As we gear up for the upcoming 2025 movies to break onto screens large and small, I find that some of my own franchise obsessions are reaching out from the past. Reporting on the recent Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning teaser is a good example of that happening, as the first look at Tom Cruise’s next action-adventure picture looks like it’s teasing us with something that symbolizes more than just a cute easter egg.
I am, of course, talking about the Rabbit’s Foot, a device so powerful it was introduced in 2006’s Mission: Impossible III… and never spoken of again. So those of you newer fans to the franchise may be wondering just why this reappearing device was a cause for me to freak out at length.
Well, if I can't explain my madness through a handy guide, what good would I be to the cinematic intelligence community? Based on what we know about Mission: Impossible 8, knowledge on this almost 20-year-old mystery just might come in handy. So let's dive into what we know about the Rabbit's Foot.
The Rabbit’s Foot Is A WMD Of Devastating Power
Introduced in 2006’s Mission: Impossible III, the Rabbit’s Foot was the Macguffin device that saw Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) chasing after infamous arms dealer Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). On the market for a brisk $850 million, the value is another flag that this creation of co-writers Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and J. J. Abrams isn’t just a bunch of water balloons tied together with some duct tape.
I mean, if it’s a device at the heart of a mission the IMF has to tackle, it’s clearly important enough to necessitate catapulting across the Shanghai skyline. This destructive ace in the hole has already made its presence known once before, and returning in Tom Cruise’s potentially final Mission adds some heft to the legacy. So we know the Rabbit’s Foot is supposed to be a big deal, but what sort of threat are we dealing with here?
According To Its Storage Protocols, The Rabbit’s Foot Is A Biological Hazard
While we don’t know exactly what the Rabbit’s Foot is, Mission: Impossible III and the Mission: Impossible 8 teaser do give us the same big clue as to what it can do. That’s thanks to each appearance of the device itself showing off a nice huge biohazard warning sign, we know that in some way the Rabbit’s Foot is a pathogenic device of some sort that could do some serious damage.
In a sense, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning could be heading back to more traditional sorts of threats if this once and potentially future Macguffin comes back to play. I’m already having flashbacks to No Time To Die’s bittersweet ending every time I see Ethan Hunt tearfully ask people to trust him one last time.
Just as 007 met his end with the genetically engineered menace known as "Project Heracles," Ethan Hunt may be disavowed from existence by the Rabbit's Foot.
Benji Dunn’s Mission: Impossible III Monologue Gives The Rabbit’s Foot A Little More Lore
Whatever the Rabbit’s Foot is, this baby packs a bit of a punch. IMF analyst Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) laid out what’s still the best explanation of what the Rabbit’s Foot could be, based on the interest it sparked and the players jockeying for its acquisition. Recalling an anecdote from a college professor of his, here’s what Benji said about Mission: Impossible III’s weapon of mass destruction:
I used to have this professor at Oxford…he taught biomolecular kinetics and cellular dynamics, and he used to sort of scare the underclassmen with this story about how the world would eventually be eviscerated by technology. You see, it was inevitable that a compound would be created, which he referred to as the ‘Anti-God.’ It was like an accelerated mutator, a sort of, you know, like an unstoppable force of destructive power that would just lay waste to everything. … So whenever I see a, like, a rogue organization willing to spend this amount of money on a mystery tech, I always assume it’s the Anti-God. End of the world kind of stuff, you know?
- Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg), Mission: Impossible III
That chilling description is still pretty vague, as it doesn’t confirm how the Rabbit’s Foot works, what sort of yield we’re looking at, and if there’s any sorts of flaws or weaknesses that can neutralise it. And do you know what’s scarier than not knowing what a weapon of mass destruction can do? Not knowing its current whereabouts, especially when Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning’s ending has Gabriel (Esai Morales) and his traitorous compatriots very much in play.
We Don’t Know The Current Location Of The Rabbit’s Foot
The end of Mission: Impossible III saw Ethan Hunt offing Owen Davian (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) in a semi-comedic fashion, preventing himself from dying due to an exploding implant, and saving new wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) from certain death. Notice anything that this movie didn’t do that could be missing from that line up? That’s right: we technically still don’t know where the Rabbit’s Foot actually is!
We have absolutely no clue or confirmation that the IMF was able to stop this device from being sold on the black market. The most closure we get is IMF Director Theodore Brassel (Lawrence Fishburne) telling Ethan that if he doesn’t quit his spy job, he’ll tell him what the Rabbit’s Foot does.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was a massive operational failure, with Director Brassel on the docket for an administrative chewing out similar to the one he gave Ethan in the middle of this film. Which brings me to our next piece of vital, but spoilery intel. So if you haven’t watched Mission: Impossible III for some reason, use that Paramount+ subscription of yours before going further.
An IMF Director Was Secretly Working To Obtain The Rabbit’s Foot
Just when you thought you could trust every IMF agent you meet that’s lent their voice to some Mastercard ads, Billy Crudup’s John Musgrave outed himself as one of those parties with a vested interest in the Rabbit’s Foot. Mission: Impossible III’s secret villain had his reasons, which were divulged in this piece of dialogue:
In 18 hours the Rabbit’s Foot will be delivered to its Middle Eastern buyer, and we’ll have credible intel to prove it. US Security Council will get a report by this time tomorrow. We’re talking a military strike within a week. And when the sand settles, our country will do what it does best. Clean up. Infrastructure. Democracy wins.
- John Musgrave (Billy Crudup), Mission: Impossible III
Basically, the IMF Director of Operations is trying to steal a weapon of mass destruction in order to play the world political stage like an orchestra. How could that sort of story reverberate in the present state of the Mission: Impossible series? That’s a good question, Reader; and I’ve got just the answer.
How The Rabbit’s Foot Could Play Into Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
With a title like Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, you’re promising a lot to your audience. As I’ve been nursing a theory involving Ethan Hunt’s potentially career-long fight against The Syndicate, this is exactly the sort of speculative evidence I live for. But if you’re looking for me to just fly off the handle and launch into an unhinged grand finale, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.
I say this because thanks to reporting from The Guardian, among other sources, we know for a fact that Tom Cruise and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie were looking to shoot this upcoming sequel in Svalbard. Now that just happens to be the real life location of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is described by The Crop Trust as “ the ultimate insurance policy for the world’s food supply.”
So what happens when you take a devastating biological agent and threaten to strike such a location? Well, you could say that would be the final reckoning of humanity, and who better to do it than someone named Gabriel? With past history showing us how The Syndicate has operated on such beliefs as “the greater the suffering, the greater the peace,” the escalating nature of the threats in Mission: Impossible’s latest pictures would have this sort of plot falling right in line with what you'd expect.
There’s plenty of time to think about the potential end of the world, as Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning has its release date slated for May 23, 2025. And while this feature may not self-destruct, you may just want to take a moment and breathe before you move onto your next story. This is admittedly pretty heavy stuff, as we’re definitely not dealing with an overpriced bunny appendage here.
