Mission: Impossible: Fallout (2018): Cast, Plot and Ending Explained

Mission Impossible Fallout begins two years after the capture of Solomon Lane, when Ethan Hunt's team tries to stop the sale of three plutonium cores. Lane's remnant group, the Apostles, is working with a figure known as John Lark to buy the cores for use in nuclear bombs. Hunt and his team move to block the sale in Berlin, but the cores are lost, and that failure drives everything that follows.

CIA director Erika Sloane then insists that her own agent, August Walker, shadows Ethan on the new mission. It is a bit like being handed a chaperone on a road trip you are already losing, and the friction between the two men gives the first half its edge. The team must trace the buyer and recover the plutonium, starting with a risky exchange in Paris.

The film sits sixth in the release order, after Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015), and it is the second film in the series directed by Christopher McQuarrie. If you are new to the saga, the Mission Impossible movies in order page shows where Fallout lands and what to watch beforehand.

The full plot of Mission: Impossible: Fallout runs as a chain of failed plans, each one forcing Ethan Hunt into a worse option than the last. Here is the sequence, one step at a time.

Step one, Berlin. Ethan's team fails to secure the three plutonium cores, and the Apostles take them. Sloane responds by assigning the heavy-handed August Walker to watch over Ethan.

Step two, Paris. The team poses as a broker to meet the White Widow, who can lead them to the buyers. Ethan agrees to deliver Solomon Lane to her in exchange for the cores. The plan goes wrong and Lane escapes, so Ethan has to chase him.

Step three, the turn. Ethan comes to suspect Walker and learns that Walker is the real John Lark. Walker then threatens Ethan's former wife, Julia, which raises the stakes from a missing weapon to a personal threat.

Step four, Kashmir. Ethan's team races to a medical camp near Kashmir where the bombs are being set up. A long helicopter chase ends with Ethan crashing his craft into Walker's, and Walker is killed.

Step five, the bombs. Ethan fights his way to the bombs and disarms the last one with seconds left, so the plutonium never detonates.

Step six, the cleanup. Lane is handed over to MI6, and Ilsa Faust is cleared. Ethan makes peace with Julia, who has moved on with a new life. The film closes on Ethan recovering from his injuries.

The twist in step three recasts everything before it: the agent who was introduced as a chaperone is the buyer the team has been hunting from the start.

Mission: Impossible: Fallout premiered in Paris at the Palais de Chaillot on July 12, 2018.

The theatrical release followed in stages. The UK opened first on July 25, 2018, the US followed on July 27, 2018, and Australia received the film on August 2, 2018 (the Australian date is reported rather than confirmed). That staggered rollout meant UK audiences saw the film two days before American audiences.

The ending of Mission Impossible Fallout resolves the plutonium plot and the personal storylines in one sweep. Ethan stops the last bomb at the Kashmir site, so the plutonium never detonates. Walker dies in the helicopter crash and Lane is returned to custody. Ilsa is freed from suspicion and Ethan reconciles with Julia, closing his personal storyline. The team is left intact and ready for further missions.

Who is the real villain in Mission Impossible Fallout? The Apostles and Solomon Lane drive the threat, but the film's twist is that John Lark, the buyer everyone is hunting, is August Walker. In my opinion, that makes Walker the villain who matters most, because the film spends its first half presenting him as an irritating ally rather than an enemy. Lane is the one who ends up in MI6 custody, while Walker pays for the plan with his life.

Why does the finale work? Perhaps because the film gives Ethan a problem he cannot solve with a disguise. The helicopter chase near Kashmir is a physical race, and Cruise flew one of the helicopters himself in the Queenstown shoot. In my opinion, the crash into Walker's craft is the cleanest payoff of any chase in the series.

What does the ending change? Julia's storyline is the quiet part. She has moved on with a new life, and Ethan makes peace with that, which is a different kind of closure from the rest of the series. Ilsa being cleared keeps her in play, and the ending leaves Ethan's team intact. The saga did continue with Dead Reckoning in 2023, so Fallout is not the last chapter.

What is the saddest death in Mission: Impossible? That is a matter of taste, and in my opinion it is not a Fallout death. Walker's end is hard to mourn. The loss that lands hardest is Lindsey Farris in Mission: Impossible III, the former trainee Ethan rescues, only for the device planted in her head to go off. The Prague operation in Mission: Impossible (1996), where nearly the whole team is killed, runs a close second.

Mission Impossible Fallout was filmed in Paris, Queenstown, Preikestolen in Norway, London and Abu Dhabi. Each location carried a specific set piece.

• Paris, France: the armored truck street chase, the motorcycle and BMW stunts, and the Arc de Triomphe sequence.
• Queenstown, New Zealand: the helicopter stunts and the helicopter chase.
• Preikestolen (Pulpit Rock), Norway: the fight between Hunt and Walker.
• London, UK: St Paul's Cathedral, Blackfriars Station and the Tate Modern chimney, including the rooftop chase.
• Abu Dhabi, UAE: the HALO parachute jump.

Was Mission Impossible Fallout shot in Kashmir? No. Kashmir is the story's setting for the final bomb site, and the helicopter chase set there was shot around Queenstown. Kashmir is not among the film's listed filming locations. For more on how the series stages this kind of work, see the Mission Impossible stunts page.

The most useful Mission: Impossible: Fallout production facts are about the HALO jump, the ankle injury and the helicopter work.

• Cruise trained for the HALO jump in a vertical wind tunnel built at Leavesden Studios and made at least 100 skydives over Abu Dhabi beforehand.
• The HALO jump was shot at dusk, which left only a couple of minutes of usable light per day, and aerial photographer Craig O'Brien filmed it with an IMAX lens.
• Cruise seriously injured his ankle during the rooftop chase in London, and this disrupted the original plan to shoot the HALO jump at an RAF base in the UK.
• Cruise flew one of the helicopters himself in the Queenstown helicopter chase.
• France raised its filming incentive to 30% of eligible local spending, and the film's Paris stunt work began with the armored truck chase.
• Lorne Balfe's score weaves in Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible Theme and The Plot, as credited on Paramount's album page.
• Wolf Blitzer appears in the film as himself.

The dusk detail explains a lot about the HALO sequence. With only a couple of minutes of usable light per day, the jump had to be filmed in short windows over many days.