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.[7][8] It is the direct sequel to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) and the eighth installment in the Mission: Impossible film series. The film stars Tom Cruise in his final portrayal of Ethan Hunt,[9] alongside an ensemble cast including Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, and Angela Bassett.[10][11] 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 both films. Plans for the eighth film changed in February 2021, with returning and new cast and crew members being 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, South Africa and Norway. Originally subtitled Dead Reckoning Part Two, the film changed its subtitle in November 2024. With a $300–400 million budget, 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 positive reviews from critics and has grossed $598.8 million worldwide, becoming the ninth-highest-grossing film of 2025, while also having the largest opening weekend of the franchise.[12] It was the last film co-produced by Paramount and Skydance as separate entities before they merged on August 7, 2025.
Plot
Two months after retrieving the key to the source code for the malevolent artificial intelligence known as the Entity,[b] rogue IMF agent Ethan Hunt receives a message from US President Erika Sloane. She informs 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.[c] He and fellow IMF agent Benji Dunn first visit their ill IMF hacker Luther Stickell in his off-grid lab beneath London, where he has finished developing the “Poison Pill” malware that can target the Entity.
The team recruits Jasper Briggs’s partner, Theo Degas, and Gabriel’s former lieutenant, Paris, who tells them where Gabriel is. In London, Gabriel’s men capture Ethan and IMF agent Grace. Gabriel forces Ethan to recover the “Podkova” module developed from the “Rabbit’s Foot”[d] in the sunken Russian submarine Sevastopol, which would give him control over the Entity. 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 in order to survive.
Ethan tasks his team with getting the Sevastopol’s coordinates and retrieving him after the dive. He races to save Luther; however, Gabriel steals the Poison Pill and traps Luther with a time bomb. Luther sacrifices himself to minimize the blast, and Ethan is brought 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 Sevastopol’s sinking. They meet former CIA analyst William Donloe, who was exiled to the island after Ethan’s 1996 break-in at CIA headquarters,[e] who coincidentally memorized the Sevastopol’s coordinates. Captured by Russian special forces seeking the coordinates, Grace and Donloe’s wife Tapeesa escape by dog sled, and 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 North Pacific Ocean and later boards the submarine USS Ohio. After receiving the coordinates and barely surviving a doomsday assassin who had infiltrated the Ohio named Hagar, 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. Reunited 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. Kittridge interrupts, seeking control of the Entity. During the gunfight, the bomb activates and Benji is shot. Gabriel flees with the Poison Pill, pursued by Ethan with the Podkova. Donloe, Tapeesa, and Degas defuse the bomb; Paris, Grace, and Benji prepare the mainframe to trap the Entity.
Sloane avoids a preemptive nuclear strike, but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is fatally wounded protecting her from a doomsday assassin, allowing the Entity time to take full control of the world’s nuclear arsenal. Ethan chases Gabriel in a biplane, climbs onto his plane, breaks his arm, and retrieves the Poison Pill. Gabriel gets himself killed hitting the rudder while attempting to escape; Ethan finds another parachute, inserting the Poison Pill into the Podkova mid-air, allowing Grace to trap the Entity just before nuclear launch.
Ethan listens to a farewell message from Luther in the Poison Pill, which self-destructs afterwards. He gives the destroyed Podkova to Kittridge, and Briggs—revealed to be the son of Jim Phelps—makes peace with Ethan for exposing his father as a traitor.[e] Reuniting in London, Grace gives Ethan the drive with the Entity, and the IMF team part ways.