Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning has been out in the world for over a month now, but if you haven’t had the chance to see it yet, you should beware: there are SPOILERS to come in the article below, because director Christopher McQuarrie has decided to explain why a certain character was killed off in this movie.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning tells the second half of the story that began in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, with Ethan Hunt out to destroy an AI system called The Entity, which is housed in a sunken Russian stealth submarine. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, and Dead Reckoning writer/director McQuarrie remains at the helm, working from a screenplay he crafted with Erik Jendresen. The official synopsis is very simple: Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
Tom Cruise is joined in the cast by Hayley Atwell, reprising her Dead Reckoning role of thief-turned-IMF-recruit Grace; Ving Rhames as IMF agent Luther Stickell, who has been part of this franchise since the first Mission: Impossible movie in 1996; Simon Pegg as IMF agent Benji Dunn, who joined the party back in Mission: Impossible III; Henry Czerny as CIA director Eugene Kittridge, who was introduced in Mission: Impossible (1996) and finally made his long-awaited return in Dead Reckoning; Rolf Saxon as William Donloe, a CIA analyst who got in trouble after Ethan Hunt accessed his computer way back in the first Mission: Impossible; and more Dead Reckoning reprisals: Esai Morales as the Entity-serving terrorist Gabriel; Pom Klementieff as Gabriel’s former ally Paris; Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis as US Intelligence agents Briggs and Degas; Mariela Garriga as Marie, a mysterious woman from Ethan and Gabriel’s past; Mark Gatiss and Charles Parnell as the heads of the NSA and NRO;. There are also a handful of new additions to the franchise: Holt McCallany as Secretary of Defense Bernstein; Nick Offerman as Sydney, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Katy O’Brian, Stephen Oyoung, Tramell Tillman, Janet McTeer, Hannah Waddingham, and Lucy Tulugarjuk in roles that weren’t specified before the release of the film.
One of the major returning characters doesn’t make it out of the film alive – and during an interview with Empire, McQuarrie gave an explanation for their death. So, let’s rip off the adhesive strip and put it out there that Ving Rhames’ character Luther Stickell, who has been with the franchise since the beginning, does not survive The Final Reckoning. Now, McQuarrie justifies that decision: “The story was about sacrifice. The sacrifice in the movie had no teeth without it, without some loss. It was a sacrifice Ving leaned fully into. It was one he wanted to do, and one he was most moved by. Ving is such a phenomenal actor, such a giving actor, and the franchise wasn’t giving him those opportunities. I said, ‘We’ve got to get him out of the van and give him the more emotional stuff to play.’ And he leaned into it. This was already forming in Fallout.“
What did you think of Luther dying in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning? Do you agree that it was necessary for the story? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
