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The last time we saw Ethan Hunt, he and his team had been outmanoeuvred by the mysterious bad guy Gabriel and the all seeing AI known as The Entity. How will they save the day? Alasdair Stuart delves into the latest trailer for clues…

0.09 – Kittridge

Henry Czerny as former IMF head Kittridge is one of the most surprising returns for this possible (probable?) franchise wrap-up. What’s especially interesting is that he seems to be speaking very admiringly of Ethan, a man who let’s not forget, ended his career.

0.10 – The Other Side

This is cut to look like it’s the room Kittridge is speaking to. It’s not. This is Ethan, in the ‘I need you to trust me, one last time’ moment we saw last trailer and that closes this one. Also, note the absolute murderer’s row of incredible character actors he’s delivering that speech to. I’m seeing Mark Gatiss, Charles Parnell (a man who steals every scene he’s in in Top Gun Maverick), Janet McTeer, genre favourite Holt McCallany, everyone’s favourite Nick Offerman and Henry Czerny. Incredible range of talent. I hope they get some thing to do because most of them were window dressing last time.

0.36 – Ethan in chains

It’s cut to look the other way but that repeated moment later of Ethan kneeling in front of some police cars feels a lot like it comes before this. He works out what they have to do to beat the Entity. He gets himself caught. He’s brought in chains to this meeting and he makes his pitch.

0.49 – Shea Wigham

Another all time great, and we’ve got even more in a few seconds. We last saw Shea Wigham as Jasper Briggs, the lead agent hunting Ethan and team in the last movie. His hair is positively Captain Pike-ian here and he seems very much onside. I hope we find out more about him, he was fun.

1.00 – Hannah Waddingham?!

Richmond AFC’s finest joins the party!

1.01 – TRAMMELL TILLMAN?!

And so does Mr Milchick?! Severance’s breakout player is a delightful surprise in this newly stacked cast.

1.10 – Endgame Theory

So remember that weird device we saw in the last trailer that looked like it was some sort of remote control? Nope, turns out it’s a VR set up. We see Ethan shackled into it here and then we see… a lot of things. Slowing them down, most of what’s here seems to be shots from the new movie. We see everyone (although, worryingly, not Luther and we’ll get to that) in various degrees of peril. But then we see moments from previous movies. In particular the apparent murder of Julia in Mission: Impossible III.

We see a surprising amount of the previous movies actually, including what looks like Ethan grabbing the Rabbit’s Foot (which interestingly we never actually saw in M:I:III), the Burj Khalifa climb and a couple of other spots. Some of it’s presented as Nick Offerman’s character looking through Hunt’s file but this is different. This is something Ethan experiencing.

I have a theory. It’s previously been established that the Entity is probabilistic. It calculates likely outcomes, and anticipates and blocks them. I think this is Ethan trying to do the same thing. He’s basically pulling a Doctor Strange in Infinity War, gaming out every possible future to see if there’s one where they win. It looks like he finds one too, and either it’s one where he dies or one where he needs people to think he dies. Either way that gives us some context to the shots here and in previous trailers of what looks like goodbyes with Benji and Luther.

1.18 – ‘Your team has been betrayed, Ethan.’

Gabriel remains a problem, in so far as he’s an empty suit right now. That’s not on Esai Morales at all, he’s a great actor who did a lot with very little in Dead Reckoning. If I’m right about the machine we see Ethan strapped into, my hope is that we get desperately needed context for Gabriel, why he hates Ethan and that brief moment in Dead Reckoning which seemed to echo the murder of Kristin Scott Thomas’ character Sarah.

1.34 – ‘Everything you were, everything you’ve done, has come to this.’

Kittridge sounds… awestruck. It’s not a ‘You SUCK, Hunt,’ speech although it could be read like that. It honestly plays like a man at the end of his career, looking at someone who started as a subordinate and became a foe, in abject awe. It’s a handshake, a sign off, a moment of forgiveness. And it’s not the only one we see.

1.40 – ‘This was your calling. Your destiny. I have no regrets. Neither should you.’

I love Luther. Ving Rhames is always fantastic and as a big, and clever, guy seeing Luther be big and clever in this series has always been nice. I’m so worried about him. He’s in hospital scrubs in this scene, and he’s referring to Ethan in the past tense. I have a couple of theories as to why.

The first is Luther is just as much of an old hand as Ethan. He knows, or has guessed, that the one way for this to work is if one or all of them die. That ties in with Luther’s background and even gives the series a nice little micro arc of Luther and Ethan slowly realising this is their life’s work. So he’s using the past tense because he knows someone isn’t coming back from this one and he’s fine with that. In particular, ‘I have no regrets. Neither should you.’ Feels a lot like Luther knows this is his last job and he’s just fine with it.

The second reason is weirder. If we do get a deep dive into simulation here, as seems likely, this could be a simulated Luther telling Ethan that it’s okay. The repeated motifs from previous movies, and the creed used last time, all seem to imply that every choice matters and has led to one inescapable fate. Whether that’s death or not, we don’t know. But the movie sure wants us to think it is.

1.52 – Birds in the air

This is three nuclear missiles launching, from what seems to be a rural location. While it’s oddly sweet to see the Entity embrace its Skynetian roots I’m guessing this situation is either a possible scenario or one that resolves happily. That being said…

2.00 – Nuke over London

It goes by very fast, but this looks a lot like a nuclear weapon, possibly airbursting, over London. If you hit pause you can see the bend of the Thames and the London Eye and what might be an initial blast wave hitting the city.

I’m going out on a limb here and saying that this doesn’t happen. If I’m right, the system we see Ethan strapped into earlier on gives him a look at every single possible outcome of their actions and this is one of the consequences if they screw up. Or maybe it’s a harmless detonation above the city when they win. Who knows? All of us, soon!

2.10 – ‘One last time.’

And there it is, the shot we saw in the first trailer only now we can see this is Ethan both making his pitch and potentially signing off. The trailer wants us to think this is the mission he doesn’t come back from but I’m not buying it. My guess is that he gets to retire. My other guess is that this is both an enormously dangerous mission with a razor thin margin for error and a situation where he needs the Entity to think he’s going to die.

Whether this is the end for Ethan, Luther, Benji or the franchise remains to be seen but we don’t have long to wait. Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning releases on 21st May.