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The first teaser for Mission: Impossible 8, now subtitled The Final Reckoning, has been released and Alasdair Stuart has scrubbed it like a plucky analyst in a Tom Clancy novel…

The Final Reckoning

The title change makes sense, given that Dead Reckoning didn’t do what was hoped at the Box Office. Stopping briefly to note that Box Office returns are no metric of artistic quality and that somehow the franchise has got worse at doing multi-part stories, let’s move on to what The Final Reckoning means.

Obviously it’s Man vs Algorithm. But it also feels like Ethan and maybe the entire team’s last operation. Whether they die, we’ll see. That tends to be negotiable in these movies. The other reckoning it’s speaking to is Ethan’s past. We got a lot of stuff with Gabriel in the last movie which somehow managed to tell us exactly nothing. We need context, we need a reason to care and God bless him, Esai Morales needs something to actually do. For all our sakes, let’s hope he gets it.

Time Has Passed

As we see later, someone surprising seems to have got a very large promotion and Degas and Paris are active IMF agents. I’m guessing a year, maybe two (?) have passed since the last movie. If so, what’s been going on in that time, given Ethan was implied to be heading off to the Sevastopol immediately?

Callbacks Galore

The Knife is from Mission: Impossible 1. So is Kittridge, played by Henry Czerny, the first IMF head we saw and whose career fell victim to Ethan’s genetic inability to not do the right thing. Also, Rolf Saxon returns! Saxon played Donloe, the technician whose failure to notice Ethan, Luther and Franz breaking into Langley got him sentenced to an Alaskan listening post  back in Mission: Impossible 1. And doesn’t that look like an Alaskan listening post at 0:09? And wouldn’t that be loosely where the submarine in Dead Reckoning went down? Also returning, Angela Bassett as CIA director Erika Sloane, who somehow kept her career despite employing a literal reaver to hunt spies and seems to have been promoted…

Also back are Janet McTeer, Charles Parnell and Mark Gatiss suggesting that the council of senior intelligence staff we see in Dead Reckoning are also back. Finally, the heart-to-heart with Luther, judging by the background, takes place in a crypt of some sort. They had a very similar important conversation in the Vatican’s tunnels way back in MI:3.

There’s a lot of more general callbacks too. The close-up virus grab evokes Mission: Impossible 2, the sprint away from a dust cloud evokes Ghost Protocol, being back in London calls back to Mission: Impossible 1 and Fallout as do the multiple flooded compartment shots. There’s a chance this is an ‘Everything is connected’ narrative or recontextualising everything Ethan’s been through as connected to the Algorithm.

And there’s some interesting stuff at specific timecodes too.

0:14-Trio On The Run

There’s a shot of what seems to be the Algorithm server farm with three people running up a gantry. The middle one is presumably Ethan and he’s in a bad way, being supported by the two people on either side of him. One of them has long blonde hair, one has short dark hair. It looks like Paris and Grace from Dead Reckoning.

0:19-Why Is The Algorithm In A Cockpit?

There’s a shot of the algorithm’s fractal rose on what seems to be a control console in front of a slanted metal pylon. It looks a lot like a helicopter cockpit. Could it be one of the Osprey troop transports we see in a later shot? Also if only Ethan, Grace, Benji, Paris and Degas are deploying why are there two transports shown?

0:21-Things get Weird

Ethan apparently decides to go not-quite skinny dipping in the Arctic Ocean. Because of course he does. What’s weird about this shot is that it seems to be flipped around. He’s not floating down to ice he’s floating up to it. How? And what’s he holding?

0:24-Who’s Going To Emergency? Who’s Going to Jail?

There’s a shot of someone with their hands cuffed in front of them being escorted into a secure corridor which seems to have a very thick, angry looking blast door every few feet. We can’t tell for sure but this really, really looks like Ethan. Is that how they’re writing him out? Taking the fall for something?

0:46-Gabriel

The world’s most murderous polo-neck enthusiast returns. That appears to be Grace manacled to the wall by her neck behind him.

0:48-President Sloane

Angela Bassett’s Erika Sloane is seen stepping off Air Force One (I checked the colour scheme. Also note the seal by the door). She’s being given a very public, very large reception in a manner a CIA director would not be expected to. When did she become President? Are we seeing the end of the movie?

0:55-The Body In The Ice

Ethan left the first movie in possession of the key so they really, really want us to believe that’s someone we know. It could be Grace? Note we see both halves of the key, and it’s carefully shot to not show us who has the other half. Do Grace and Ethan die in the ice? And if so is this going to be the biggest bummer ending in franchise history?

1:14-Goodbye to All That, Or Is it?

The tone here is very much that Ethan won’t be coming back from this one. The franchise has played with that twice before (remember the man went deep cover in a Russian prison for years once) but the heart to heart with Luther, a moment with Grace and this with everyone’s favourite IT guy turned field operative certainly want you to think that.

1:18-Ilsa in the Upside Down

We’re back with Ethan lying against the ice. And that’s Ilsa. That’s categorically Ilsa. And she’s breathing. And not stabbed. I will be so annoyed if this is ‘Ethan finds a second wind embodied in his dead not quite girlfriend’. Everything about Ilsa’s death implied set up. This seems to be the payoff. I hope it’s the payoff.

1:27-A Kick in the Head

It almost looks like a couple of Sevastopol crew have survived judging by the uniform of the chap in this shot. Also, unless Ethan is secretly Stretch Armstrong, the man whose head he’s kicking is not attacking him but someone else. Presumably Grace who we also see in the Sevastopol dive sequence.

1:34-Good Ends

Luther’s ‘You’ve always been on the right side, brother. I’ve got no regrets. Neither should you’ feels a lot like a signoff. Also it worries me that Luther seems to be in something that looks a lot like hospital scrubs in every shot we see him here. Could be nothing, could be something. But he’s also not on the plane…

1:40-What’s Ethan Screaming?

It looks just a little like ‘ILSA!’ to me.

1:46-Degas!

The magnificently named Greg Tarzan Davis, who first worked with Cruise on Top Gun Maverick is flying the plane everyone’s being emotional on! Nice to see Degas return from the previous movie. One interesting note. This is shot to look like the team are aboard the transport taking Ethan out to the Sevastopol and presumably near certain death. He’s not in this shot and everyone’s looking very sad at a specific spot off camera. But Benji doesn’t seem as beaten up. Also the Osprey’s cockpit doesn’t quite work like that. So who are they looking at? And where’s Ethan?

1:50-‘I need you to trust me. One last time.’

At 1:50 Ethan delivers this line to and past the camera. Who to?! Luther and Benji are down to ride all the way to the end of the line and so is Grace. Is it Kittridge? Is it…Ilsa?

The Final Reckoning releases on 25 May next year. We’ll have our answers then, but for the first time in a while, I’m pretty excited about the questions.