Two months after retrieving the key to the
source code for the malevolent
artificial intelligence known as the Entity, rogue
IMF agent
Ethan Hunt receives a message from
U.S. President Erika Sloane. She informs Ethan that the Entity continues to seize control of global nuclear systems, aided by undercover
doomsday cultists. Ethan is ordered to surrender the key, but he refuses and continues pursuing Gabriel, the Entity's former proxy, who was forsaken after failing to steal the key himself. Ethan and fellow IMF agent Benji Dunn first visit their ill IMF hacker
Luther Stickell in his off-grid laboratory beneath
London, where he has finished developing the "Poison Pill" malware that can target the Entity. The team recruits Jasper Briggs's partner, Theo Degas, and Gabriel's former lieutenant, Paris, who tells them where Gabriel is. In London, Gabriel's men capture Ethan and IMF agent Grace. Gabriel orders Ethan to recover the "Podkova" module, developed from the Rabbit's Foot, from the sunken Russian submarine
Sevastopol, which would give him control over the Entity. However, with help from the team, Ethan and Grace escape. Contacting the Entity, Ethan is shown visions of a nuclear apocalypse. The Entity says Luther will die and demands access to a digital bunker in
South Africa to survive. Ethan tasks his team with getting the
Sevastopols coordinates and retrieving him after the dive. He races to save Luther, but Gabriel steals the Poison Pill and traps Luther with a
time bomb. Luther sacrifices himself to
minimize the blast while Ethan escapes, but is caught by Briggs, who is revealed to be the son of
Jim Phelps, and is taken to
Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center. With three days until the Entity takes over the remaining nuclear weapons control facilities and launches
nuclear armageddon, Ethan convinces Sloane to let him locate the
Sevastopol, against
CIA director Eugene Kittridge's objections. Grace, Benji, Paris, and Degas travel to
St. Matthew Island in the
Bering Sea, home to a
Cold War era
naval sonar array that detected the
Sevastopols sinking. They meet former CIA analyst
William Donloe, who was exiled to the island after Ethan's break-in at
CIA headquarters thirty years ago and coincidentally memorized the
Sevastopols coordinates. Russian special forces intercept them seeking the coordinates, though Grace and Donloe's wife, Tapeesa, escape by dog sled while the others fight off the soldiers as Donloe transmits the coordinates to Ethan. Ethan joins the aircraft carrier
USS George H. W. Bush in the northern
Pacific Ocean and boards the submarine
USS Ohio. After receiving the coordinates and barely surviving a doomsday assassin named Hagar, who had infiltrated the
Ohio, Ethan uses an experimental diving suit to reach the
Sevastopol and retrieve the Podkova as the wreck slides down the
continental shelf. Narrowly escaping without his diving suit, Ethan is revived from
decompression sickness by Grace using a portable decompression chamber. After reuniting with his team, Ethan plans to plug the Poison Pill into the Podkova, fooling the Entity into entering a physical drive instead of the bunker mainframe. At the bunker, Gabriel ambushes the team with a timed nuclear device, demanding the Podkova, though they are interrupted by Kittridge and a team of agents seeking control of the Entity. During the gunfight, the bomb is activated and Benji is shot. Gabriel escapes with the Poison Pill, pursued by Ethan with the Podkova. Donloe, Tapeesa, and Degas defuse the bomb while Paris, Grace, and Benji prepare the mainframe to trap the Entity. President Sloane refuses to order a preemptive nuclear strike, though a failed attack by a doomsday assassin allows the Entity time to take full control of the world's nuclear arsenal. After a lengthy chase in a pair of biplanes, Ethan climbs onto Gabriel's plane and retrieves the Poison Pill. While making a reckless attempt to escape, Gabriel is killed hitting his forehead on the plane's rudder. Parachuting away, Ethan inserts the Poison Pill into the Podkova mid-air, allowing Grace to trap the Entity just before nuclear launch. Ethan listens to a farewell message from Luther in the Poison Pill, which self-destructs afterward. He gives the destroyed Podkova to Kittridge, and Briggs makes amends with Ethan for exposing his father as a traitor. Reuniting in London, Grace gives Ethan the drive with the Entity and the IMF team part ways. ==Cast==