Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning Ending Explained - Is This Really the End of Tom Cruise's M:I Series?

Yahoo

26-05-2025

Let's make this simple: You want to know if there are any post- or mid-credits scenes in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. The answer is no, there are none.
Full spoilers follow.
It's been one wild, stunt-filled ride over the past 29 years, but every mission must come to an end eventually. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is apparently the final entry in this long-running series, as Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt confronts his most daring and high-stakes mission yet.
Now that The Final Reckoning is in theaters, we're here to break down the ending to this epic blockbuster. Who lives? Who dies? Is this really the end of the road for Ethan and his team, or could the franchise return? Read on to learn more.Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning's Ending Explained
The Mission: Impossible series has always been about the IMF racing against the clock to prevent various villains from unleashing global catastrophes, but the deck is really stacked against Ethan and his team in the eighth and final movie. While Ethan stopped Esai Morales' Gabriel in the short term in 2023's Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, there's still the little problem of the hyper-advanced AI known as 'The Entity' worming its way into every computer system across the globe.
The situation is immediately dire in The Final Reckoning, with The Entity systematically taking over the nuclear stockpiles of every nation on Earth and Angela Bassett's President Sloane forced to choose whether to unleash a preemptive strike on those nations. The Final Reckoning only further cements its dark, foreboding tone when Ving Rhames' Luther Stickell becomes an early casualty in the conflict with Gabriel, which allows Gabriel to take possession of Luther's Poison Pill device. Even after Ethan defies the odds and retrieves The Entity's source code from the sunken Sevastopol submarine, he knows that the code is useless unless he can combine it with the Poison Pill. One way or another, all roads lead to Gabriel.
As this conflict unfolds, The Final Reckoning introduces some fun and unexpected callbacks to previous Mission: Impossible films. For example, we learn that The Entity has its roots in the Rabbit's Foot, the MacGuffin device from 2006's Mission: Impossible III. Ethan's team also reunites with former CIA analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), the man who almost walked in on Ethan during his tense wire-hacking mission from the original film. Meanwhile, Shea Whigham's Jasper Briggs is revealed to be the son of Jon Voight's Jim Phelps, the IMF leader from the original film. No wonder he seems to bear such a personal grudge toward Ethan.
Ethan and Gabriel's paths do ultimately converge in South Africa, at a digital bunker where The Entity plans to retreat before unleashing a nuclear holocaust. Ethan's plan is to retrieve the Poison Pill and combine it with the source code module, tricking The Entity into isolating itself on a holographic drive that Hayley Atwell's Grace can then pickpocket.
Predictably, things go haywire with the arrival of CIA Director Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and his team, and Simon Pegg's Benji is shot in the ensuing chaos. As Ethan and Gabriel battle it out aboard two dueling planes, the clock steadily ticks down to nuclear armageddon. President Sloane is forced to make her choice, and she chooses to trust Ethan and pull the US's nuclear arsenal offline rather than allow The Entity to take control.
Ethan finally outwits Gabriel, and the latter's defiant villain speech is cut short when he bashes his head into the tail of his plane. Ethan parachutes to safety and combines the module with the Poison Pill. Grace performs the impossible feat of snatching the drive at just the right moment, trapping The Entity in its tiny prison.
Once again, Ethan and the IMF have saved the world from ruin, even if few people will ever know the full truth. Even more impressive, they do so without any further casualties. Benji survives his near-fatal gunshot wound, meaning Luther is the only IMF member to die in The Final Reckoning. Ethan and his team reunite one last time in London's Trafalgar Square, where Grace hands Ethan the briefcase containing The Entity. After exchanging solemn nods, they all go their separate ways. Thus ends their latest, and apparently last, impossible mission.
Does The Final Reckoning Have a Post-Credits Scene?
As mentioned above, the eighth and final (for now?) Mission: Impossible movie has no mid- or post-credits scenes. You're free to leave once the credits start rolling. Though, as always, it never hurts to stick around and show some appreciation for all the cast and crew who made those death-defying stunts happen.
