Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is a 2025 American action spy film directed by Christopher McQuarrie from a screenplay he co-wrote with Erik Jendresen. It is the sequel to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) and the eighth installment in the Mission: Impossible film series. The ensemble cast includes Tom Cruise (in his final portrayal of Ethan Hunt), Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny and Angela Bassett. In the film, Hunt and his IMF team continue their mission to prevent the Entity, a rogue artificial intelligence, from destroying all of humanity.
In January 2019, Cruise announced that the seventh and eighth Mission: Impossible films would be shot back-to-back with McQuarrie co-writing and directing. Plans for the eighth film changed in February 2021, with returning and new cast and crew members announced soon after, including Lorne Balfe, who composed the score for two other films in the series; Balfe was later replaced by Max Aruj and Alfie Godfrey. Principal photography began in March 2022, but was suspended in July 2023 due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. Production resumed in March 2024 and concluded in November, with filming locations including England, Malta, Norway and South Africa. The subtitle was changed from Dead Reckoning Part Two in November 2024. With an estimated production budget of $300–400 million, The Final Reckoning is one of the most expensive films ever made.
The Final Reckoning had its world premiere in Tokyo on May 5, 2025, was screened out of competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival on May 14, and was theatrically released in the United States on May 23 by Paramount Pictures. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised McQuarrie's direction, Cruise's performance, the supporting cast and the action sequences, although the runtime and the pacing of the second act were criticized. It grossed $598.8 million worldwide and was considered a box office disappointment due to its budget, though it performed slightly better overseas and was recorded as the largest opening weekend of the franchise at $79 million. It was the final film co-produced by Paramount and Skydance before they merged in August 2025.
Plot
Two months after retrieving the key to the source code for the malevolent artificial intelligence known as the Entity, rogue IMF agent Ethan Hunt receives a message from U.S. President Erika Sloane, informing Ethan that the Entity continues to seize control of global nuclear systems, aided by undercover doomsday cultists. Ethan is ordered to surrender the key, but he refuses and continues pursuing Gabriel, the Entity's former proxy, who was forsaken after failing to steal the key himself.
Ethan and fellow IMF agent Benji Dunn first visit their ill IMF hacker Luther Stickell in his off-grid laboratory beneath London, where he has finished developing the "Poison Pill" malware that can target the Entity. In Austria, the team breaks Gabriel's former lieutenant, Paris, out of prison and also recruits Jasper Briggs's partner, Theo Degas.
In London, Gabriel's men capture Ethan and IMF agent Grace. Gabriel orders Ethan to recover the "Podkova" module, developed from the Rabbit's Foot, from the sunken Russian submarine Sevastopol, which would give him control over the Entity. However, with help from the team, Ethan and Grace escape. Contacting the Entity, Ethan is shown visions of a nuclear apocalypse. The Entity says Luther will die and demands access to a digital bunker in South Africa to survive.
Ethan tasks his team with getting the Sevastopols coordinates and retrieving him after the dive. He races to save Luther, but Gabriel steals the Poison Pill and traps Luther with a time bomb. Luther sacrifices himself to minimize the blast while Ethan escapes, but is caught by Briggs, who is revealed to be the son of Jim Phelps, and is taken to Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center. With three days until the Entity takes over the remaining nuclear weapons control facilities and launches nuclear armageddon, Ethan convinces Sloane to let him locate the Sevastopol, against CIA director Eugene Kittridge's objections.
Grace, Benji, Paris and Degas travel to St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea, home to a Cold War-era naval sonar array that detected the Sevastopols sinking. They meet former CIA analyst William Donloe, who was exiled to the island after Ethan's break-in at CIA headquarters thirty years ago and coincidentally memorized the Sevastopols coordinates. Russian special forces intercept them seeking the coordinates, though Grace and Donloe's wife, Tapeesa, escape by dog sled while the others fight off the soldiers as Donloe transmits the coordinates to Ethan.
Ethan joins the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush in the northern Pacific Ocean and boards the submarine USS Ohio. After receiving the coordinates and barely surviving a doomsday assassin named Hagar, who had infiltrated the USS Ohio, Ethan uses an experimental diving suit to reach the Sevastopol and retrieve the Podkova as the wreck slides down the continental shelf. Narrowly escaping without his diving suit, Ethan is revived from decompression sickness by Grace using a portable decompression chamber. After reuniting with his team, Ethan plans to plug the Poison Pill into the Podkova, fooling the Entity into entering a physical drive instead of the bunker mainframe.
At the bunker, Gabriel ambushes the team with a timed nuclear device, demanding the Podkova, though they are interrupted by Kittridge and a team of agents seeking control of the Entity. During the gunfight, the bomb is activated and Benji is shot. Gabriel escapes with the Poison Pill, pursued by Ethan with the Podkova. Donloe, Tapeesa and Degas defuse the bomb while Paris, Grace and Benji prepare the mainframe to trap the Entity.
