, we should have believed Cruise back in 2023 when he said “I hope to keep making Mission: Impossible movies until I’m [Harrison Ford’s] age.” So the end of Final Reckoning is no ending at all for the franchise, which which becomes a problem when it fitfully attempts to emulate the gravity of franchise closers like The Dark Knight Rises, No Time to Die, and Avengers: Endgame (at least in terms of Iron Man and Black Widow). There are no real goodbyes in Final Reckoning, but the movie is still almost certainly a farewell of sorts—to this iteration of the franchise which began a decade ago. McQuarrie is, again, the greatest collaborator Cruise has ever found on this series. They created the platonic ideal of what a Mission film should be in Rogue Nation and then elevated it to rarified, god tier levels within the action genre in Fallout. But it would seem McQuarrie has pushed his messianic interpretation of Ethan to a breaking point. That becomes more pronounced, too, when considering the latest entry began production during COVID and ended it on the other side of the labor strikes of 2023, causing its budget to reach a reported $400 million zenith. That is a record no studio Still, I suspect if anyone can convince a studio to invest in a franchise even after that kind of budget explosion, it’s Cruise. And until relatively recently he has kept the Mission films healthy and exciting by bringing in new directors who radically reinvent it in terms of tone, aesthetics, and even interpretations of the central character. Cruise’s all-American farmboy turned spy in Brian De Palma’s original film is not the Kung fu-kicking rebel in John Woo’s M:I2, and neither are convincingly J.J. Abrams’ familiar schtick of a suburban everyman (or woman) who has an espionage secret in the closet. McQuarrie’s version of Ethan is my favorite: the reckless gambler with a heart so big that it will redeem all mankind of its sins one insane stunt at a time. But between the 63-year-old movie star getting older and Final Reckoning arguably missing the highs of Fallout in spite its bigger budget, it is likely time to soft reboot the series again. Which might explain the non-ending of Ethan Hunt drifting into the crowd, heading toward his next reinvention.

Perhaps the most defining aspect of the Mission: Impossible movies during their Christopher McQuarrie era has been their spontaneity. Outside of a renewed emphasis on Buster Keaton-like daredevil stunt work, each Mission film since 2015’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation has been informed by the IMF characters onscreen, led by the indefatigable Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), knowing the loose framework of what the job is and then figuring out all the hair-raising details as they run along. Behind the scenes, it’s been much the same for the cast and crew, who likewise discover the plot specifics and their characterizations in an environment that’s equal parts improvisation and manifest destiny. Hayley Atwell even reveals to us that it wasn’t until late into the process of making 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning that she was told her character name. And it proved to be a profoundly moving moment for the actress. Cast as the biggest addition to the franchise canon over what might be the final two Mission flicks, Dead Reckoning and this week’s hotly anticipated Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Atwell was no stranger to blockbuster work after her time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She also knows what it means to be part of an organic ensemble with a long history of working in the British theater. Nonetheless, it was a touching surprise when, well into production on this two-part finale, Atwell was informed her aloof and thieving foil to Cruise’s Hunt is called… Grace. “It was a beautiful moment because towards the end of the last movie, McQ and Tom came to christen me and christen the character, and they did it as a reveal,” Atwell remembers. “They just said, ‘We want to tell you we’ve come up with the name and the name is partly based on how we’ve seen you work and how you’ve been consistently over time, and over this filming and training period.’ And they said her name is Grace.” It is an intriguing revelation that dispels the fan theory that she was named after Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (after all, Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa was introduced in the one with Casablanca as a location). It also meant much to Atwell who right up until seeing the finished film at a premiere was unsure what version(s) of the character she played would be selected by writer-director McQuarrie in the editing bay. “I felt incredibly flattered and moved by that, because they felt that’s how I approached anything that was asked of me,” she says. “So I feel very proud that I showed up every day, not knowing what was going to happen. And also when I even watched the movie, I had no idea the version of Grace that they were going to choose and that they were going to edit through, because there’s no set script. So to what extent would she be an all-knowing calculated femme fatale, an ingenue, a wide-eyed idiot savant, a mysterious, enigmatic vulnerable, complex person?  