Is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Going to Address the Franchise’s Biggest Unanswered Question?

Ethan Hunt is back again to save humanity from the artificial intelligence trying to take us all down in Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Finishing what Dead Reckoning started is going to take a lot of hands on deck, including a lot of characters from previous installments of the franchise.

The new trailer (via Slashfilm) reveals not only Rolf Saxon’s William Donloe and Angela Bassett’s Erika Sloane returning, but also the elusive Rabbit’s Foot from Mission Impossible: III. Could Tom Cruise‘s adventures as Ethan Hunt finally be coming to a bombastic end AND wrapping up old questions from the past? It sure looks like that’s what writer/director Christopher McQuarrie intends to do.

Who and What Is Returning For Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning?

“Our lives are not defined by any one action,” IMF Agent Luther Stickell begins. “Our lives are the sum of our choices. Everything you were, and everything you’ve done, has come to this.”

“Now the fate of every living soul on Earth is your responsibility,” the ominous voiceover continues as shots from film current film and installments of the past play.

It was originally announced that Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning would shoot back-to-back as a two-part finale for the cinematic mega-series. And with the reappearance of so many characters and Easter Eggs from previous iterations in this trailer, it seems that the end really is nigh.

Easter Eggs like the inclusion of William Donloe, a minor character from earlier films. Donloe is a former CIA analyst who — after being banished to a polar substation in Alaska — created the Artificial Intelligence program known as the Entity that’s currently wreaking havoc and causing major headaches for Ethan and his crew.

As for Erika Sloane’s part in all of this, when we last saw her in 2018’s Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Sloane was a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency turned Secretary of the IMF. But some eagle-eyed fans noticed that in Dead Reckoning, a photo of a woman bearing a striking resemblance to Angela Bassett‘s character was on the walls of The Director of National Intelligence’s office in the place usually reserved for presidential portraits. Does that mean we’ll see President Sloane in The Final Reckoning? And will she help Ethan and the team stop the Entity from defeating humanity completely?

Perhaps the most intriguing returning aspect, though, is the elusive Rabbit’s Foot. In Mission: Impossible III, a black market dealer named Owen Davian (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) looks to sell the Rabbit’s Foot to an extremist group for profit and world domination. Its return could mean nothing … or it could mean everything. Like, say, provide an answer to whatever Entity, the AI’s, ultimate goals are for the human race.

But what, exactly, is the Rabbit’s Foot? Well, it is a mysterious biological hazard that was possibly created by a private, Chinese equity firm. It allegedly contained the power to destroy the world. After a series of unfortunate (but high octane, obviously) events, Ethan and Julia (played by Michelle Monaghan) manage to take back the Rabbit’s Foot, but the audience has no idea what actually happened to it. It was assumed that Ethan kept it safe from the intended terrorists and neutralized it to an extent, but its return could point to that being untrue — or maybe it’s just reappeared because Entity has some big, nefarious plans for it.

Whatever the case may be, its inclusion alongside so many other familiar faces points to one bombastic culmination of events when Christopher McQuarrie’s final installment hits theaters next year.