President Sloane refuses to order a preemptive nuclear strike, though a failed attack by a doomsday assassin allows the Entity time to take full control of the world's nuclear arsenal. After a lengthy chase in a pair of biplanes, Ethan climbs onto Gabriel's plane and retrieves the Poison Pill. While attempting to escape, Gabriel is killed hitting his groin and then his head on the plane's vertical stabilizer. Parachuting away, Ethan inserts the Poison Pill into the Podkova mid-air, allowing Grace to trap the Entity just before nuclear launch.
Upon landing, Ethan listens to a farewell message from Luther in the Poison Pill, which self-destructs afterward. He gives the destroyed Podkova to Kittridge, and Briggs makes amends with Ethan for exposing his father as a traitor. Reuniting in London's Trafalgar Square, Grace gives Ethan the drive with the Entity and the IMF team part ways.
Cast
Additionally, through archival footage from previous films, Jon Voight, Michelle Monaghan, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby, Emilio Estevez, Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė, Marcin Dorociński, Ivan Ivashkin, Anthony Hopkins, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Maggie Q, Jean Reno, Dougray Scott, Michael Nyqvist, Emmanuelle Béart, Léa Seydoux, Kristoffer Joner, Keri Russell, Kristin Scott Thomas, Jens Hultén, Henry Cavill, Vanessa Redgrave, Liang Yang and Alec Baldwin all appear as their respective characters Jim Phelps, Julia Meade-Hunt, Ilsa Faust, Alanna "The White Widow" Mitsopolis, Jack Harmon, Hannah Williams, Sevastopols Captain 1st rank, Sevastopols second-in-command, Swanbeck, Owen Davian, Theodore Brassel, William Brandt, Jane Carter, Zhen Lei, Franz Krieger, Sean Ambrose, Dr. Kurt "Cobalt" Hendricks, Claire Phelps, Sabine Moreau, Nils Delbruuk, Lindsey Farris, Sarah Davies, Janik "Bone Doctor" Vinter, August "John Lark" Walker, Max Mitsopolis, the fake John Lark and Alan Hunley (Hoffman and Nyqvist appearing posthumously). Rob Delaney and Indira Varma, also uncredited, appear as the heads of JSOC and the DIA, respectively, via archival audio footage from Dead Reckoning. Director Christopher McQuarrie also makes a cameo appearance at the end of the film.
Production Development
On January 14, 2019, Tom Cruise revealed that the seventh and eighth Mission: Impossible films would be shot back-to-back with Christopher McQuarrie writing and directing both films for July 23, 2021 and August 5, 2022, releases. However, in February 2021, Deadline Hollywood revealed that Paramount had decided to no longer move forward with that plan.
Casting In September 2019, Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff joined the cast of the eighth installment. In December, Simon Pegg confirmed his return for the film, while Shea Whigham was also cast. Nicholas Hoult joined the cast by January 2020, along with Henry Czerny, who reprised his role as Eugene Kittridge from Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and the first film. However, due to scheduling conflicts, Hoult was replaced by Esai Morales for both films. Vanessa Kirby, who first appeared in Fallout, revealed she was returning for both films, but did not appear in The Final Reckoning.
In July 2022, it was reported that Holt McCallany had joined the cast. In August 2022, it was announced that Nick Offerman and Janet McTeer were also added to the cast.
In March 2023, McQuarrie announced Hannah Waddingham, Lucy Tulugarjuk and Rolf Saxon's addition to the cast, the last of whom reprises his role from the first film. In March and April 2024, respectively, Katy O'Brian and Tramell Tillman joined the cast in then-undisclosed roles. In November 2024, it was announced that Angela Bassett would reprise her role as CIA director Erika Sloane.
Filming In February 2021, Deadline Hollywood reported that the film would no longer be filmed back-to-back with Dead Reckoning Part One. By November, McQuarrie was in the process of rewriting the film's script. On March 23, 2022, The Hollywood Reporter reported the beginning of principal photography of the then-untitled Mission: Impossible 8. Filming took place in the UK at Longcross Studios and the Lake District. Other locations included Malta, Norway and South Africa. In December 2022, filming was finished in the UK. The crew then moved to Apulia in Italy to continue filming aboard the aircraft carrier . During the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, production was thought to have been put on hold according to an interview with McQuarrie in the June 2023 issue of the Empire magazine. However, this was later announced to have been a misinterpretation of McQuarrie's statement and continued production was only waiting for the promotion of Part One to complete. Filming was officially suspended in July due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike.
The film returned to production in March 2024, though in May, it encountered a delay due to a submarine malfunction. During filming in England, Cruise and Morales were observed performing stunts from an airborne biplane, with Cruise holding onto the wings of the open cockpit aircraft as it flew upside down, while the pilot wore a greenscreen suit so as to be digitally removed from the final shot. In July 2024, Simon Pegg revealed filming had concluded for his part, though the cast and crew were maintaining radio silence. By November 2024, production had concluded and the film was in post-production. The Hollywood Reporter reported that the budget had neared $400 million due to the production delays.
Post-production Industrial Light & Magic returned from the seventh film to produce the visual effects, with Clear Angle Studios and Halon Entertainment as the additional vendors for lidar, cyber scanning and previsualization. In October 2023, Dead Reckoning Part Two was removed as the film's subtitle and the new subtitle was confirmed as The Final Reckoning on November 11, 2024.
Music