TAGGED AS: Action, blockbusters, movies
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to watch Ethan Hunt and the rest of the IMF attempt to save the world, picking up from the cliffhanger ending of 2023’s Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning. The eighth movie in the acclaimed action franchise will be a direct sequel to the previous film for the first time in the series’ history, meaning fans of secret agents, Tom Cruise, and epic stunts will get to see how the story concludes when it opens in the spring of next year. Before then, here’s everything you need to know about Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. And don’t worry — this website will not self-destruct.
[Updated 11/11/24]
(Photo by ©Paramount Pictures)
Originally, this upcoming film was meant to be titled Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2. However, that subtitle was scrapped. Paramount Pictures, the studio behind the movies, announced the title change in October 2023 along with the news that the movie’s release date was being delayed a year. The reason for this has not been explicitly stated, but Dead Reckoning — which you can retroactively strip of its “Part 1” moniker — underperformed at the box office when it came out in July 2023, and it’s possible the eighth Mission: Impossible got a different title because they didn’t want to scare away potential audiences by explicitly marking it as the Part 2 to a Part 1 that moviegoers largely skipped.
Eventually, with the release of the first trailer in November of 2024, we did learn that the new title is officially Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which of course also alludes to the fact that it is intended to be the final film in the ongoing franchise (but more on that below).
(Photo by Christian Black/©Paramount Pictures)
The eighth Mission: Impossible movie was originally supposed to have been shot, edited, and released years ago, with the original premiere date being August of 2022. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both it and Dead Reckoning were significantly delayed. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning was supposed to come out in June of 2024, but has since been delayed again to its current date of May 23, 2025.
This latest delay came as a result of the SAG-AFTRA strike, which shut down production of the film in the summer of 2023. Filming resumed the following March.
Like all the previous Mission: Impossible entries, The Final Reckoning will premiere exclusively in theaters.
(Photo by Christian Black/©Paramount Pictures)
Christopher McQuarrie, the director who took Mission: Impossible to new heights starting with Rogue Nation, the fifth film in the franchise, and continued with Fallout and Dead Reckoning after that, returns for the eighth movie. As with Dead Reckoning, McQuarrie co-wrote the movie with Erik Jendresen.
(Photo by Christian Black/©Paramount Pictures)
Tom Cruise will, of course, return to play IMF agent extraordinaire Ethan Hunt, who he first portrayed in 1996 when the original Mission: Impossible hit theaters. He’ll be 62 when the eighth Mission: Impossible movie premieres, and it’s possible that it will be his final appearance as the character, some 30 years later.
He’ll be joined by several returning cast members, including Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames as his fellow IMF agents Benji Dunn and Luther Stickell, respectively. Hayley Atwell will reprise her role as Grace, a pickpocket who becomes embroiled in the action and eventually joins the IMF at the end of Dead Reckoning. Esai Morales returns as Dead Reckoning’s primary villain, Gabriel, a man working on behalf of the all-powerful A.I. “Entity” that could doom the world. Also returning are Vanessa Kirby as black market arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis; Frederick Schmidt as her brother Zola; Shea Whigham as Jasper Briggs, a US Intelligence agent who spent the last movie trying to track Ethan Hunt down; Greg Tarzan Davis as his partner Degas; and Pom Klementieff as Paris, an assassin who defected from Gabriel’s employ after Ethan spared her life. Henry Czerny once more plays CIA director Eugene Kittridge, who made his return to the franchise in Dead Reckoning decades after playing the character in the first Mission: Impossible.
(Photo by ©Paramount Pictures)
Mark Gatiss and Charles Parnell are reported to reprise their small roles as the heads of the NSA and NRO, and Mariela Garriga will play a woman who appeared in mysterious flashbacks linking Ethan and Gabriel. Hopefully, this next movie will explain how they know each other.
Amusingly, Rolf Saxon, last seen in the franchise as hapless CIA agent William Donloe, who was transferred to Alaska as punishment for letting Ethan Hunt break in during the first Mission: Impossible, will make his return to the franchise.
Of course, there will be new additions to the cast, as well as returning actors from Dead Reckoning. Parks & Rec’s Nick Offerman plays Sydney, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; The Iron Claw’s Holt McCallany plays Bernstein, the Secretary of Defense; and Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham has an as-yet unrevealed role. Katy O’Brian, Janet McTeer, Lucy Tulugarjuk, and Tramell Tillman are also slated to appear.
