The first Mission: Impossible film opens with a team of agents from the Impossible Missions
Force attempting to track down a rogue agent in Kiev who is attempting to steal a list
of identities of undercover CIA operatives. Unfortunately, the mission goes awry, resulting
in the list being stolen and the entire IMF team, including leader Jim Phelps, being killed.
All except for agent Ethan Hunt.
When Ethan meets with the IMF’s director Eugene Kittridge, he discovers that the Kiev
mission was actually supposed to be a setup to discover a mole, codenamed Job, from within
the IMF. And as the mission’s lone survivor, Ethan Hunt has become the prime suspect. Ethan
flees from Kittridge and the IMF, now on a mission to uncover the true mole and clear
his name.
With no other options, Ethan seeks out the mysterious Job’s illegal arms dealer contact
Max. Ethan promises to obtain and deliver to Max the real CIA list in exchange for $10
million and for her revealing Job’s true identity. Ethan then teams up with Phelps’
widow, Claire, and disavowed IMF agents Luther Stickell and Franz Krieger to help in his
mission. Ethan successfully steals the list from CIA headquarters, and despite being betrayed
by Franz, he entrusts his loyal ally Luther to keep the list safe.
As Ethan plans his next moves, an alive and well Jim Phelps seeks him out to warn him
that Kittridge is in fact the IMF mole. Despite this revelation, Ethan deduces that the real
mole is actually Phelps upon discovering Phelps’ Bible and linking it to the book of Job. Ethan
keeps his knowledge a secret from Phelps, and plans to deliver the list to Max aboard
a train in Paris.
Aboard the train, Ethan delivers the list to Max, but Luther successfully prevents her
from sending it to her dangerous colleagues. Ethan then confronts Phelps and Claire, who
attempt to steal the money and flee. Ethan records their confrontation, sending the evidence
to Kittridge. Exposed as the mole, Phelps becomes erratic, killing Claire and attempting
to escape the moving train onto a helicopter piloted by Krieger. Ethan manages blow up
the helicopter, killing Phelps and Krieger and putting an end to their villainy.
As the film comes to a close, Kittridge arrests Max and takes back the CIA list, then reinstates
Ethan and Luther into the IMF.
In Mission: Impossible 2, Ethan Hunt is assigned to take down a rogue IMF agent named Sean
Ambrose who has stolen the cure to a deadly bio-engineered virus known as Chimera. Ambrose
plans on releasing the virus so he can profit from the cure.
To aid in his mission, Ethan recruits his old friend, Luther, and Ambrose’s professional
thief ex-girlfriend, Nyah. At the lab housing Chimera, Ethan’s team manage to destroy
all but one sample of the virus before Ambrose and his men arrive to engage in a firefight.
To prevent Ambrose from obtaining the virus, Nyah injects herself with it and begs for
Ethan to kill her, which would put an end to Chimera’s threat. Ethan can’t bring
himself to do it and is forced to flee as Ambrose captures Nyah.
Disguising himself as Ambrose’s right hand man, Ethan manages to infiltrate Ambrose’s
team and steal the cure. After a motorcycle chase through the streets of Sydney, Ethan
manages to kill Ambrose and his men before getting the cure to Nyah just in the knick
of time.
With the day saved once again, the IMF clear Nyah’s past criminal record and she decides
to take a romantic vacation with Ethan.
In Mission: Impossible 3, several years have passed and Ethan Hunt has retired from IMF
fieldwork, instead spending his days training new recruits while coming home to his fiancé,
Julia, at night. Julia has no idea about Ethan’s true occupation, and that secret becomes harder
to keep when IMF’s Assistant Director John Musgrave alerts Ethan that one of his former
students, Agent Lindsey Farris, has been captured by an arms dealer named Owen Davian while
on a mission to stop him from obtaining a bioweapon known as Rabbit’s Foot. Feeling
loyalty to his protege, Ethan agrees to lead a mission to save her, accompanied by Luther
Stickell, and new allies Declan Gormley and Zhen Lei. Ethan’s team successfully extracts
Lindsey and a pair of broken laptops, but as the team flies away, an explosive device
planted inside Lindsey’s head explodes, killing her and devastating Ethan.
