Key Takeaways
- “Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning” reportedly features Ethan Hunt battling a malevolent AI known as the Entity.
- Despite being billed as a potential conclusion, the film’s ending seems to intentionally leave room for future installments.
- The plot involves Hunt securing the Entity’s source code and ultimately neutralizing it, but not without raising new questions.
- Several unresolved issues include a character’s surprising survival, unaddressed health concerns for another, a past death being ignored, and the film’s extensive runtime.
The latest supposed chapter in the Mission Impossible saga, “The Final Reckoning,” sees Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt confronting a formidable new foe: an evil AI called the Entity. While speculation suggested this might be Hunt’s final mission, the story, packed with thrilling action, concludes in a way that could easily pave the way for more adventures.
In this installment, Hunt races against time to prevent the Entity, which has seized control of global nuclear arsenals, from causing worldwide devastation. He must also contend with Gabriel, an antagonist from his past with his own ambitions for the AI.
Hunt’s primary objective becomes disabling the Entity. This leads him on a perilous journey to retrieve its source code from the Sevastapol, a Russian submarine that, according to Business Insider, sank at the beginning of the previous film, “Dead Reckoning.”
The mission takes Hunt to the depths of the North Pacific. In a claustrophobic and tense sequence, he navigates the wrecked submarine, dodging falling missiles and debris as the vessel floods, eventually securing the source code. He narrowly escapes, even momentarily drowning before being revived by Grace, played by Hayley Atwell, using a hyperbaric chamber.
The team then heads to a secure bunker in South Africa. Their plan is to use a device called the “Poison Pill” to isolate the Entity onto a single hard drive, thereby averting nuclear catastrophe. However, Gabriel intervenes, threatening to detonate a smaller nuclear bomb if he doesn’t get the Poison Pill.
An intense chase ensues, culminating in a breathtaking aerial sequence where Ethan, moving between two biplanes mid-flight, reclaims the hard drive. Meanwhile, Benji (Simon Pegg) is shot and, while injured, guides Grace through a critical system reboot as their former adversary Paris (Pom Klementieff) performs an emergency tracheotomy on him.
In classic Mission Impossible fashion, Ethan deploys the Poison Pill in the final moments while freefalling, after Gabriel plummets from the fiery plane. Grace then “traps” the Entity onto a device resembling a USB stick. The film concludes with the IMF team regrouping in London, where Grace entrusts the contained Entity to Ethan, hinting that their missions may not be over.
This open-ended finale has sparked discussion, especially given the film was presented as a potential end for the franchise. Business Insider highlights several lingering questions that have left viewers pondering.
One major question revolves around whether Ethan Hunt was initially meant to die. The film sets up a potential sacrifice when Gabriel declares he has the only parachute, but Ethan conveniently finds another. Some feel a heroic death might have given the story more emotional weight.
Another point of curiosity is the health of tech whiz Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames). He’s depicted with medical equipment, suggesting a serious illness, but this is never explicitly addressed in the film. Instead, the narrative sees him die while defusing a bomb planted by Gabriel.
The film also surprisingly side-steps the death of Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) from the previous movie. Despite Gabriel being her killer, her demise and its impact on Ethan are largely unmentioned, a choice that some fans found perplexing.
Finally, the movie’s considerable length—two hours and fifty minutes—is also a topic of debate. While the extensive runtime allows for globe-trotting spectacle, some argue the initial hour, heavy with exposition, could have been streamlined to focus more directly on the main conflict.
These unresolved elements suggest that while “The Final Reckoning” provides a dramatic clash, the door for Ethan Hunt’s return remains decidedly open, should he choose to accept another mission.
