How does a long-running action franchise keep raising the stakes? If one follows the Mission: Impossible rule book, it’s about stunt work. Previously,Tom Cruiseclimbed up the world’s tallest skyscraper and clung to the side of a plane taking flight. InMission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, he speeds off a cliff with a parachute. The movies don’t usually check off the other box to keep the tension going: killing off a beloved, major character. And when it comes to an action series, there may be nothing worse than a lackluster farewell when this scenario plays out. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson). What makes it baffling isn’t so much the character’s death, but the narrative choices leading up to it and what happens after. Here lies agent Ilsa Faust, whose death is utterly unsatisfying.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands.
Where Did ‘Mission: Impossible’ Last Leave Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust?
Ilsa was free at last of her MI6 obligations. The British intelligence agency had their hooks in her throughoutRogue NationandFallout, blackmailing her into remaining their operative or else she would be permanently disavowed. This would turn her deep undercover work with a terrorist organization into her exclusive identity, thus making her a global enemy. Not good. By theend ofFallout, Ethan saves the day, which gives him powerful allies.This gets Ilsa out of MI6’s grip, and the last scene sees Ethan and Ilsa smiling together. Of course, in a franchise where the next danger looms ahead, this happiness is short-lived.
Yes, Ilsa is free. And yet,she returns inDead Reckoning Part One, proving she is even more like Ethan. They cannot escape protecting the world. If something doesn’t pull them back in, they do it themselves. The reintroduction to Ilsa finds her hiding out in the Abu Dhabi desert, a massive bounty on her head after she nabbed half of the intricate, dangerous, and very cool Cruciform key. Ethan hurries to help, with a swarm of assassins close behind. She blasts a good amount away with a powerful sniper rifle, clearing out a path for Ethan. Dust storms seem to love Ethan, swallowing him up inGhost Protocoland billowing into him here. The first weird story choice involving Ilsa happens here.
When Ethan gets to her, he finds her sprawled out on the ground. That this death is a fake-out, isn’t surprising, it happened off-screen and way too quickly. However, the character’s actual death scene wasn’t an improvement. Ethan’s demand that she “stay dead,” doesn’t work out. Ilsa is as hard-headed as he is, after all.Something feels off when she reenters the story for what ends up as another limited appearance. Sure, Ilsa has always been a woman of little words, but she also has had entire scenes where she is as important as everyone around her. InRogue NationorFallout,Ilsa Faust never feels lost among scene partnersin Ethan or an ex-Syndicate leader. She goes toe to toe with those men. With this in mind, there is a very different Ilsa inDead Reckoning, whereshe is only in two sequences, the desert shootout and the Venice meeting.
Let’s Be Clear, Ethan and Ilsa Are Not Just Friends
PreviousMission: Impossiblemovies didn’t have trouble building or sustaining the relationship between Ethan and Ilsa. It did stop short of them starting a romantic relationship, with akiss getting cut outofFallout. DirectorChristopher McQuarrieadded his own thoughts on why a romance wouldn’t work,tellingEmpire:
“I was never really interested in creating a typical love interest for Ethan. Once that relationship consummates, that relationship is over. The simple fact of the matter is you’re not makingMr & Mrs Smith, you’re makingMission: Impossible, and so the challenge comes in creating a relationship that is always evolving and never quite reaching what is a somewhat mundane resolution.”
While Ilsa is anything but “typical”, she absolutely is a love interest.This leads into the next weird narrative choice inDead Reckoning, when Faust is confined as a doomed woman in Ethan’s life, where past installments saw to it that she had her own mission to complete.
In movies, Venice is a place of passion and danger, a location whereDonald Sutherland’s character loses himself to grief and false hope inDon’t Look Now. Grief and false hope settle into the IMF’s stay in Venice as well. Ilsa tells Ethan about this being her first time in the Italian city, and it will be her last, but she does ride through the canals with Ethan (just trying to find some positives). At the club meeting, Gabriel (Esai Morales) delivers an ultimatum on behalf of the A. I. Big Bad — the Entity. Ethan must choose which two women he can keep alive, Ilsa or Grace (Hayley Atwell).
How Safe Are the ‘Mission: Impossible’ Heroes?
Thedamsel in distress is a tropetheMission: Impossiblemovies have shifted away from and this seventh movie does try to give agency to both Ilsa and Grace. Once the meeting erupts into chaos, Ilsa flips herself over a chair to take down a henchman and steal a sword. Grace takes a pair of switchblades and tries to escape. It isn’t long until the two find themselves on a Venetian bridge, having to duel with the Entity’s human representative.Grace and Ilsa are given the chance to fight, but it still ends up like a backward plot line. Because the other characters in IMF, Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), who are much closer to Ethan are not as endangered as the women are.
At the Abu Dhabi International Airport, they help Ethan avoid pursuing Community agents while they additionally disarm a nuclear bomb. While the countdown ticks away toward oblivion, Luther and Benji’s efforts to diffuse the weapon work for good suspense, even though it’s obvious the bomb can’t go off with Ethan in the blast radius. After strong character work in recent entries,this seventhMission: Impossiblemovie decides to then have agent Faust’s death come down to how it hurts Ethan. In other words,she gets fridgedaka when a woman in a story is killed in order to advance a man’s story. It’s fairly obvious Ilsa and Ethan’s bond is not platonic. In Venice, they stand on a rooftop before the fatal meeting, Ilsa holding onto Ethan, resting her head on his shoulder. Later, Ethan goes through a rapid grieving process,. The mission does need to continue.But it still makes for a rushed goodbye for someone who saved and spared his life many times. Then there’s Grace’s role in this.
Before the climatic train setpiece, Ethan is about to drive off the cliff, and he thinks back to the women who matter to him. His ex-wife Julia is glaringly absent from this flashback reel, instead, there is Marie (Mariela Garriga) who Ethan failed to save in the past from Gabriel, then Ilsa, and then Grace.Only one of these three was a prominent character in past movies.
When it comes to Grace, she’s in way over her head as a thief. In the role, Hayley Atwell is fantastic, giving a burst of new energy to being the complete opposite of everyone else. She is in no way a field agent. The way Ethan protects her, especially how gentle and tender he is to her, seems to hint at something romantic.By taking Ilsa out, Grace gets turned into a replacement of sorts, without the skills, but with the growing bond. It seems the IMF can’t handle more than one woman on the crew, perhaps it’s timeMaggie QorPaula Pattoncome back. As it stands, it feels like Ethan has switched out a dead woman for one still alive.
Without dire stakes, a spy movie will end up a parody, likeAustin Powers. But theMission: Impossiblefranchise has successfully continued as long as it has by creating spectacular set pieces that leave audiences on the edge of their seat, not by killing off major players.Rebecca Ferguson didn’t really need to be taken out of the cast. It did seem possible Ilsa was not going to make it out alive because her life expectancy was slim by appearing in three consecutive movies. How it happened doesn’t feel worthwhile to the character. Ilsa Faust won’t be in disguise, pulling off a face mask, for a grand resurrection in the next installment. If this is it, without any tricks up the sleeve, it’s an underwhelming goodbye for a formidable character.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part Oneis available to stream on Paramount Plus in the U.S.
