Mission Impossible Timeline: The Story of Every Film in Order

The timeline opens with Mission Impossible 1996, directed by Brian De Palma, in which Ethan Hunt becomes the only survivor of a failed IMF operation in Prague. His chief, Kittridge, suspects him of being the mole, so Ethan escapes custody and recruits the disavowed operatives Luther Stickell and Franz Krieger to break into CIA headquarters in Langley. In the vault sequence, Ethan is lowered on wires into the secure room. The trail ends on a train bound for Paris, where Ethan exposes his old team leader Jim Phelps as the real traitor and destroys a helicopter in the Channel Tunnel. Claire dies in the confrontation, and Ethan's name is cleared.

Three threads from this film pay off much later: Luther Stickell stays at Ethan's side for the whole saga, Kittridge returns in the Entity films, and Phelps has a son who turns up in 2025.

The second story is a self contained chapter: Mission Impossible 2, directed by John Woo, places Ethan in Seville and Sydney chasing an engineered virus called Chimera and its only cure, Bellerophon. The rogue agent Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) steals the cure and brings down a plane, so Ethan recruits the thief Nyah Hall (Thandiwe Newton), Ambrose's former lover, to get close to him again. Luther and the pilot Billy join the team in Sydney.

The virus has a dormant period of about 20 hours, which sets the clock for the finale. Ethan infiltrates Ambrose's base on Bare Island, escapes to the mainland with the samples and wins a long beach fight, while Luther reaches Nyah in time to inject the cure. The film does not set up a direct follow up, and the IMF clears Nyah's record before Ethan takes a vacation with her in Sydney.

Ethan leaves field work in the third story, and Mission Impossible 3, directed by J.J. Abrams, is the entry that gives him a personal life. He trains recruits and is engaged to Julia, a nurse (Michelle Monaghan) who believes he has a desk job. The IMF pulls him back when his former trainee Lindsey Farris is captured while tracking the arms dealer Owen Davian (Philip Seymour Hoffman), and she dies when a device in her head goes off.

The search for the Rabbit's Foot runs through a Vatican raid, a road ambush and a theft in Shanghai. Musgrave (Billy Crudup), a senior IMF figure, is exposed as Davian's partner. Ethan kills Davian by throwing him in front of a truck, survives the explosive in his head with an improvised shock, and Julia shoots Musgrave before the couple leave on their honeymoon. Simon Pegg appears as Benji, who comes back in every later film.

The fourth film strips Ethan's team of official backing, and Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol, directed by Brad Bird, begins with a Kremlin bombing that Russia pins on Hunt. The US President disavows the IMF under Ghost Protocol, which leaves Ethan with an unsanctioned crew: Jane Carter (Paula Patton), Benji Dunn and the analyst William Brandt (Jeremy Renner).

The culprit is Kurt Hendricks, a nuclear strategist who goes by Cobalt and wants to provoke a war. The chase runs through Dubai, where Cruise climbed the outside of the Burj Khalifa himself, and on to Mumbai, where Hendricks plans to send a launch order through an old Soviet satellite. Ethan disables a missile aimed at San Francisco seconds before impact, the IMF is reinstated, and a closing scene reveals that Julia is alive. Luther hands Ethan a new briefing in the last shot.

The fifth film introduces the organization that shapes the next two, and Mission Impossible Rogue Nation, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, pits Ethan against the Syndicate, a network of rogue former spies. He is captured and rescued by Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), while CIA chief Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) persuades the Senate to dissolve the IMF and makes Ethan a fugitive.

The set pieces move from the Vienna opera to a Casablanca underwater vault and a chase through London. The Syndicate's leader is Solomon Lane (Sean Harris), a rogue British agent. Ilsa passes the stolen ledger to her MI6 boss Atlee, who destroys it, and Ethan later destroys the locked file that opens access to billions of pounds, because Lane would use it to fund the Syndicate. Ethan trades himself for Benji, and Lane ends up trapped in a bulletproof glass cell. Hunley tells the Senate his actions were a plan to expose the Syndicate, and the IMF is restored.

The sixth film is a direct continuation of the Syndicate story, and Mission Impossible Fallout, again directed by Christopher McQuarrie, opens two years after Lane's capture. His remnant group, the Apostles, is buying three plutonium cores. Ethan's Berlin operation fails, and CIA director Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) assigns August Walker (Henry Cavill) to shadow him.

In Paris the team meets the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby), and a deal to trade Lane for the cores goes wrong. Ethan learns that August Walker is the real John Lark. The finale is a helicopter chase near Kashmir, where Ethan crashes his craft into Walker's and then disarms the last bomb with seconds left. Lane returns to MI6 custody, Ilsa is cleared, and Ethan makes peace with his former wife Julia, who has moved on with a new life.

The seventh film starts a two part story, and Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, begins when an artificial intelligence called the Entity takes over a Russian stealth submarine, the Sevastopol, and sinks it. Ethan must find the two halves of a cruciform key tied to it.

The thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) takes the first half in Abu Dhabi, and the chase passes through Rome, Venice and the Orient Express. Gabriel (Esai Morales), who acts for the Entity, kills Ilsa in Venice and later sabotages the train. Denlinger reveals that the Entity began as a cyber weapon built to test the Sevastopol, and Gabriel blows up a bridge so the cars fall into a gorge. Paris (Pom Klementieff) dies after explaining how the key connects to the submarine, and Ethan escapes by speed wing and meets Benji. The story is left unfinished.

The eighth film picks up directly from Part One, and Mission Impossible Final Reckoning, directed by Christopher McQuarrie, finds the Entity spreading its hold over the world's nuclear arsenals with help from a doomsday cult. Ethan holds the source code key, rescues Paris from prison, recruits Degas and receives the Poison Pill malware from Luther.

Gabriel captures Ethan and wants the Podkova module from the wreck of the Sevastopol. Luther sacrifices himself to limit a nuclear blast, and Jasper Briggs, who captured Ethan, turns out to be the son of Jim Phelps. With three days left, Ethan persuades the US president to let him search for the wreck, then dives to recover the module off St. Matthew Island. A biplane chase ends with Gabriel dead in a crash. Ethan then joins the Poison Pill to the Podkova, and Grace traps the Entity before it can launch. The team splits up, and Grace hands Ethan the drive that holds the Entity.

The Mission Impossible timeline needs no reshuffling, because the story order and the release order are the same. In my opinion, the cleanest way to read it is as three arcs: the mole and the lone agent (the 1996, 2000 and 2006 films), the disavowed and rebuilt IMF (Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation and Fallout), and the Entity war (Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning).

The first arc is the loosest. Mission: Impossible II does not set up a follow up, so it could be argued that it is the most skippable chapter for anyone short on time. The third film is harder to skip, since it brings in Julia, whose fate drives the ending of Ghost Protocol and the closure in Fallout. The 1996 film earns its place for a different reason: Kittridge and the son of Jim Phelps both return in the Entity films.

The second arc is the tightest. Rogue Nation sets up Lane and Ilsa, and Fallout pays them off, so I would not split those two. The final arc genuinely needs both parts in order, because Dead Reckoning ends with the key still in play and The Final Reckoning begins with it in Ethan's hands. Mission Impossible movies ranked gives the quality view, while the characters page tracks who returns. For what comes after, see Mission Impossible 9: no sequel has been announced.