Mission: Impossible has an Ilsa Faust problem

The MI6 agent turned Ethan Hunt love interest turned kind of not dies seemingly twice in the latest instalment, Dead Reckoning – Part 1.

The awe-inspiring blockbuster that features everything from Tom Cruise riding a bike off a cliff to Tom Cruise dangling from a train edging into the abyss to Tom Cruise waving away the attention of four of the most beautiful women on the planet opens with Faust seemingly dead in the Arabian desert.

She’s been tracked down by bounty hunters and appears to fail at holding them off, with Ethan turning up too late to save her.

We’re shown Faust lying face down in the sand and Hunt looking forlorn. But it’s a fakeout. Not a very good one, given Rebecca Ferguson featured prominently in the trailers in locations that are very much not sand dunes, and the reveal isn’t uncovered until a fair bit later in the film. But it may have been a deliberate move given the third act twist.

Mission: Impossible – like virtually all action franchises – doesn’t really dabble with killing off protagonists. It’s a series that stands on the shoulders of technical mastery, ingenious set-pieces and, well, Tom Cruise, rather than any kind of emotional heft. Which makes the storytelling in the final third even more baffling.

To cut to the chase: Faust is killed off after a fight on a Venetian bridge with Dead Reckoning’s AI-loving villain Gabriel, played with debonair charm by Esai Morales.

He had earlier propositioned Vanessa Kirby’s Alanna to kill either Faust or latest M: I addition Grace – a thief played by Hayley Atwell who is in possession of the film’s MacGuffin – with Hunt indelibly tasked with saving one at the expense of the other.

This is usually the bit where the hero miraculously saves both women, but while he keeps Grace from harm, Ilsa – the best addition the series has had – gets stabbed in the heart, echoing flashbacks that recur throughout the film of Gabriel killing a woman from Hunt’s pre-IMF past.

It’s a moment that is supposed to hit hard, especially given a running theme throughout the movie that people close to Hunt are going to get hurt - but it’s the moves that follow that prevent the plot point from working properly.

The ethereal Ferguson is irreplaceable, but the script promptly replaces her Ilsa Faust with Atwell’s Grace - because heaven forbid there be two women on an IMF team.

Grace literally gets anointed as Hunt’s new female sidekick within minutes of Ilsa’s death, and the moment feels somewhat ghastly given Faust is a badass femme fatale superspy while Grace is closer to the damsel in distress archetype.

Read more:

• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 review | The epitome of popcorn cinema
• Mission: Impossible's Simon Pegg would "love" a Benji and Ilsa spin-off

The Mission: Impossible series has had something of a difficult relationship with women. While the IMF team has largely stuck to the same members (Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner), the women of the films have not been treated to the same longevity, with Ferguson the first female star to appear in more than one instalment.

The move to kill off Faust and have her replaced by another brunette seemed to embody the legitimate criticism that can be levelled at the series over its dispensable attitude towards female characters.

It was a move that feels doubly dubious because of the audience's connection to the character, as Ferguson quickly became a fan favourite thanks to her charisma, rapport with Cruise and ability to snap an anonymous henchman in half with her thighs.

The decision, likely to generate jeopardy for the viewer and create a sense that no character is safe, instead makes Faust seem expendable as the team swiftly depart for their mission.

Of course, the reaction to her death by her so-called friends was so subdued in the film that fans are speculating that it is another fakeout - and that she’s not dead at all.

Even though director Christopher McQuarrie appeared to put a definitive stamp on Faust’s death in a recent interview, some are still hopeful that it is a long play to outwit Gabriel and his sentient AI.

It wouldn’t be the first time the series has offed a character before staging a miraculous resurrection. The opening of the very first Mission: Impossible saw Hunt’s entire IMF team massacred in a job gone wrong, only for double-crossing husband and wife team Jim and Claire Phelps (Jon Voight and Emmanuelle Beart) to return later.

The audience spends the majority of Ghost Protocol believing Hunt’s wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) is dead, only for her to turn up very alive at the end.

And even Hunt himself appeared to get a bullet in the head in the second film, but it turned out to be a bad guy in one of the series’s trademark masks.

The point is, the old bait and switch is part of Mission: Impossible lore, which is what is giving fans hope that Ilsa Faust will live to kill another day. But for now, she looks very dead, a move McQuarrie and co are going to come to regret.

They’re going to find out you can’t just replace a Rebecca Ferguson.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 is now available to own and rent on various digital platforms, including Amazon. Check out more of our Film coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.

Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10, PLUS a £10 John Lewis and Partners voucher delivered to your home – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.