Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning is really the last film in the saga?

CAUTION – The article below contains spoilers on “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”, since it is about its end. So please go your way if you haven't seen it yet.

Here, is it finished? The question has obviously been on everyone's lips since the announcement of the project (in January … 2019!), And it came back when the title was revealed with this poster in black and white with the appearance of necrology, or these trailers who insisted on the idea of ​​end of the course, baroud of honor and the balance sheet for the mission saga: impossible. But is the Final Reckoning the last opus of the franchise as we know it since 1996? Answers.

Yes and no according to the film

Almost everything suggested it in the trailer (“You have no regrets to have”,, “I need you to trust me one last time”), and the twilight atmosphere of the first minutes in the form of a best-of of the saga or the heavy notes that accompany the title at the end of the credits of start only confirms that the Stations of the Cross of Ethan Hunt could end with his death (sacrificial or not).

And finally no. Responsible for the creation of the entity (which is none other than a derivative of the mysterious rabbit's leg of episode 3), the hero played by Tom Cruise manages to overcome it with the help of his accomplices. Not by destroying it, under penalty of annihilating the cyberspace, but by imprisoning it in a super USB key which he then inherits, designated as the only person in the world who will not do anything with it. The Final Reckoning would only be a opus like the others? Not necessarily.

Paramount pictures France

Admittedly, the end is not as definitive as hoped, and it leaves the door open to a ninth film. But the story loops a narrative arc started in 2006 with mission: Impossible III, and even sees Ethan being forgiven with a character in the first film (William Donloe, CIA analyst sent to Alaska after being involved, despite himself, in the breakage of the stronghold) and rehabilitating the name of Jim Phelps, star of the series that has become a traitor before the camera of Brian de Palma.

It is therefore at the end of a cycle that Mission invites us: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, and we should open a new chapter if the saga should continue, which could depend on the desires of its star and producer as well as the results of this eighth opus at the box office. As it stands, the spectator finds himself in the same position as at the end of Fallout, who already had the appearance of a film-sleep and could act as a conclusion if the public was not as expected as expected.

Case to follow therefore, but this end is nonetheless consistent with what the film and the saga have been telling for a few years, namely that Ethan is on a mission to save the world, of which he is the last hope here. To kill him would therefore be to see him fail, which has never happened so far (not in the long term at least), and to condemn the planet of which he is not far from being a new Messiah, except that he returns to live in the shadow to which he is condemned. To perhaps never get out of it in the cinema.

Yes and no according to Simon Pegg

Failing to have been able to ask the question to Tom Cruise or Christopher Mcquarrie, we tried it with one of their most loyal associates: Simon Pegg, present in the saga since 2006 and the third film. Behind twenty Rhames (Luther), who participated in each feature film, he is the actor that we have seen the most on the screen in the franchise, and he had published a video that supported the hypothesis that The Final Reckoning acts as a final point.

“I just ended my last day on mission impossible and I said goodbye to everyone”he said in July 2024. Less than a year later, his words question. His character does not die more than Ethan, and Benji never says he wants to retire, even if he does not come out unscathed from this adventure. So is this really the end?

After having offered us a macaroon (because “Each person who asked me if it was the last mission: Impossible had one”), the English actor tells us this: “This film has definitely an end. It closes a mission chapter: Impossible. If that never happens again, if there are no more missions, I would be very happy because I have devoted 20 years of my life there, I spent the best of moments and the Final Reckoning is perfectly loops this story. You should never say, of course, but if it's the end …”

“I think people took my message a little more definitively than I thought. I had just finished shooting this film, not necessarily saying goodbye to the saga. But if it's really the end, 'it's life' ' [en français dans le texte]. “ After all the threats he faced and the crazy waterfalls he made, Tom Cruise will therefore face an opponent even more unpredictable than the entity: the box office, on which the future of the franchise may depend.

Interview by Maximilien Pierrette in Cannes on May 14, 2025