What version of any little thing that I did would be put together to paint the portrait of who Grace ultimately was and how she fits into the world of it? So to be given that name was particularly meaningful for me.” It’s an illuminating story and says much about what Atwell brought to Dead Reckoning, as well as the now imminent Final Reckoning. Indeed, the new movie finds Grace in a very different place than the last film, with the master pickpocket agreeing to join the IMF and Ethan at the end of Dead Reckoning. When audiences catch up with her in Final Reckoning, like everything else in the movie, she is in a state of constant flux and movement—but now as Ethan’s teammate. “She’s like ‘oh no, you’ve made me care about you!’” Atwell laughs. “The cost of that is so great! Life was a lot easier when I didn’t care and I was just out for myself.” Yet having worked on and off in the world of Mission: Impossible for nearly five years now, Atwell feels like she truly understands what it’s like being part of the team. For instance, there was a day high above the snow line in Svalbard (Norwegian territory deep in the Arctic Circle) where the British actress looked around her to see a sun high in the sky and dogs pulling a sled beneath her feet. Something clicked. “It’s a beast, this kind of unquantifiable, unparalleled traveling circus of an adventure where anything could happen because anything can change at the last minute,” Atwell considers. “And so [because of] the maintenance and the training and the preparation and the drilling, I was able to do anything that happened to be asked of me on that day—whether it’s a sudden scene change or a sudden added action sequence that tried out different things that we ended up not putting in the movie, I know now what it takes and I think when we got to the Arctic, there was a sense of surrender, total surrender to the process of that, rather than figuring it out, trying to prove myself, or force anything.” There was also acceptance that when you’re on Mission, nothing ever truly ends. By her own estimate, Atwell must have wrapped The Final Reckoning 14 times over the last few years. The first couple instances were highly emotional moments, but she now smirks at how soon she’d be back in the thick of things, one way or another.  “It reminded me of when you meet up with someone and then you’re walking down the street and you say goodbye and you go your separate ways, but then you realize you’re going in the same direction so you have this awkward sense of a false goodbye,” says Atwell. Thus during her recent stint on the West End where Atwell played Shakespeare’s Beatrice opposite Tom Hiddleston’s Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, Atwell even found herself spending her one day off in a London studio in a 10-meter tank doing Final Reckoning scenes. “Every time I wrapped on Mission… they’d say ‘and that’s a wrap!’ and I’d be like, ‘I’ll see you next week! Bye guys.’” Not that she is complaining, by her own admission Atwell has trouble saying farewell and savored every moment she was back in the team. Like Grace, they’ve made made her care. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens in theaters this Friday, May 23.

This list contains spoilers for the Mission: Impossible franchise.A new Mission: Impossible film is hitting theaters this month – the final one in the franchise, if we’re to believe Tom Cruise and the suits at Paramount – and if you’re like us, you’re probably knee deep in a series rewatch right now.The focus of the films, spectacular action set pieces aside, has been Cruise’s lead spy, Ethan Hunt. Fellow team agents have often come and gone, and supposedly impossible missions have varied time after time, but Ethan has remained. The only other constant has been a steady supply of villains – men and women with big plans fueled by greed and/or malice, who think they’ll be the one to outwit, outsmart, and outrun Hunt. Fools.It might seem counterintuitive ranking the Mission: Impossible villains under the banner of “best,” but every great hero needs an equally great villain. Numerous elements come into play when determining the best villain, but we’re zeroing in on the scale of their threat, the weight of the violence (both physical and emotional) they commit against Hunt and his team, and the palpable degree of villainous charisma they exhibit.So cue up that classic Lalo Schifrin theme, here are the 10 Best Mission: Impossible Villains, Ranked!Top 10 Mission Impossible Villains10. A.I. The Entity (Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One)Director: Christopher McQuarrie | Writer: Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen | Stars: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson | Release Date: July 12, 2023 | Runtime: 163 mins“A self-aware, self-learning, truth-eating digital parasite infesting all of cyberspace” sounds like a pretty cool threat in any other high-octane thriller, but in the Mission: Impossible franchise it’s only good enough to land at number ten. It underwhelms compared to its human counterparts, because let’s be real – zeroes and ones ain’t got shit and madness and guns – but its power and immense reach are undeniable. The Entity began “life” as a digital weapon designed by the U.S. government before going rogue and hopping through cyberspace with the giddiness of a puppy experiencing its first snowfall.Most villainous act of villainy: While toying with and killing a submarine filled with Russian sailors is an act of murderous cruelty, it’s the Entity’s bigger, broader acts of deception that mark it as a true villain. Its early days of online manipulation saw it shifting public opinion and behavior through social media, and it’s a brutal reminder of events in the real world. We live in a present where people with nefarious agendas are influencing easily shaped minds, and with the increased use of A.I. in our online dealings, it’s not hard to imagine something like the Entity stepping in and really turning our daily lives into a nightmare.Where to WatchPowered by9. John Musgrave (Mission: Impossible III)Director: J.J. Abrams | Writer: