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When most people think of Mission: Impossible III, two things leap to mind. First, people remember Philip Seymour Hoffman‘s tremendous performance as villain Owen Davian. Second, people ask, “What was the deal with the Rabbit’s Foot?” While the Entity, the self-aware AI villain of the upcoming Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, probably won’t prompt any comparisons to Davian, the Rabbit’s Foot may come up again.
The first trailer for The Final Reckoning features plenty of images one would expect from this well-established franchise. Tom Cruise runs. Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames look on with awe. Tom Cruise jumps. Side characters played by Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett, Vanessa Kirby, and Hayley Atwell shout and punch. Tom Cruise delivers his lines intensely.
Amid these pleasures come throwbacks to earlier films, including the knife from the repelling stunt from the first movie. But the most surprising might be a brief shot of the Rabbit’s Foot from M:I3. Now, there’s certainly a chance that the Rabbit’s Foot appears just as a wink to the franchise’s past, showing us just how far Ethan Hunt has come across eight movies and almost 30 years.
But there’s also a chance that The Final Reckoning could finally answer that Rabbit’s Foot question that’s been lingering since M:I3. The Rabbit’s Foot was, of course, a MacGuffin, an object that had no meaning other than giving characters something to pursue. And M:I3 was the debut feature from J.J. Abrams, working with his mid-2000s collaborators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. Starting with the Rabbit’s Foot, Abrams would become infamous for setting up compelling premises and then never paying them off.
Abrams, Kurtzman, and Orci have gone on to other things and Mission: Impossible is completely under Tom Cruise’s control, who has chosen Christopher McQuarrie to guide the last few entries. Where most of the Mission: Impossible movies charge ahead, never taking the time to look back, McQuarrie has glanced to the past at times during his run, introducing Vanessa Kirby’s White Widow as the daughter of arms dealer Max from the first film and bringing back Czerny’s former IMF director Kittridge. Furthermore, a larger narrative has developed, positioning the Syndicate as the primary villain behind all of the M:I movies, including the third entry.
So it wouldn’t be that much of a surprise if McQuarrie decides to revisit the Rabbit’s Foot in The Final Reckoning, giving closure to a dangling plot thread. Of course, the movie will have to do what Abrams et. al. never did, or cared to do: figure out what, exactly, the Rabbit’s Foot is. We’re told in M:I 3 that the Rabbit’s Foot is some type of incredibly destructive weapon, which worked fine when the real pleasure of the film came from watching Hoffman work.
But now that we’re in the eighth entry, “really, really bad thing” just won’t cut it, especially since the previous movie Dead Reckoning already told us that the AI the Entity is a really, really bad thing. In order to make the Rabbit’s Foot matter beyond a reference to another movie, Cruise and McQuarrie will have to develop it into something significant. And that might be a mission too impossible for anyone to accept.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning runs into theaters on May 23, 2025.
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