I hated the Mission: Impossible TV show. Let me just get that out of the way. It was a fixture on Sunday afternoons when we didn’t have cable—reruns of that lifeless series looping like some cruel punishment. It was always the same shtick: dull plots, even duller characters, and the kind of “spy tech” that felt like it belonged in a RadioShack clearance bin. That fuse in the intro would light up, the music would swell, and I’d sigh. “This again?” I’d think, already bored before the episode began.
But the movies—ah, the movies—those were something else.
I still remember the summer of 1996, standing in line at the theater, a few months after finishing my second year of law school. My head was full of torts and constitutional law, and my life felt anything but cinematic. But that first Mission: Impossible film hit different. It wasn’t just a spy thriller—it was sleek, tense, and cleverly twisted. Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt didn’t just reboot a stale franchise. He detonated the past and rebuilt it from scratch.
And here we are, nearly 30 years later, and I’ve just seen The Final Reckoning. Maybe it really is the last. Maybe it isn’t. But one thing’s clear: Cruise has done what even James Bond couldn’t. Sean Connery bowed out of Bond after less than a decade. Tom? He’s been sprinting, leaping, hanging from cliffs and airplanes, and chasing ghosts of global conspiracies for almost three decades. And he’s still going.
It’s poetic in a way. I saw the first two Mission films in theaters when they came out, then drifted away. Life happened—career, family, and all the responsibilities that come with trying to do right in a world that often does wrong. I didn’t return to Mission: Impossible until Fallout. That was the turning point. I binged the ones I’d missed—III, Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation. Each one felt sharper, more focused. The stakes got higher, but so did the emotional weight. And somehow, through all the high-octane stunts and breakneck pacing, Ethan Hunt became more human.
Then came Dead Reckoning Part One, and now The Final Reckoning. Together, they didn’t just deliver closure—they delivered connection. Threads from every film, every mission, every decision Ethan ever made came full circle. And in that, I found something personal. The way those films stitched themselves together across decades—it mirrored my own story. The twists in my life, the betrayals, the battles fought in quiet rooms and conference calls, the victories that no one else saw but mattered just the same.
The teaser trailers for The Final Reckoning did more than hype up the movie. They helped shape my story—Full Circle, the book I poured myself into. The language, the tone, even the sense of finality—the idea that everything leads back to where it began—was inspired by Mission: Impossible. Watching Ethan Hunt battle through layers of deception to uncover truth, to protect those he loves, to make peace with a life defined by sacrifice—that resonated with me. That was me.
Like Ethan, I didn’t choose every mission in my life. Some were handed to me. Some exploded in my face. And some I took on because no one else would. But I see it now: like in the movies, all of it was connected. Every impossible mission. Every fall. Every climb back up.
Like with Mission: Impossible, the circle is complete.