Alex Kurtzman, Robert Orci, and J.J. Abrams | Stars: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup, Michelle Monaghan | Release Date: May 5, 2006 | Runtime: 126 minsNot every villain has direct blood on his hands, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less dangerous. Musgrave is Hunt’s Operations Manager at the IMF, and it’s suggested they may even be minor friends – understandable as he’s played by Billy Crudup, and who wouldn’t want to be friends with Billy Crudup. He brings Hunt in on a mission to rescue one of his proteges, Lindsey Farris, and when that goes wrong and Hunt is blamed for the fallout, it’s Musgrave who helps the agent escape to pursue justice. See? A friend.Surprise! It’s all a ruse, and Musgrave is actually a traitor working with a man named Owen Davian on some elaborate plan to retrieve a piece of tech nicknamed “the rabbit’s foot.” Musgrave’s a hero in his own mind, though, as he’s hoping to use this as motivation for first strikes against enemy forces. He wants the U.S. and the IMF to play a more aggressive role in the fight against terrorism, and if that means supporting terrorists along the way, well, he’s all for it.Most villainous act of villainy: Musgrave might think his heart is in the right place here, but in addition to enabling a murderous terrorist in Davian, he crosses an equally big line by pulling Ethan’s wife, Julia, into danger. Worse, he lets Davian shoot Julia in the head right in front of Hunt. Sure, she’s revealed to have been a minor henchwoman in a mask, but the emotional damage is real.Mission: Impossible IIIParamount PicturesMay 5, 2006PG-13Where to WatchPowered by8. Kurt Hendricks (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol)Director: Brad Bird | Writer: Josh Applebaum and Andre Nemec | Stars: Tom Cruise, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Michael Nyqvist | Release Date: December 21, 2011 | Runtime: 132 minsWhile some villains act out of greed and others cause misery simply for the fun of it, Kurt Hendricks is a man who only wants the best for humanity. What is the best, you ask? Well, in Hendricks’ mind, our species would benefit from something of a cleanse. From the great biblical flood to the atomic bombing of Japanese cities during World War II, immense disasters lead to rebuilding, recovery, and real improvement… apparently.Sounds logical, so Hendricks sets out to trigger just such a global debacle starting with a massive attack on the Kremlin in Moscow and leading to the acquisition of nuclear codes. He proves himself to be one of the greatest threats Ethan Hunt has faced to that point.Except, and this is where casting comes into serious play, the film wants us to see him as a physical threat to Hunt – but that’s nearly impossible. Michael Nyqvist was a fantastic actor, and he makes for a compelling villain through dialogue and intent. But a serious contender in a fight with Cruise? It’s difficult to buy, but that doesn’t stop director Brad Bird from letting him go toe to toe with the film’s star for a weirdly long fight. (To be fair, Chad Stahelski started it by letting Nyqvist seemingly hold his own for a bit with Keanu Reeves in John Wick.) So, while Hendricks is a grand threat on the world stage, he tumbles some in the ranking here as an unserious brawler against the highly trained and in far better shape Hunt. Most villainous act of villainy: Like Musgrave above, Hendricks seriously thinks he’s doing the world a favor by causing harm. His final act results in a nuclear missile being fired towards San Francisco, something that would have killed tens of thousands of people immediately before triggering the death of millions more. That’s no small thing, and he would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling IMF agents.Where to WatchPowered by7. August Walker (Mission: Impossible - Fallout)Director: Christopher McQuarrie | Writer: Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen | Stars: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson | Release Date: July 27, 2018 | Runtime: 147 minsHunt and his IMF team have been betrayed by double agents and traitors on numerous occasions, but most of them are greedy middle-aged men in suits who don’t pose an immediate physical threat to our intrepid hero. August Walker is something different entirely. He towers over Hunt and is jacked from his mustache on down. Henry Cavill’s portrayal ensures that he’s already menacing even while pretending to be on Hunt’s side, but once the truth comes out, the gloves come off.Walker is revealed to be working in cahoots with the brilliant Solomon Lane, and together they frame Hunt and once again pull the love of his life, Julia, into harm’s way. His motivation for it all is a bit over the top and dramatic – he wants the old world to implode and give rise to something better – but what else would you expect from a man who seems to cock his arms like guns during fist fights.Most villainous act of villainy: Walker and Lane are planning to detonate nuclear bombs, and while the latter stays behind to die in his greatest act of terror, Walker is on a chopper heading to safety. Hunt, of course, catches up to him in pursuit of the detonator that’s needed to stop the countdown. While Walker could have easily escaped by giving up the detonator, his desire to cause suffering – especially Hunt’s suffering if Julia were to die – leads him to a one-on-one fight to the death with the agent. It’s a decision built on rage and self-righteous justification, and it rightfully ends in his painful demise.Mission: Impossible - FalloutParamount PicturesJul 27, 2018Where to WatchPowered by6. Paris (Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One)Director: