It’s a tough gig to be a female lead in the Mission Impossible franchise. The box office juggernaut has chugged along for two decades, delivering top-of-the line thrills and pusle-pounding heist sequences along the way, but with sequel after sequel, it’s become increasingly clear the iconic franchise has one sticking point it still isn’t quite sure how to figure out: its female characters. As far back as Emmanuelle Beart’s doe-eyed Claire in the first Mission Impossible, the majority of female characters Ethan Hunt encounters fit a very specific mold: capable in combat, drop-dead gorgeous (often donning slinky dresses or skimpy, skin-tight outfits), and in desperate need of saving, despite their supposed prowess in espionage.
It’s a frustrating blind spot in a series of films that otherwise represent some of the best action flicks of the 21st century, and Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One continues the unfortunate trend with its rather unceremonious dispatching of (until now) the series’ most prominent female character, Ilsa Faust, played by Rebecca Ferguson.
**This article contains major spoilers for Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One**
Prior to Ilsa’s introduction in Rogue Nation, the women of Mission: Impossible operated like a revolving door: They’d show up, look stunning, then either die tragically to give Ethan (Tom Cruise) further motivation, end up betraying him, or simply be cast aside by the franchise in favor of a newer, shinier, more scantily-clad female character for the next film. While the introduction of Ethan’s wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) certainly made for a refreshing reprieve from this trend, even she falls squarely into the “damsel in distress” category, and doesn’t get screen time unless she’s being used as leverage against Ethan. So, when Ilsa came on the scene in Rogue Nation it seemed like at long last, the Mission Impossible films had finally cracked the code on how to write female characters that might actually stick around for more than one movie.
And to the franchise’s credit, that’s exactly what Ilsa was—the series even went so far to explicitly bill her as “the female Ethan Hunt.” To paraphrase Ginger Rogers, Ilsa can do everything Ethan can do, but backwards, and in heels and that stunning, high-slitted opera dress. Like the women before her, she’s physically stunning and more than capable in combat, but unlike the rest, she’s given narrative agency. She grapples with her own allegiances, forced to either succumb to her fear of Solomon Lane or take the leap of trusting Ethan and his IMF team, and watching her open up and learn to trust others is a high point of Rogue Nation.
In Fallout, too, she’s given plenty to do. While the White Widow fills the arbitrary role of sexy femme fatale, Ilsa once again gets to be the mysterious wildcard. We the audience and the IMF team have grown to know and love her, but she’s still allowed to have her own crisis of faith as she (like Ethan in the early films) begins to try and re-learn what it’s like to trust your team after having been backstabbed.
Heading into Dead Reckoning, Ilsa was a shining beacon of what a well-written female character could look like in an otherwise extraordinarily male-dominated franchise: but if you’ve seen the latest Mission: Impossible, you already know it all comes crumbling down with a single bridge fight. Of course, the stakes were always going to be high with Dead Reckoning— it’s a sort of swan song for the McQuarrie/Cruise Mission: Impossible era, and though we’ve gotten confirmation the franchise will continue, there’s a distinct sense of gravity and finality engrained in the Dead Reckoning two-parter.
And, with a franchise as twist-filled as Mission: Impossible, a penultimate entry in a two-parter means the stakes have to be upped somehow. TLDR, there needed to be a major character death, and it had to be one that would hurt. Of course, the pool of characters whose deaths would leave a lasting impact on both Ethan and the audience is relatively slim: only Benji (Simon Pegg), Luther (Ving Rhames), and Ilsa have been around for more than one film, and killing off Julia (though undoubtedly devastating for Ethan) would lack punch, considering she’s already been killed off and resurrected earlier in the franchise.
So, it ends up being Ilsa who draws the unlucky “sacrificed so Ethan can be motivated into act three” card. After one desert action sequence and a ruminative moment with Ethan above the canals of Venice, she meets her demise at the hand of Esai Morales’ Gabriel, sacrificing herself in an attempt to save Hayley Atwell’s newly-introduced Grace. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that Ilsa was killed off that I have an issue with, it’s the fact that the film did so so unceremoniously. Ilsa has been a franchise mainstay for three films now. She has the loyalty and affection of the entire IMF team, and a deep, sibling-like bond with Ethan that feels distinct and unique from the cut-and-dry romances he’s dabbled with in previous entries.
She’s a crucial part of what makes the recent Mission: Impossible entries so great, but Dead Reckoning doesn’t seem interested in honoring this or respecting the significance of her role in the franchise. Typically, if you’re killing off a major character, you’d spend every moment prior to their departure emphasizing just how key a part of the group they are—so that when the death does eventually come, we get maximum emotional impact for both the characters and the audience. But that’s the trouble with Ilsa’s departure in Dead Reckoning— the film is so interesting in setting up Grace as the next big mystery for Ethan to solve that Ilsa falls to the wayside, and her death ends up feeling like a tertiary motivation for Ethan as opposed to a major, earth-shattering revelation for the franchise.
Ilsa isn’t given any significant story of her own in Dead Reckoning, either—she’s after the same MacGuffin as Ethan, trying to protect the same woman (Grace) as Ethan, and ends up falling to the same villain Ethan has been trying to bring down—a villain she has virtually no personal connection to. Admittedly, if there was anyone Ilsa would lose her life trying to save, it’s gratifying that it’s Grace, another prominent female character. On the other side of that coin, though, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the early franchise revolving door is once again in operation—Ilsa’s body is barely cold before the film begins teeing Grace up as Ethan’s next big partner in crime.
Sure, she gets a few cool action set pieces, but in the grand scheme of the hustle and bustle of Dead Reckoning, Ilsa’s death (especially because it comes at such an odd, early point in the film) feels under-emphasized and like a grave betrayal of how powerful of a woman she was in life. Though she may have gone out fighting, at the end of the day, Ilsa still ends up another female casualty of the Mission: Impossible franchise killed so Ethan can be motivated into action—a reductive and lackluster ending for a one-of-a-kind ass-kicker.
(featured image: Paramount)
