Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 Ending: Where The Blockbuster Leaves Ethan Hunt And The IMF Agents Ahead Of Part 2

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains massive spoilers for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!

The Mission: Impossible franchise has never been one for strict, complicated continuity between its installments, but Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 is a different ballgame. As implied by the title, the new blockbuster provides audiences with only half of an epic, multi-part story – similar to what we saw from the conclusion of Fast X and the cliffhanger in Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. The action concludes with a setup for the direct sequel... and that means that there is a lot of narrative pressure on the end of Dead Reckoning Part 1.

So where does the film conclude, and in what position does it leave its principal characters leading into Part 2? We've put together this feature with the specific aim of addressing both of those questions, and we'll start with what happens at the end of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1.

What Happens At The End Of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1

The beginning of the end of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 kicks off when Grace (Hayley Atwell) – disguised as Alanna Mitsopolis (Vanessa Kirby) – declines the $100 million transfer from Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), saying that she’ll sleep better knowing that the key that can control The Entity is in the right hands. For a moment it seems as though all may be well… but then the real Alanna Mitsopolis shows up. The jig is up, Grace’s mask is removed, and all chaos ensues as she runs.

Thankfully, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) has god-level timing and skill, and just as Grace is about to be killed, he comes crashing through the side of the train following his motorcycle drive off of a mountain cliff. When their pursuers are neutralized, Ethan heads to the top of the train to fight Gabriel (Esai Morales), who has taken the key, and the new, in-training IMF agent is told to do what she can to stop the locomotive. Both efforts are a struggle – the latter dealing with the fact that Gabriel has sabotaged the controls.

The extended fight between the hero and villain is ultimately stopped by Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham), who holds a gun on the two battling men. Gabriel is able to escape when he executes a planned leap, and Ethan is able to convince Jasper not to put him under arrest due to the fact that everyone aboard the train is potentially minutes from death. As though on cue, Gabriel arms a series of bombs that are rigged on a railway bridge down the track to go off in three minutes.

Back inside, there is a rush to get all of the passengers into the back cars as quickly as possible – and while the bad news is that there is no way to stop the runaway train, the good news for humanity is that Ethan has the key (having swapped it in Gabriel’s pocket for his lighter). Ethan and Grace then try and stop the upcoming disaster by detaching the cars from the engine, but their efforts are a touch too slow. The bridge explodes and the train still has a great deal of forward momentum.

As the train cars slowly fall, Ethan and Grace rush to try and jump and climb their way to safety and it turns out to be Paris (Pom Klementieff) who saves their lives – just as Gabriel said she would. Though she is close to death, Paris tells them what she knows about the key by telling him about the connection to the destroyed submarine featured at the beginning of the film. Ethan then escapes from the train in a speedwing, flying down to meet Benji (Simon Pegg) and deliver the key, and Grace does as she was instructed in the original version of the plan: she goes to Kittridge and chooses to accept her future as an agent for the Impossible Mission Force.

Where Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 Leaves The IMF Agents Ahead Of The Action In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2

Throughout Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1, Ethan Hunt is faced with an infuriating conflict: he needs to stop Gabriel, who has created an alliance with The Entity, but he can’t kill him because he is the only person who knows how to use the key that the characters are all chasing. By the end of the movie, however, that problem is solved. Because Paris overhears the conversation between Gabriel and Denlinger (Cary Elwes), the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, she knows that the key is designed to be used in the Russian submarine Sevastopol, and she passes that information along to Ethan.

Both having the key and knowing where to bring it, Ethan, Grace and Benji will start Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2 in a pretty good place… but there are still plenty of conflicts left to face in their mission. For starters, they are going to have to find a way to get down to the destroyed remains of a submarine in arctic waters to try and find the locks that the key opens, and then they have to figure out how to actually take control of the über-powerful artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, we can assume that Gabriel isn’t just going to give up; he’s committed to letting The Entity take control of the world, and he’s going to want to get revenge against Ethan for getting the best of him in their last encounter.

The wild card that Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2 will surely play at some pivotal point is the part played in the adventure by Luther Stickel (Ving Rhames). Because he’s following a mysterious lead, the Mission: Impossible franchise stalwart isn’t featured in the big third act action sequence in the 2023 blockbuster, but that’s very clearly a setup for some kind of big reveal in the upcoming sequel.

Also not to be totally discounted from the action is Kittridge, who is just as slippery a character now as he was back when he was introduced in the first Mission: Impossible movie. He seems to have some degree of Ethan Hunt’s trust (hence why he would send Grace to Kittridge to become an IMF agent), but he also very clearly has his own motivations for taking control of The Entity. He may end up seeing Ethan’s point of view – that The Entity is too dangerous to be controlled by any single person or government – but if he doesn’t, he’s a threat to the mission.

Fans will have to wait less than a full year for the satisfaction of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1’s cliffhanger, as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 2 is set to be released on June 28, 2024. Stay tuned for plenty more coverage of the blockbuster franchise here on CinemaBlend, and learn about all of the exciting films that are set to come out next year with our 2024 Movie Release Calendar.