Christopher McQuarrie | Writer: Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen | Stars: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson | Release Date: July 12, 2023 | Runtime: 163 minsWhen it comes to villains in the Mission: Impossible universe, few can touch Pom Klementieff’s Paris on style and charisma points. A henchwoman to Gabriel, she lets her gleefully murderous skillset do most of her talking, and it’s a refreshing change of pace from baddies who seem compelled to share their life stories before pulling a trigger.Her costume and face makeup see her stand apart from the crowd, but don’t let her doll-like appearance fool you. Paris is a merciless fighter who refuses to quit despite the odds, as evidenced by a shootout and car chase in Rome that sees her literally plowing through obstacles both human and otherwise in her pursuit of Hunt. Most villainous act of villainy: While Paris makes mincemeat out of numerous threats, she ultimately succumbs to Hunt during an alleyway brawl. He spares her life, though, and after being punished by Gabriel – he basically tries to kill her – she chooses to betray both him and her villainous tendencies by saving Hunt’s life. Maybe I’m stretching the definition here, but it takes a real badass to turn your back on villainy with the discovery of unexpected morals and a change of heart.Where to WatchPowered by5. Gabriel (Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning)Director: Christopher McQuarrie | Writer: Christopher McQuarrie and Erik Jendresen | Stars: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson | Release Date: July 12, 2023 & May 23, 2025 | Runtime: 163 mins & 169 minsThe mysterious Gabriel arrives in the penultimate entry of the franchise, and he’s a man with deadly skills and an alliance with the Entity. He also comes with a backstory suggesting an integral role in Ethan Hunt’s life. It seems Gabriel killed a woman named Marie thirty years ago, someone Hunt was apparently fond of, and it’s that murder that landed Hunt at the IMF – where he went on to save thousands of lives. Hundreds of thousands, even. So maybe Gabriel is a hero? I kid, I kid.He’s obviously a villain, and he may even be something of a seer (?), but while his late-to-the-party franchise arrival unavoidably undercuts his dramatic weight, the character’s casting lifts Gabriel right back up again. Esai Morales brings real charm and a calm menace to the character, and it’s immediately made clear that he’s not someone to be trifled with. You believe both his physical abilities and deadly intentions, and Morales’ added dramatic weight makes him a real threat to Hunt. He also earns a bump in the rankings by gifting viewers with the best, most unforgettable villain death in the entire franchise.Most villainous act of villainy: Gabriel’s killed a lot of people, and he even destroyed a rolling Agatha Christie landmark, so it’s clear he’s a bad guy. His most vicious act, though, comes as a bookend to having “fridged” Marie three decades earlier. Gabriel threatens to do it again by killing either Ilsa or Grace – Hunt’s current love interest or the woman who just landed in his lap mere hours ago – and while the film wants to trick viewers into thinking it’s going to be the latter, it’s Ilsa who dies by Gabriel’s blade instead. McQuarrie and Cruise are obviously the real villains here for introducing this tired trope of a woman’s death being responsible for a man’s life, but it’s ultimately Gabriel who thrusts the knife into Ilsa’s gut. It could have been Grace who died. Hell, it should have been Benji. Instead, Gabriel extinguishes the franchise’s brightest flame this side of Hunt himself. J’accuse!Where to WatchPowered byNot yet available for streaming.4. Jim Phelps (Mission: Impossible)Director: Brian De Palma | Writer: David KoeppSteven Zaillian, and Robert Towne | Stars: Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, Emmanuelle Beart, Henry Czerny, Jean Reno | Release Date: May 22, 1996 | Runtime: 110 minsJim Phelps wasn’t the only friend/fellow agent to betray Hunt over the years, but he was the first – and arguably the most shocking. The character, as played by Peter Graves, was the IMF’s lead agent for the bulk of the television series’ seven-season run from 1966 to 1973. He was unquestionably a good guy, so there was no reason to suspect that his presence in the first Mission: Impossible film would be anything different – well, Jon Voight in the role was probably a clue.Audiences expected Phelps to essentially hand the reins over to Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, but while he did just that, he did so with a major act of betrayal. As he tells Hunt once his ruse is discovered, the end of the Cold War threatens to end the need for the IMF – this is as naive a statement as ever uttered in the entirety of the franchise – and he was worried about becoming a relic barely scraping by on sixty-two thousand dollars a year.Most villainous act of villainy: The betrayal itself is already brutal as Phelps turns his back on friends and agents who’ve risked their lives together over the years, but it’s the specifics of his traitorous act that hits hardest. In his effort to frame someone else for his crime, Phelps kills off three members of his team during an operation and then fakes his own death. What could have been a simple theft, instead becomes an act of cruelty making his betrayal sting even more.Where to WatchPowered by3. Sean Ambrose (Mission: Impossible II)Director: John Woo | Writer: Robert Towne | Stars: Tom Cruise, Dougray Scott, Thandiwe Newton, Ving Rhames | Release Date: May 24, 2000 | Runtime: 123 mins“That was always the hardest part of having to portray