Subscribe
Follow Us
As with any part one in a film series, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One ends with a cliffhanger. While not quite as egregious as Fast X's, it makes you want more and anxiously await the sequel (which is due next year). Here's where Dead Reckoning Part One left Ethan Hunt and Co.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One ending explained
Warning: Spoilers ahead for Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One
The story of Dead Reckoning Part One is a race for two halves of a key to a powerful AI threat. Ethan (Tom Cruise) convinces Grace (Hayley Atwell) to board the train where the buyer of one-half of the key is set to make a deal with Alanna (Vanessa Kirby). A busted mask-making machine causes Ethan to have to find a new way on the train, but Grace follows through and poses as Alanna for the transaction with none other than a returning Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny).
While the business deal goes down, a little tussle goes on between Gabriel (Esai Morales) and Paris (Pom Klementieff). The former ultimately gains the advantage and stabs the latter, telling her that the AI revealed her fate to be something along the lines of, “You betray me to held Ethan for sparing your life” — oh yeah, a little while earlier, Ethan smashed Paris' head into a building a few times but decided to let her live. How she survived is up to the imagination, but here she is. But more on that prediction by Gabriel in a second.
Ethan, meanwhile, is attempting to find a way onto the train. The original plan was that he'd find a vantage point and hop on while the train was operating at its slowest speed. However, Gabriel and the AI were one step ahead and manipulated the tracker to make Ethan believe he was on time. He misses it and thus has to use an alternate route — one that takes him up the mountains in the Alps (I think you know where that goes).
Grace is holding her own while posing as Alanna, and initially asks for one more stipulation to the deal. In addition to the $100 million being wired to her, she wanted to give herself (as Grace, not Alanna) a clean slate and a new identity to avoid being tied to the IMF or being thrown in prison. Once she stalls enough, she takes the keys and flees. However, she's figured out by Alanna's brother Zola (Frederick Schmidt) and a chase ensues. Just when things look like they can't get any worse, Ethan flies in and crashes through the train, and takes out Zola. However, he knocked the keys out of Grace's hands and Gabriel is there to snatch them.
Article Continues Below
Ethan and Gabriel fight on top of the train before being approached by Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis). Gabriel has an escape plan, however, and jumps off the train to be caught by an escape car. As he drives off, he realizes that he doesn't have the key and that Ethan has it.
But it's never that simple, as Gabriel had broken the breaks off the train earlier and it's now a runaway train approaching a bridge that will soon explode. Ethan and Grace get stuck in the first car attempting to stop the train, and after a sequence of narrowly surviving each falling train car, they're saved by none other than Paris, who does fulfill her destiny. She reveals in her dying breaths that the key unlocks the submarine seen in the beginning of the film and that's where the race is ultimately heading.
Grace ends up approaching Kittridge with the proposal of joining IMF, saying she accepts the mission (though we don't see his reaction to this). Ethan escapes via a parachute provided by Luther and makes it to the rendezvous spot where Benji (Simon Pegg) awaits. A monologue that was heard in the beginning once again plays as Ethan stares off in the distance and Benji watches concerned — reminding Ethan of the stakes of this mission. Dead Reckoning Part One ends with a shot of the sunken submarine before the credits roll.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One is in theaters now.
