[Warning: This article contains Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning spoilers.] “We live and die in the shadows for those we hold close — and for those we never meet.” That’s the creed of IMF Agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team, who have saved the world from nuclear weapons, shadow organizations, and existential threats like the Entity, a self-aware, self-learning, truth-eating digital parasite also known as the “Anti-God.” For most of his missions since the 1996 original Mission: Impossible, Ethan’s closest ally has been Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames), the once-disavowed cyber ops hacker known as the infamous Phineas Freak.
In The Final Reckoning, Luther’s magnum opus is the “poison pill” that can kill the rogue AI, provided Ethan can retrieve the Entity’s source code from the Sevastopol, a state-of-the-art Russian submarine at the bottom of the ocean. Pairing Luther’s algorithm with the Entity source code stored on the Podkova aboard the sunken submarine would destroy it — which is why Ethan’s nemesis, Gabriel (Esai Morales), needs Luther to die.
“Gabriel needs me alive,” Ethan realizes when he finds Luther disarming a nine-detonator device with a plutonium core capable of leveling an entire city. “And he needs you to die, because you are the only one who can make another poison pill… and I am the only one who can get to that submarine.”
By detaching one last detonator, Luther will save the city from a six-megaton blast — but will die in the process. With his last words, Luther tells Ethan, “This is my mission. This is what I was born to do … Stop him. ‘For those we never meet.’” As Ethan races out of the collapsing tunnels, Luther smirks, “No one is safe from Phineas Freak.”
“The story was about sacrifice,” co-writer and director Christopher McQuarrie told Empire Magazine about Luther’s death. “The sacrifice, the movie had no teeth without it, without some loss.”
And Rhames, who has appeared in all eight Mission: Impossible movies alongside Cruise, was game for Luther’s heroic ending.
“It was a sacrifice Ving leaned fully into,” the director said. “It was one he wanted to do, and one he was most moved by.”
McQuarrie also revealed Luther’s sacrifice had been fomenting since 2018’s Fallout, which opened with Luther in a van manning computers and surveillance with field agents Ethan and Benji (Simon Pegg). When the Apostles took Luther hostage and threatened to kill him in order to force Ethan to hand over plutonium cores, Luther told his friend, “Don’t you do it, Ethan! Not for me!”
“Ving is such a phenomenal actor, such a giving actor, and the franchise wasn’t giving him those opportunities,” McQuarrie added. “I said, ‘We’ve got to get him out of the van and give him the more emotional stuff to play.’ And he leaned into it. This was already forming in Fallout.”
Ethan nearly dies uploading Luther’s poison pill to kill the Entity, but ultimately survives his final mission. Upon infecting the Entity with Luther’s algorithm, Ethan receives a message from beyond the grave telling him that “the world is still here and so are you.”
“All that is good inside us is measured by the good we do for others,” Luther’s voice says in the recording. “We all share the same fate — the same future… the sum of our infinite choices. One such future is built on kindness, trust, and mutual understanding, should we choose to accept it. Driving without question towards a light we cannot see. Not just for those we hold close… but for those we’ll never meet.”
“I hope you know I’ll always love you, brother. And I will see you again, though I hope it’s not too soon. The world still needs you. Of course, they’ll never know it, but we do,” the message continues. “We, who live and die in the shadows. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Ethan.”
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is now playing in theaters.
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