you,” says ex-IMF agent Sean Ambrose to a beaten and angered Ethan Hunt, “grinning like an idiot every fifteen minutes.” That line alone makes Ambrose a top villain as it’s a terrific zing at both Hunt and Cruise himself. He’s equally dismissive of women as evidenced by his comment that they’re like monkeys when it comes to the men in their lives, that they “won’t let go of one branch until they get a grip on the next.” Say what you will about his greedy desires, but Ambrose (Dougray Scott) understands the assignment when it comes to being a charismatic villain.That greed has led him to steal a deadly plague with plans to unleash it on whole populations if his demands aren’t met. While cash money is his primary motivator, though, Ambrose also seems fueled by a splash of jealousy towards Hunt. That makes their faceoffs all the more entertaining whether they’re jousting on motorcycles or sharing beatdowns in the sand as only the great John Woo can capture it.Most villainous act of villainy: The film opens with Ambrose masquerading as Hunt in order to acquire the Chimera plague, but rather than just kill one man, Ambrose and his team crash an entire passenger jet filled with innocent civilians. Acts of terror would claim higher body counts in later films, but this puts faces to the dead in a far more direct way making it more personal and affecting.Mission: Impossible IIParamount PicturesMay 24, 2000PG-13Where to WatchPowered by2. Solomon Lane (Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation)Director: Christopher McQuarrie | Writer: Christopher McQuarrie | Stars: Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames, Sean Harris | Release Date: July 31, 2015 & July 27, 2018 | Runtime: 131 mins & 147 minsWhether due to low pay or poor benefits, the world is seemingly overflowing with ex-government employees ready and willing to betray their nations and jump on the train to villain town. Solomon Lane is one such agent, but he goes a step or three further by helping create an organization called The Syndicate that’s built entirely on those bitter, trigger happy ex-agents. They want to sow chaos and reap financial rewards, and they’ve been doing it for years.Lane is introduced killing a young, unarmed female agent right in front of Hunt, and it’s soon revealed that he’s responsible for thousands of deaths over the years through events made to look like accidents or the work of wholly unrelated perpetrators. Lane’s history of manipulating trust and the world’s various systems makes him one of the most dangerous villains in the franchise. He’s ahead of Hunt at every step, and his mantra – “The greater the suffering, the greater the peace.” – marks him as a man willing to do anything to accomplish his goals.While many actors go big playing villains, Sean Harris takes the opposite approach and makes Lane a weasel of a man who you just want to see get beaten senseless. It’s an unusually bold choice that leaves him without a darkly appealing persona or personality – he’s just a very bad man who couldn’t care less about you or your loved ones.Most villainous act of villainy: As the rare villain to be an active threat across more than one film, Lane inflicts plenty of pain, suffering, and stress on Hunt and his team. The bulk of his evil acts were committed before Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation even begins, but his cruelest and most personal action unfolds during the followup, Fallout. Along with August Walker, Lane manages to activate two nuclear bombs threatening not only the water supply for billions of people, but also the life of Hunt’s greatest love, Julia. Seeing her in harm’s way is the kind of gut punch that Hunt felt only once before, and it’s clear just how sorry he is that his choices have once again brought her so close to dying.Where to WatchPowered by1. Owen Davian (Mission: Impossible III)Director: J.J. Abrams | Writer: Alex Kurtzman, Robert Orci, and J.J. Abrams | Stars: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Billy Crudup, Michelle Monaghan | Release Date: May 5, 2006 | Runtime: 126 minsThere’s a lot of competition when it comes to selecting the best villain in the Mission: Impossible franchise, but there was never any doubt who’d land at the top of the heap. Davian doesn’t care about much beyond his own wants and needs, and the film reflects that by never revealing exactly what his end goal is – we know he wants the so-called rabbit’s foot, but what it is and what it does are never made clear. We just know that Davian will cut through anyone and anything to get it, and that makes him an exceptionally dangerous man.J.J. Abrams’ Mission: Impossible III is unfairly maligned, but even those underwhelmed by the film itself can’t help but applaud Philip Seymour Hall’s frighteningly effective and highly entertaining portrayal of Davian. His blistering stares, his lightning quick shifts from dead silence to raging outbursts, and his deceptively calm way of threatening everything that Hunt holds dear all work to make him a villain who commands the screen and even steals every scene from Cruise himself.There may not be a big, global threat at play here, but Davian is the man who arguably gets closer than any other villain to actually killing Hunt. He injects the agent’s head with an explosive device that gets within seconds of churning Hunt’s brain tissue into ground beef, and he even gets some serious licks in while brawling. You wouldn’t think a Cruise versus Hoffman fight would convince, but the latter’s pure ferocity paired with Hunt’s incapacitation due to the pain in his head makes for a viciously compelling bout.Most villainous act of villainy: Davian is a mean bastard who, while still in restraints, coldly threatens to murder Hunt’s fiance Julia. “I’m gonna make her bleed and cry and call out your name”, he says, and it’s one of the few times where Hunt’s legendary control tips into real fear and emotion. Davian later comes close to doing just that after abducting Julia, tying her up, and appearing to shoot her in the head. Hunt’s pain is palpable, and it’s enough to damage his heart to the point that he’d go on to never let someone that close again. Davian has literally halted Hunt’s ability to connect with someone on a deeply personal level, and it’s the kind of attack that bullets and bombs just can’t compete with.Mission: Impossible IIIParamount PicturesMay 5, 2006PG-13Where to WatchPowered by

