For the first two decades of its existence, the Mission: Impossible franchise didn’t feature much direct connective tissue other than Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and Ving Rhames’ Luther Strickell. The rest of the team and the hierarchy of the IMF itself was switched up on a regular basis, a byproduct of a fresh director stepping in to helm each subsequent installment.
That’s all changed since Christopher McQuarrie assumed the reins beginning with fifth outing Rogue Nation, though, keeping the core cast together through Fallout and even adding Henry Czerny’s Eugene Kittridge back into the mix for the first time since Brian De Palma’s 1996 original alongside Cruise, Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby and Angela Bassett for the seventh and eighth globetrotting blockbusters.
Sadly, Henry Cavill won’t be along for the ride having bitten the dust in pretty spectacular fashion during Fallout‘s third act, with his CIA assassin August Walker proving to be a formidable adversary. The actor’s hulking frame and gruff charm were a welcome addition to the dynamic, and he even spawned a meme after reloading his own arms during a fight sequence.
He might be dead, but we’ve heard from our sources – the same ones who told us Paramount were rebooting the entire Transformers franchise from the ground up before it was confirmed – that the studio want Cavill to return for either flashbacks tying his character to the wider mythology, or even a prequel spinoff of some description.
Mission: Impossible has always been The Tom Cruise Show, although there were once plans for Jeremy Renner to assume the mantle of leading man before they were quietly abandoned, which is probably the reason we haven’t seen any spinoffs. Still, that could all be set to change in the future, especially with Cavill’s schedule now looking a lot more open given what WB’s doing to his Superman.
