Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One Ending, Explained

This article contains spoilers for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part OneTom Cruise comes back to save the world as he reprises his role of Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, the seventh installment of the beloved franchise, and as the title suggests, the beginning of the end. Despite the movie being over two and a half hours long, when the screen fades to black, Ethan’s mission is far from over. Director Christopher McQuarrie, wanting to bring more emotion to the franchise and give the characters more things to do, opted for splitting the movie into two parts, ending the first one on a cliffhanger that leaves the fate of the characters -and the human race- uncertain.