Wing walking is an art older than sound cinema. Before movies included spoken dialogue, they were already filled with daredevils who risked — and sometimes lost — their lives performing incredible feats in and on top of airplanes. So when producer/star Tom Cruise and producer/co-writer/director Christopher McQuarrie turned the climax of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning into maybe the greatest display of wing walking and aerial stunt work in the last 50 years, that’s wasn’t a haphazard choice. It was a decision designed to further the mission of this franchise for the last three decades: To thrill moviegoers with old-fashioned Hollywood spectacle on the grandest scale possible.It’s impossible for me to give a negative review to a movie with a climax as good as the one that concludes The Final Reckoning; Cruise hanging off a biplane hundreds of feet in the air is more than worth the price of admission all by itself. But it’s also possible that the rest of The Final Reckoning is a mess, and ranks near the bottom of this long-running franchise.Mission: Impossible - The Final ReckoningParamount Pictures and Skydanceloading...It’s not just that its story is a confusing jumble, although that is also true. Some of the script’s problems are even more fundamental than that. I do not understand, for instance, how filmmakers of McQuarrie and Cruise’s expertise and experience could make a movie that never explains why one of its key characters spends almost all of his scenes in an underground hospital. Is this person dying? Can they be cured? Despite a runtime of 170 minutes, The Final Reckoning can’t find room to answer those basic questions.That decision is all the more baffling because that same character looked completely fine when they last appeared in the previous Mission: Impossible, 2023’s Dead Reckoning — Part One. The Final Reckoning establishes that two months have passed since the events of the prior film, and while this movie does continue its central conflict, with Cruise’s super spy Ethan Hunt fighting a rogue AI known as “The Entity,” some of The Final Reckoning’s twists feel oddly disconnected from its predecessor (like afflicting a previously healthyDead Reckoning and went back to square one in the middle of shooting — which, to be fair, would be an extremely Ethan Hunt thing to do.Mission: Impossible - The Final ReckoningParamountloading...Of course, Ethan Hunt would have pulled off that kind of on-the-fly salvage operation without breaking a sweat. The Final Reckoning opens with a jarring series of scenes that awkwardly reestablish its key heroes and villains. While the Entity spreads its truth-altering tentacles throughout the internet, Ethan races to rescue various members of his Impossible Mission Force from the computer’s fiendish emissary Gabriel (Esai Morales).The same pattern repeats a couple times; Ethan gets knocked out in one glamorous location and wakes up in another. Gabriel drops Ethan in an inescapable trap in order to force him to do something against his will. Ethan wriggles free, only to find Gabriel has an even more elaborate backup plan waiting for him. (I guess when you can consult a godlike computer, you’re prepared for every eventuality.)Cut to: More running, more chasing, more hazy alliances between assorted members of an enormous cast that includes longtime players Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, and Henry Czerny, relative newcomers Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff, and total neophytes like Ted Lasso’s Hannah Waddingham as an Naval officer and Parks and Recreation’s Nick Offerman as the Secretary of Defense. The whiplash between locations, the bewildering web of character loyalties — some people want to control the Entity, some want to destroy it — is such a muddle I started to wonder whether Ethan was trapped inside an impressive but not wholly convincing computer simulation of reality he would eventually recognize and escape in true impossible mission fashion.Mission: Impossible - The Final ReckoningParamountloading...No such luck. To be sure, when The Final Reckoning finally puts all its pieces in place, it quite literally flies. But there also some truly clunky exchanges — something that has never been the case in the Mission: Impossible franchise before, especially since McQuarrie took over as writer and director with 2015’s Rogue Nation. That includes way too many self-congratulatory Easter eggs from throughout the history of the franchise. The callbacks include multiple clip montages, surprise cameos, and totally unnecessary explanations of unresolved Mission plot threads. Even the date of the first Mission: Impossible’s premiere becomes an crucial plot point.I love these movies as much as anyone on the planet; I’ve seen every single one in a theater, most multiple times. A few of the references made me smile; most felt indicative of a film that’s a bit too clever for its own good. Every single thing in every single movie