Major Spoilers for Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning are below.
Summary
Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoningis finally hitting theaters. It features deep ties to earlier movies in the franchise, but they may not be the installments you would assume.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoningsees director Christopher McQuarrie return for his fourth outing in the series, having started with 2015’s Rogue Nation. Tom Cruise is back in the lead alongside Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Nick Offerman, Esai Morales, and Angela Bassett. It picks up after the events ofDead Reckoning, with Ethan and his team working to stop the villainous AI, The Entity.
The Final Reckoningfeatures numerous ties to earlierMission: Impossiblefilms. While this helps to bring cohesion to the lengthy 30-year franchise, the connections also aid the final mission in coming to a close. However, even with McQuarrie helming half the franchise, the connections reach beyond his tenure.
Mission: Impossible(1996)
There’s More To Shea Whigham’s Briggs Than We Realized
Shea Whigham firstappeared inMission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Oneas an agent of the Community (a coalition of governmental intelligence agencies), named Jasper Briggs. He seems to have an animosity toward Ethan, which can simply be explained away as one agent being upset with the actions of another. However,Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoningreveals his real name is Jim Phelps Jr.
Jon Voight played Jim Phelps in the firstMission: Impossible.The character betrayed the IMF, proving to be the franchise’s first villain. Whigham’s Briggs is revealed to be the son of Phelps, adding contentiousness to an already antagonistic relationship. This explains his feelings and connects the franchise with a unique character reveal.
Kittridge Is Back (Again)
In 1996’sMission: Impossible, Kittridge served as the IMF director, an antagonistic boss to Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. He returned inMission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Oneas the director of the CIA, with a thriving distrust of Ethan and his continued rogue actions. Again serving as an antagonistic presence, Kittridge still wields power, with Grace accepting an offer to work for him and Ethan using her to keep tabs.
Kittridgereturns inMission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, out to stop Ethan, either out of spite or to take credit for the work, making their mission that much harder to complete (or both). He interjects with poor timing, setting off the film’s finale, but ultimately ends up humiliated while Ethan and his team save the day again.
William Donloe Plays A Key Role In The Plan
One ofMission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning’s most well-crafted surprises is the prominent role of William Donloe. Rolf Saxon returns to the role he first played in the 1996 original, where he was the architect of the CIA’s “black box” from which Ethan stole the NOC list, and the new film reveals the fallout from that heist.Donloe was relegated to a remote polar sonar station as a punishment for his perceived screw-up.
While this seems like a terrible outcome, he lets Ethan know it allowed him to find his wife and true happiness, ultimately proving to be a positive outcome for him. Donloe also aids Benji with coordinates to help Ethan find a submarine, with Grace and Donloe’s wife setting off together on a dog sled to the same location to pluck him from icy waters.Donloe and his wife even help the teamduring the film’s finale, defusing a bomb while others are preoccupied with the villains, Gabriel and The Entity.
Mission: Impossible III(2006)
The Rabbit’s Foot Drives The Plot OfMission: Impossible III
Mission: Impossible IIItells oneof the franchise’s most personal stories, seeing Ethan getting married and attempting to walk away from the spy life. However, his marital bliss is short-lived when his wife is kidnapped by Owen Davian, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (in one of cinema’s scariest villain performances).Davian threatens her life unless Ethan delivers something called the Rabbit’s Foot to him.
The Rabbit’s Foot drives the film’s plot, with Ethan and his team going to extreme lengths to steal the MacGuffin, which ultimately proves inconsequential. When Davian is thwarted, the Rabbit’s Foot is stowed away at the IMF, with their team set to do as they please with it. However,the truth behind the Rabbit’s Foot was never revealed to the audience, remaining a mystery until now.
Mission: Impossible - The Final ReckoningFinally Reveals The Truth Of The Rabbit’s Foot
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoningsees Ethanand his team combating the evil AI known as The Entity, which first reared its head inDead Reckoning Part One. While Gabriel served as the human antagonist, carrying out the AI’s whims, The Entity has proven to be one of the franchise’s biggest villains. The Entity has brought the world to the brink of a full nuclear missile crisis that could trigger an apocalyptic event, and Ethan is right in the middle of the chain of causation.
The Final Reckoningreveals that the Rabbit’s Foot fromMission: Impossible IIIcontained the code that would ultimately be developed into the AI known as The Entity.When Ethan and his team stole the Rabbit’s Foot, it was a true MacGuffin, but now, what started as a throwaway plot device has evolved into a potentially world-ending threat.
The Implications Of Ethan’s Actions Throughout The Series Are Monumental
Ethan’s most human actions, caring for his team and his wife during his short-lived marriage, prove to be his undoing, and even paint him as a partial villain.While he didn’t develop The Entity, his actions inMission: Impossible IIIdirectly influenced it, making him culpable to a degree for putting the world into the situation it currently finds itself in.The Entity created a cult-like following of human believers who aid in his cause as the world’s nuclear superpowers are losing control of their arsenal, andThe Final Reckoningdoesn’t let Ethan shed his blame.
The events ofMission: Impossible - The Final Reckoningcan be linked back to Ethan’s Rabbit’s Foot heist, as if it never got out, the AI may not have been able to get control. However, even with Ethan always presenting as an altruistic character and working for the greater good, the final installment of theMission: Impossiblefranchise sees him dealing with repercussions he could have never seen coming, making the last mission feel more impactful as the series comes to an end.