(Photo by Christian Black/©Paramount Pictures)
In Dead Reckoning, Ethan and his team were on the hunt for two high-tech keys that were the only means to control a rogue, near-omnipotent AI system known as the Entity. Every organization and nation on Earth — including the United States — wants to be able to control the Entity, prompting Ethan to go rogue in an attempt to destroy the AI rather than risk letting it fall into anybody’s hands.
Ethan’s struggle to obtain the two keys to the Entity has him cross paths with Grace, a talented thief who is tasked with stealing the keys without fully knowing the implications. Gabriel, a man who has some sort of a past with Ethan, is looking for the keys, too, and he’s working directly for the Entity on its behalf. In the struggle for the keys during a botched sale at black-market arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis’ swanky Venice Party, Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), former M16 agent and Ethan’s ally and possible love interest, is killed.
(Photo by Christian Black/©Paramount Pictures)
In a last-ditch attempt to get both keys, Grace, now working with Ethan, impersonates Alanna on the Orient Express. Though this plan — and the train, literally — goes off the rails, Ethan is able to take possession of both keys from Gabriel, while the villain escapes. Ethan, Benji, and Luther are still going rogue, but Grace announces her intention to properly join the IMF. Meanwhile, Paris, an assassin who betrays Gabriel after Ethan saves her life, manages to tell Ethan what the keys to the Entity unlock. The AI’s intelligence is housed inside a sunken next-generation Russian submarine called the Sevastopol. Ethan’s next impossible mission? To find the Sevastopol, get inside it, and use the keys to destroy the Entity for good — unless Gabriel or anybody else stops him first.
(Photo by Christian Black/©Paramount Pictures)
There hasn’t been an official synopsis for the eighth Mission: Impossible movie, but given that it’s the first direct sequel in franchise history, we have a decent idea of the plot. Ethan Hunt and his allies will attempt to defeat Gabriel and destroy the Entity once and for all. The final showdown will likely take place aboard the sunken Sevastopol, though since Ethan has no idea where the wreck is, discovering that information should drive the early plot. An early teaser released in November 2024 reinforces these ideas but offers little in the way of actual plot, so we’ll have to wait until an official synopsis is released.
(Photo by Giles Keyte/©Paramount Pictures)
Dead Reckoning and its sequel were originally billed as a grand finale for the Ethan Hunt character, and the eighth film’s title — The Final Reckoning — would certainly seem to confirm that, even if it seemed likely that the M:I franchise would continue in some form, even without Tom Cruise. However, in June 2022, McQuarrie told Fandango that “Parts 1 and 2 are not the end of the series, and they already have ideas for what comes next.” Cruise similarly didn’t close the door during the press tour, even going so far as to say he hoped to continue making Mission: Impossible movies well into old age. Now, granted, this was before Dead Reckoning underperformed at the box office, but if the eighth The Final Reckoning proves to be a hit, don’t be surprised if Ethan Hunt rides again.
(Photo by Christian Black/©Paramount Pictures)
The runtime for the eighth Mission: Impossible movie has not yet been revealed, but for comparison’s sake, Dead Reckoning was 163 minutes long — the longest in the franchise by a significant margin, as the rest of the movies are more or less in the 130-minute range.
We finally got our first look at the eighth film — and, as previously mentioned, its new title — in November 2024. The teaser is a long montage of images from past Mission: Impossible films and The Final Reckoning, with ominous voiceovers from different characters echoing the theme that this film is the culmination of Ethan Hunt’s entire career. They also talk about Hunt’s heroic streak, as images of his companions and dramatic scenes play out onscreen. Oh, and there’s lots of shots of Tom Cruise running. Naturally.
(Photo by ©Paramount Pictures)
Is that a serious question? Of course Tom Cruise, who famously rode a motorcycle off a cliff for Dead Reckoning, is doing his own stunts for the sequel.
At the 2022 CinemaCon, the premiere of the first Dead Reckoning trailer was preceded by a clip of Cruise chilling on a biplane, introducing the trailer, and then jumping off. He and director McQuarrie were filming in South Africa at the time, and since no sequence like that appeared in Dead Reckoning, it was safe to assume this was a bit of a sneak preview of one of the stunts in The Final Reckoning.
Of course, now that we’ve seen the teaser for The Final Reckoning, we know that’s true, and the stunt looks spectacular. You can always count on Tom Cruise to go the extra mile for his fans.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is currently scheduled to open in theaters on May 23, 2025.
