Warning: Some light spoilers for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One to follow.
Going into the franchise’s seventh entry, the Mission: Impossible movies have racked up quite the ensemble cast of familiar favorites, from long-term team players like Simon Pegg’s Benji Dunn and Ving Rhames’ Luther Stickell, to Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust, a beloved addition since 2015’s Rogue Nation. 2018’s Fallout introduced yet another new fave in the form of White Widow, as played by Vanessa Kirby, a character who makes her second appearance in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.
In doing so, we end up learning a little more about White Widow than we did the first time around, even if the secret about her familial origins wasn’t ever exactly, well, a secret and was more of an Easter egg for hardcore fans to pick up on. However, in the latest movie, the connection to Mission: Impossible‘s early days is spelled out to help deepen Kirby’s character. But who is the White Widow’s mother?
Who is Max Mitsopolis in Mission: Impossible?
In Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the White Widow is introduced as an affluent activist and philanthropist who is really a highly self-serving arms dealer. Her real name is stated to be Alanna Mitsopolis, and given her chosen profession, it was not hard for fans to work out that she must be the daughter of Max Mitsopolis, the main antagonist of the very first film in the franchise, 1996’s Mission: Impossible, as played by Vanessa Redgrave.
Sure enough, Kirby confirmed this to the press while promoting Fallout, but we’ve had to wait until Dead Reckoning Part One for that to be confirmed on screen. Her heritage is discussed by Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), another character from the 1996 movie, which only adds to the feeling that the series is coming full circle as it heads towards 2024’s Dead Reckoning Part Two, which may or may not be the final M:I movie ever made (probably not, if Tom Cruise has anything to say about it, but still).
The connection to Redgrave’s character seems to have been a major draw for Kirby in the first place. While speaking to Digital Spy, Kirby gushed over getting the chance to build on the “history” and “legacy” of the franchise, as well as admitting that she intensely studied Redgrave’s performance as Max to believably play her daughter:
“What I find incredible about it is that you have Ethan Hunt, he’s in the center, he’s been the common denominator in every movie, and it’s so strange to think that Vanessa Redgrave played my mother and he did that incredible scene with her in the car where she’s really playing with him. I watched it a thousand times to try and remotely emulate what she did.”
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is in theaters everywhere July 12.