Tom Cruise and Esai Morales in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.”
Paramount PicturesTom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is new in theaters. Is there a post-credits scene that you should stick around for?
Cruise’s espionage action film franchise — based on the classic 1960s and ’70s CBS-TV series — began in 1996 with Mission: Impossible, followed the numeric sequels II and III in 2000 and 2006, respectively.
The series took on subtitles after that, starting with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in 2011, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation in 2015, Mission: Impossible – Fallout in 2018 and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning in 2023.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning — which was originally titled Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part 2 — is a continuation of the 2023 film. While there are many callbacks to all of the Mission: Impossible films, The Final Reckoning mainly concentrates on Impossible Mission Force Agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his pursuit of Dead Reckoning villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) and the self-aware artificial intelligence program known as The Entity.
Since the events of the last film, The Entity has stirred up division all around the world. Far worse, it is one by one securing all of the world’s biggest nuclear arsenals. Ethan begins the film in hiding and the only person who can lure him out to try to stop The Entity from starting World War III is U.S. President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett).
Thanks to the loyalty of his fellow IMF agents, Ethan isn’t going it alone, as Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg) and Grace (Hayley Atwell) join the deadly mission, and recruit Gabriel’s former henchwoman, Paris (Pom Klementieff) and a U.S. intelligence agent, Theo (Greg Tarzan Davis), to help them out.
Note: Spoilers from the film are discussed in the next section.
Should You Stick Around For The End Credits Of ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’?
End credits and/or post-credits scenes generally serve one of two purposes for moviegoers. Either they wrap up loose ends from a scene earlier in the film or tease a potential sequel.
Most often, of course, a sequel isn’t guaranteed unless a film makes money — that is unless the star and producer of said film is Tom Cruise, who has enough clout to say yes or no to a sequel no matter how the film at hand performs financially.
So, is there an end credits or post-credits scene at the end of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning? The answer is no for both, and fans shouldn’t be surprised about it. After all, there’s a sense of finality with a subtitle like The Final Reckoning, which is presumed to be Cruise’s last hurrah as Ethan Hunt.
The only thing is, neither Cruise nor director Christopher McQuarrie — who took over as Mission: Impossible franchise’s sole director with 2015’s Rogue Nation — have not officially confirmed that The Final Reckoning is truly their last Mission: Impossible film.
They’ve certainly implied it, though.
For example, a week ago on the red carpet at the film’s U.K. premiere, Entertainment Tonight point-blank asked him if it was the final film, to which he replied, “Well, they don’t call it Final for nothing.”
The maybe-sort of answer is the latest in the coy responses the creative collaborators have given for months. When pressed by Empire Magazine in February about whether The Final Reckoning was the final Mission: Impossible film, Cruise replied, “It’s a hard thing for me to discuss at the moment, because it really is something that you have to experience.”
McQuarrie, meanwhile, answered, “It is, I hope, the satisfying conclusion to a 30-year story arc. I’m pretty confident that people are going to feel that the title was appropriate.”
Without giving away any major spoilers, in the final scene of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, there’s a gathering of IMF agents who after a brief meetup go on their separate ways — but seemingly leave the door open for another impossible Mission should they choose to accept it.
So, did Cruise shut the door in his red-carpet interview with ET? Like all of his answers about The Final Reckoning before, what he says seems to be up for interpretation. “I have so much love for this. My cast, my crew. For me, it’s never goodbye. It’s like we’ll see you again,” Cruise told ET.
Rated PG-13, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is opening in theaters worldwide on Friday.
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