does not needs to connect to everything else.Mission: Impossible - The Final ReckoningParamountloading...The spectacular aerial climax is one of four do-or-die missions all happening simultaneously in The Final Reckoning’s final minutes. While I appreciated the attempt to top every previous world-saving effort — and Cruise’s commitment to these movies is beyond reproach — I also found myself a little disappointed every time McQuarrie cut away from him dangling off that biplane. The other characters don’t add more tension; they distract from the main event. The old masters of early movie stunts who Cruise and McQuarrie so obviously admire knew that sometimes simpler was better.Additional Thoughts:-Flashbacks sprinkled throughout Dead Reckoning established that Gabriel played a role in a mysterious tragedy that led Ethan to join the IMF. In these flashbacks, Esai Morales appeared as a young man, presumably de-aged using digital technology. The Final Reckoning doesn’t really pay off this subplot (yet another element from the last film that gets dropped) but in the brief snippets that do appear in The Final Reckoning, Cruise’s face is never shown. The “young“ Ethan Hunt only appears from behind or in shadow. In a movie all about Ethan Hunt trying to destroy a truth-manipulating computer that can alter reality, that feels notable.-Also notable: Ethan Hunt wants to destroy the Entity, but because the Entity has infiltrated every corner of cyberspace, that means Tom Cruise may have to destroy the entire internet in the process.RATING: 6/10Guilty Pleasure Movies From the ’90sThese ’90s films do not have good reputations. Most are cheesy and a few are really dated. We love them anyway.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning carries the weight of a meaningful farewell but lacks the courage to commit. The eighth film in the series begins with a sincere American president (Angela Bassett) entreating IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) to take one last mission to save the world. This time, he must defeat a scheming AI called the Entity, which is hell-bent on wiping humans off the face of the earth through computer hacking and nuclear war. As fans have come to expect of this espionage franchise, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning will deliver globe-trekking, tense twists, jaw-dropping action sequences that make grown-ups feel like kids again, the unrelenting star power of Tom Cruise, and a sentimental belief in the righteousness of one noble man playing by his own rules. But amid these treasures, The Final Reckoning is a film at war with itself. Rather than a fitting send-off to a film series rich in stunts and thrills, it feels like an exquisite corpse of warring artistic goals that is incredible to behold, but never really comes together. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning delivers a plot that refuses to make sense. Ethan is still on the mission from Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.not to capture this AI wonder and hand it over to any government. He wants to destroy it, even though stern American counselors to the president insist that killing the Entity would mean destroying cyberspace. How? Despite much, much exposition dropping in brow-furrowing war room scenes, that's never remotely clear. You May Also Like Actually, the script by Christopher McQuarrie (who also directs) and Erik Jendresen makes a lot of declarations about the Entity's intentions, powers, and drawbacks without giving much sense of how any of it is possible. This has the effect of making the movie feel less like a sci-fi espionage thriller and more like flat-out fantasy adventure. The Entity becomes effectively an evil spirit that must be captured to end its reign of terror and its influence on the power-hungry or weak-minded. Final Reckoning even offers a doomsday cult devoted to the Entity to unfurl a thin thread. At 2 hours and 49 minutes, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning takes off running with the plot line from Dead Reckoning, but runs it into the ground by losing sense of what made audiences so excited about the last installment. This fuzzy focus on AI as some vague but almost inescapable demon makes many of the decisions by Ethan and his crew hard to follow if not impossible. Worse yet, McQuarrie and Jendresen's overstuffed plot forces too many of Ethan's allies into a dull box, where they become tools of the plot over engaging characters. Tom Cruise is in top form, but Hayley Atwell is criminally misused in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Cruise is a producer and star of this movie, and that's clear even without the title card announcing "A Tom Cruise Production." In Final Reckoning, he is an American action star in full, able to drop a powerful glower to underscore a dramatic moment better than any orchestra swell. He can perform a complicated and astonishing stunt with seeming ease. And truly, no one in cinema history can run as intensely as Cruise; his every speedy step seems to propel the iconic Mission: Impossible theme. At 62, his latest mission pulls him into the depths of the ocean and into a sky-high dogfight. Whether pummeling cronies with his bare hands or leaping from one in-flight plane to another, Cruise (and his stunt team) make Ethan a one-of-a-kind hero, capable of anything, yet able to express keenly his own morality through a powerful glance. This works even amid Final Reckoning's meandering plotting. Unfortunately, all the Ethan-centered heroics leave little room for his expansive crew to shine. Reprising their roles as IMF agents Luther Stickell and Benji Dunn, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg have little screen time, but solid impact. They've mastered the art of making the most of these brotherly supporting roles. But more recent additions — like Hayley Atwell as pickpocket turned agent Grace and Pom Klementieff as assassin turned ally Paris — have achingly little to do. Mashable Top Stories Stay connected with the hottest stories of the day and the latest entertainment news. Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up! Klementieff gets a fun opening fight scene and a tender sequence in the third act. But frankly, that finale feels in conflict with her chilly character, as everywhere in between her dialogue is the same one-note joke of being apathetic, in French. Atwell, who was established as Cruise's next love interest in Dead Reckoning, becomes an unrecognizable nag in Final Reckoning. Her spirited banter and self-assurance has been swapped for tedious dialogue filled with worry or bizarrely out-of-character proclamations, like that Ethan should take over Entity and effectively rule the world! A collection of critically heralded actors, from Academy-Award winner Bassett to Emmy-winner Nick Offerman to Morales, Hannah Waddingham, Shea Whigham, and Janet McTeer, are similarly underused in scenes that involve a lot of furrowed brow-talking, but too little logic. Their intensity might have better sold the absurdity if McQuarrie didn't linger so long in these preposterous war room discussions. Tramell Tillman steals Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. The underwhelming dialogue, which veers from exposition dumping to near-religious proclamations, proves a stumbling block for much of the Final Reckoning ensemble. Even Cruise struggles with comically dramatic lines like, "We can deceive the Lord of Lies!" But Severance star Tramell Tillman strides where others stumble. It's not that he gets better dialogue. Many of his lines are unremarkable, like, "Oh, OK" in response to some intense Ethan declaration. But Tillman builds a world with his curious delivery. Playing a smooth submarine captain, Tillman delivers every line as if he is welcoming Ethan into an exclusive resort. There's an almost seductive attitude to Tillman's captain, who moves suavely in the tight confines of the submarine and addresses his crew with a magnanimous warmth. As if he had not a concern in the world, he oozes charisma, which is reflected by his invitingly smirking crewmate Kodiak, played by Love Lies Bleeding's Katy O'Brian. Together they weave an underwater world of camaraderie and personality that had me wishing Ethan would abandon his mission and just hang out there for a spell. This series has offered scads of compelling characters. But I was sad to see the plot plunge away from this submarine crew so soon. I'd follow Tillman's captain anywhere, just because of the beguiling way he says "OK." Related Stories Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is bloated but very fun. The final hour of Final Reckoning is jam-packed with suspense as action sequences between Ethan and his crew are cut across each other. Editor Eddie Hamilton masterfully creates tension while underlying how everything in the impossible plan to defeat the Entity must come together in "the blink of an eye." When the action scenes are hitting as they should, it's hard to imagine anything better to experience in a theater than a Mission: Impossible movie. Even Cruise's old-school sincerity is contagious, as Ethan throws his life on the line one more time for life, liberty, and an idealized American way. Very likely, you'll walk out of the cinema with a rush and joy, marveling over the stunts and heroics. But if you linger on the details of Final Reckoning, you begin to notice plot holes and dangling threads. You may get hung up on the tonal shifts that feel less like a flowing dance — as they did in Dead Reckoning — and more like a frenzied battle between ideas. In some ways, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning feels like the final chapter. Ethan's colleagues praise him so intensely that several scenes feel like a premature eulogy for the still (ass-)kicking agent. The title and the snarling threats of the antagonist Gabriel — who promises a "final reckoning" — suggest this is Ethan's last mission, should he choose to accept it. Cruise's drive to top himself with not one but two absolutely bonkers action set pieces feels like an encore before he retires the character for good. Plus, a reprisal of a character long forgotten in the franchise is not only a welcome surprise, but also suggests this story is coming to a comforting close. (Cheers to Rolf Saxon and Lucy Tulugarjuk, who are splendid scene partners.) However, McQuarrie also refuses to shut doors that seem to be closing. Without giving away third-act spoilers, I can say Final Reckoning pulls its punches, seemingly to allow for a IMF story to continue. Yet what might make for a happy ending isn't satisfyingly resolved either. Rather than providing a sense of resolution, McQuarrie ends the film with a sequence meant to speak to enduring connection, but it feels jarringly isolating because of how disjointedly it is presented. Essentially, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning feels like the filmmakers were both trying to make this the final movie in a successful franchise — and also leaving the door open for more. In waffling over that, they deliver a final chapter that is in turns thrilling and frustrating. Rather than going out with a bang, Mission: Impossible may go out with the fizzled whimper of a message self-destructing in a tape deck. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning opens exclusively in theaters on May 23. Topics Film