The lack of a post-credits scene isn't necessarily that surprising, given that they've never really been a thing with this particular Hollywood franchise. Still, with this supposedly being the last entry in the series, you might think Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie would want to give fans one last nod before sending Ethan Hunt off into the sunset. As much as this is billed as the conclusion of the series, The Final Reckoning certainly leaves the door open for more. A post-credits scene could have hinted at what's next for the victorious Ethan.
But that does raise an important question. Is this really the end? Let's explore what we know.
Is This Really the End of the Mission: Impossible Series?
Paramount has definitely marketed The Final Reckoning as the conclusion to the Mission: Impossible saga. It's right there in the name. This film is meant to cap off a 29-year journey and chronicle Ethan Hunt's final and most desperate mission.
But how final is this film, really? It certainly wraps up on a pretty open-ended note. Ethan is still alive, having somehow survived diving to loot a sunken submarine in the frigid Arctic Ocean. Luther may have perished heroically, but the rest of the IMF is alive, too (even Benji, who was touch-and-go there for a bit). That's honestly one of the criticisms that can be leveled at The Final Reckoning. Even in this supposedly final outing, the film seems reluctant to break too many of its toys or veer outside the standard formula. Anyone expecting to see Cruise's iconic hero finally bite off more than he can chew and meet his end will come away disappointed.
Given the way The Final Reckoning ends, there's nothing stopping Paramount from greenlighting another sequel featuring this revamped cast, with Cruise's Ethan being joined by Atwell's Grace, Pegg's Benji, Pom Klementieff's Paris, and Greg Tarzan Davis' Theo Degas. The studio certainly seems to be leaving that door open, whether or not they choose to walk through it.
It may all come down to a question of money. The Mission: Impossible franchise has certainly raked in the cash for Paramount over the years, but these movies are also insanely expensive to produce. Stunts this epic and stars this famous don't come cheap. Case in point: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One grossed an impressive $571 million worldwide, yet the film is still considered to be a box office failure because of its massive budget (which was inflated by complications stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic).
The Final Reckoning's budget is reported to be as high as $400 million even before marketing, meaning it needs to gross way more than its predecessor to break even. That may be too much to hope for in a summer movie season as crowded as this one. That's to say nothing of the fact that audiences are proving ever more fickle in the age of endless streaming options.
Given the astronomical cost of making Mission: Impossible movies, Paramount may be happy to close the door on the franchise and focus on the more profitable Top Gun series. The ROI simply isn't there any longer.
That said, we could see Paramount pivoting in a slightly different direction with Mission: Impossible. Perhaps Cruise's character could become more of a supporting player, with a new generation of heroic IMF agents taking center stage. That formula certainly worked for 2022's Top Gun: Maverick. At one point, rumors even suggested that Maverick star Glen Powell was being eyed to become the new face of the M:I franchise, though Powell himself has denied this.
At the very least, we know director Christopher McQuarrie has explored the idea of further sequels beyond The Final Reckoning. But if the studio ever does greenlight them, we suspect the goal will be to pivot to smaller, cheaper spinoffs with less emphasis on Cruise. It's not as if Cruise is getting any younger, and at some point, Ethan Hunt needs to be allowed to retire for real. How many times can one guy save the world before it's enough?
In IGN's Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review, Clint Gage gave the film a 6 out of 10, writing, "While its action is reliably thrilling and a few of its most exciting sequences are sure to hold up through the years, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning tries to deal with no less than the end of every living thing on the planet – and suffers because of it. The somber tone and melodramatic dialogue miss the mark of what's made this franchise so much fun for 30 years, but the door is left open for more impossible missions and the hope that this self-serious reckoning isn't actually final."
For more on the series, check out our ranking of the Mission: Impossible movies from worst to best.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.