‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ Ending: Who Dies and Is This Really Tom Cruise’s Last Mission?

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains major spoilers for “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” now playing in theaters.

So, is “The Final Reckoning” really the last “Mission: Impossible” movie for Tom Cruise‘s Ethan Hunt? Cruise has teased that this is seemingly the send-off for his IMF agent, and there aren’t any confirmed plans for more sequels in the series. Does Ethan escape from his battle with the AI Entity unscathed, or does he meet a grim fate?

Well, it should come as no surprise that Ethan once again saves the world from certain disaster by the end of the movie, and he and almost all of his crew walk away safely into the streets of London. The one casualty is Ving Rhames’ Luther Stickell, who sacrifices himself to disarm a nuclear bomb that the villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) planted in London. However, Luther builds the ultimate device to destroy the Entity: a “poison pill” data drive, which is stolen by Gabriel.

After collecting the Entity’s source code module (which is actually the Rabbit’s Foot from “Mission: Impossible III”) from the abandoned Sevastopol submarine, Ethan just needs to retrieve the poison pill from Gabriel during a shootout in a South African digital bunker. Things can’t be that easy, though, as Gabriel sets off a nuclear bomb with a 20-minute timer as he escapes in a biplane. As Ethan stows away, Benji (Simon Pegg), Grace (Hayley Atwell), Paris (Pom Klementieff), Degas (Greg “Tarzan” Davis), William Donloe (Rolf Saxon) and his wife Tapeesa (Lucy Tulugarjuk) defuse the bomb. After hijacking one plane and climbing aboard Gabriel’s, Ethan manages to take back the poison pill and unite it with the source code module. Gabriel isn’t so lucky and dies after unfurling his parachute and cracking his head on the rudder.

In the most stressful 100 milliseconds in the history of “Mission: Impossible,” Grace must allow the Entity to upload into the poison pill then unplug it from the bunker before it gains control of the world’s nuclear bombs. This all happens while Benji painfully relays her instructions while he gets makeshift emergency surgery from Paris. In literally the blink of an eye, Grace flips the switch and traps the Entity inside the poison pill, saving the day.

The movie ends with Ethan, Grace, Benji and the rest of their gang going their separate ways in London, with the Entity safely contained within the poison pill drive in Ethan’s possession. What’s next for Cruise then? He may be leaving Ethan behind for a while, as his next movie, an untitled comedy from “The Revenant” director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, is slated to release Oct. 2, 2026. He also has an upcoming movie set in space with director Doug Liman, where he’s set to be the first actor to do a spacewalk and shoot beyond Earth’s orbit.