Now with a personal vendetta to avenge Lindsey, Ethan agrees to rejoin the IMF, under new
Director Theodore Brassel, to take down Owen Davian. He marries Julia in an impromptu ceremony
before departing for his next dangerous mission. IMF technician Benji Dunn, who desperately
wants to be a field agent, successfully uses the broken laptops to track Davian to Vatican
City. Ethan’s team manage to capture Davian, but upon returning him to America, they are
ambushed by mercenaries and Davian escapes. Davian and the mercenaries then kidnap Julia,
threatening to kill her if Ethan didn’t steal and deliver Rabbit’s Foot within 48
hours. And to make matters even worse, Ethan then discovers that before her death, Lindsey
had sent him a postcard warning of Davian and Director Brassel’s association. And
so, the IMF apprehend Ethan, accusing him of aiding Davian in his escape. Agent Musgrave
helps Ethan flee IMF, where he then reunites with his team.
After obtaining Rabbit’s Foot and delivering it to Davian, the villainous arms dealer implants
an explosive device in Ethan’s head before leaving. Agent Musgrave arrives to reveal
himself as the real IMF traitor, explaining that he wanted Davian to acquire the Rabbit’s
Foot so that the IMF would have cause to attack Davian’s terrorist partners. Ethan knocks
out his former friend and races to save Julia and steal back the Rabbit’s Foot from Davian.
As the film comes to a close, Benji helps Ethan track down Davian, killing the man and
saving Julia. As the device in his head is about to explode, Ethan hurriedly teaches
his wife how to shoot a gun and how to use a makeshift defibrillator to deactivate the
explosive. After the defibrillator deactivates the explosive but knocks Ethan out, Julia
kills Musgrave as he attempts to flee with Rabbit’s Foot before successfully resuscitating
her husband. With another impossible mission complete, Ethan reveals all about his IMF
career to his wife as the two go on a well deserved honeymoon.
In Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, several years have passed and Ethan Hunt is tasked
by the IMF to find and stop Cobalt, a mysterious villain who paid an assassin named Sabine
to murder an IMF agent named Hanaway and steal nuclear launch codes. Ethan’s new team for
the mission are the newly promoted to field agent Benji Dunn, and Hanaway’s grieving
IMF girlfriend Jane Carter. They track Cobalt to the Kremlin, which is then blown up and
framed as an attack committed by Ethan. As the team is now pursued by the Russian Intelligence
Service, Ethan is informed that the President of the United States has initiated the Ghost
Protocol, disavowing every IMF agent. Despite this, the IMF’s secretary urges Ethan to
continue his pursuit of Cobalt to prevent him from starting a nuclear war between the
US and Russia. The Secretary is then killed by the Russian Intelligence Service, but his
aid, IMF analyst William Brandt, escapes to accompany Ethan and his team.
Brandt identifies Cobalt as a Swedish-Russian named Kurt Hendricks, and the team track the
villain to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, where the terrorist has sent his men to buy the
nuclear codes from Sabine. Ethan traverses the outside of the world’s tallest building
during the mission to intercept the sale of the nuclear codes, Jane kills Sabine as revenge
for Hanaway’s murder, and Brandt proves himself highly skilled as a field agent, drawing
the suspicions of the rest of the team. In the end, Hendricks escapes with both the nuclear
codes and a launch device, giving him all of the tools necessary to launch a nuclear
war.
As Hendricks sends the official launch order for a Russian submarine to nuke San Francisco,
Ethan’s team races to stop him. As Jane, Benji, and Brandt attempt to repair a satellite
station, Ethan pursues Hendricks to retrieve the launch device. Hendricks sacrifices himself
in an attempt to keep the device away from Ethan, but the IMF agent manages to retrieve
the device anyway, and with the satellite repaired, he is able to disarm the nukes moments
before they detonate in San Francisco.
With another impossible mission completed, Brandt confesses to Ethan that he retired
from fieldwork to become an analyst after failing to protect Julia from an assassination
attempt. And that’s when Ethan reveals that Julia is alive and well, her death faked to
allow her to live a safer life in peace, under the watchful eye of Ethan’s IMF pal Luther.
Relieved of his guilt and burden, Brandt officially rejoins the field and Ethan’s team, ready
for their next mission.
In Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, CIA Director Alan Hunley decommissions the entire
IMF and has them join the CIA to give them more direct oversight following the events
in Russia. In the IMF’s absence, a villainous shadow organization known as the Syndicate,
comprised of rogue operatives from various international intelligence agencies, begin
to orchestrate their own sinister plans. Ethan Hunt gets some assistance from Benji, now
working for the CIA, to track the Syndicate to Vienna. There, Ethan meets Ilsa Faust,
an MI6 agent working undercover to take down the Syndicate from the inside. Despite the
team’s best efforts, the Syndicate assassinates the Austrian Chancellor and escapes. Hunley
blames Ethan, Ilsa, and Benji for the Chancellor’s death, and orders their execution. When the
newly minted CIA agent William Brandt learns of this, he works with Luther to find their
old friends and warn them of Hunley’s planned hit.
Ilsa briefs the team on everything she knows about the Syndicate, including its leader,
former MI6 agent Solomon Lane. The group work together to steal a digital ledger containing
the names of every Syndicate member, but Ilsa betrays the team to deliver the ledger to
her MI6 boss, Chief Atlee. Fortunately, Benji made a copy of the ledger, though the team
discovers they needed the British Prime Minister’s biometrics to access the information. Brandt
invites Hunley to a meeting between himself, Chief Atlee, the British Prime Minister and
a secretly disguised Ethan Hunt. During the meeting, Atlee is exposed as having founded
the Syndicate, intending it to be an agency to conduct missions without any government
oversight. When the Prime Minister refused Atlee’s plans, he founded the Syndicate
anyway, before it was eventually taken over by Solomon Lane. To cover up his schemes,
Atlee has been blackmailing and framing Ilsa to help him destroy any evidence of his involvement.
Ethan’s team then discovers that the digital ledger actually contains over $2 billion that
Solomon Lane intends to use to further fund the Syndicate’s cause, and kidnaps Benji
to force Ethan to give him the money. Ethan and his team manage to rescue Benji and apprehend
Lane, seemingly putting an end to the Syndicate’s threat. Following the mission’s success,
Hunley is impressed by the skills of Ethan’s team, inspiring him to restore the IMF and
become the agency’s new Secretary.
In Mission: Impossible - Fallout, two years have passed and the remaining members of the
Syndicate have reformed, now known as the terrorists-for-hire Apostles. Working for
a mysterious extremist named John Lark, the Apostles begin stealing the plutonium cores
necessary to create three nuclear bombs. As Ethan’s team attempts to protect the cores,
the Apostles capture Luther and threaten his life. In order to save his friend, Ethan allows
the terrorists to escape. For this decision, the new CIA Director Erika Sloane forces her
fellow CIA agent August Walker to accompany Ethan on his next mission to ensure the plutonium
is acquired at any cost. Ethan and Walker track the Apostles to Paris, where Ethan poses
as John Lark and agrees to bring Solomon Lane to the mysterious power broker known as the
White Widow in exchange for the plutonium core. After extracting Lane from a prison
convoy, Ethan and his team travel to London where they intend to deliver the villain to
the White Widow. Before the exchange, Hunley arrives, claiming to have received intel confirming
that Ethan Hunt is in fact John Lark. But this is all a ruse, designed to trick August
Walker into revealing that he is the real John Lark. Upon learning of Walker’s betrayal,
CIA Director Sloane sends a team to apprehend him. Unfortunately, the Apostles have infiltrated
Sloane’s team, leading to an assault that results in the death of Hunley and the escape
of Walker and Lane.
Reeling from Hunley’s death, Ethan, Luther, Benji, and Ilsa uncover Walker and Lane’s
plan to detonate the nuclear bombs at a medical camp in the Himalayas, which would contaminate
the water supply and kill ⅓ of the earth’s population. Ethan’s team races to the camp
to stop the bombs, learning that the bombs needed to be deactivated at the same exact
moment as the detonator to avoid exploding. At the camp, Ethan discovers his ex-wife Julia
and her new husband Erik are working as volunteers. Lane activates the bombs while Walker flees
with the detonator in a helicopter, giving the team fifteen minutes to avert a total
disaster. While Ethan pursues Walker, the rest of the team, with some help from Julia,
work to diffuse the bombs and battle Lane. Benji and Ilsa defeat Lane, Luther and Julia
prepare the bombs for diffusion, and Ethan battles Walker atop a snowy mountain. In the
end, Ethan kills Walker and the entire team diffuse their bombs in the knick of time,
saving the world from catastrophe.