As fun as the Mission: Impossible saga is, there’s a lot about it that makes no sense. Plot holes and silly inconsistencies abound, issues that compounded exponentially with Dead Reckoning and its follow-up, The Final Reckoning. These films might be the two-part finale to Tom Cruise’s tenure as Ethan Hunt, and so they had to work overtime to create some common themes out of eight jarringly disparate films. The Reckoning duology answers some lingering questions, like the true nature of the forgotten Rabbit’s Foot from Mission: Impossible III. But by shoehorning an old enemy, Gabriel (Esai Morales), into Ethan’s past, it creates big holes in his backstory.
Their enmity began with Marie (Mariela Garriga), Ethan’s old flame and likely the first tragic brunette he ever tried to save. Dead Reckoning tells us, via flashback, that Gabriel murdered Marie decades before the rogue AI known as the Entity would pit them against each other. Given that this little tidbit is introduced randomly and with very little context, fans assumed The Final Reckoning would try to flesh out the character further. Unfortunately, we never learn who Marie truly was to Ethan, or why Gabriel would see fit to torture Ethan with her demise. It’s one of the film’s most frustrating blind spots, but The Final Reckoning does give us a consolation prize by complicating Ethan’s origins.
Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning are technically two halves of a whole, but the latter doesn’t have much time to resolve the loose threads of its predecessor. Rather than expand on Ethan’s relationship to Marie, Final Reckoning just doubles down on the tiny flashbacks we already got. As frustrating as that is, it does reinforce a retcon first introduced in the 2023 film, as it uses Marie’s demise to explain how Ethan came to work for the Impossible Mission Force.
Ethan’s origins have never been clear, although he presumably had some military background; how else would he be able to pull off all those crazy stunts? In Fallout, his dossier implies he served in the Army before being recruited to the IMF, and though the details of that recruitment have never factored into his adventures, Dead Reckoning changes that by adding a wrinkle in Ethan’s once squeaky-clean resume.
Whatever motive Gabriel had for murdering Marie, it’s irrelevant in hindsight. All that matters is that he left Ethan to take the fall for it, and Ethan would have spent his life in prison had it not been for what the CIA’s Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) describes as “unique natural talents.” He’s supposedly the one who intervened before Ethan was convicted for Gabriel’s crime, giving him “the choice” between prison and a lifetime of service to the IMF.
This change doesn’t just retcon Ethan’s origin story, but the origins of every IMF agent we’ve ever met. While it was widely assumed that the IMF rehabilitates some criminals to its own benefit, like Nyah Nordoff-Hall (Thandiwe Newton) of Mission: Impossible II, or Dead Reckoning’s Grace (Hayley Atwell), it’d make more sense for the force to recruit from armed forces and espionage agencies. In Final Reckoning, we learn that every member of Ethan’s team found themselves in a similar position to him, and elected to take an IMF oath rather than face prison.
This change feels a bit unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, as it’s mostly a ploy to tie Gabriel to Ethan’s past, and it wastes a prime opportunity to take that relationship any further. That said, it does bring some interesting color to an organization like the IMF and, like it or not, a stalwart character like Ethan. And now, just as the franchise’s sequel looks uncertain, the stage has been set for a prequel.
