"Should You Choose To Accept" - Mission Impossible 7 Reveals The Dark Truth Behind The IMF (2024)

Warning! SPOILERS about Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One ahead.

The transformative events of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One guarantee its part two will be full of death-defying action and revelations regarding the unexplained connection between Ethan Hunt and Gabriel, but Mission: Impossible 7 also revealed the dark system the IMF employs to recruit agents. The Mission: Impossible franchise is famously neglectful of its agents with its iconic briefing message, "Should you or any member of your IMF team be caught or killed, the secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions." However, another key sentence supposedly left freedom to the agent with “your mission, should you choose to accept it.” The recruitment of Grace in Mission: Impossible 7 actually unveiled how that wasn’t technically true.

In the seven Mission: Impossible installments, Ethan and his collaborators were regularly left on their own when in trouble, and many of the most action-packed sequences were made possible by their being disavowed or actively wanted by international organizations. Mission: Impossible 7 itself reiterates that pattern, as Hunt is always chased by Briggs and Degas, but in wanting to recruit Grace to Hunt’s team, it also reveals what needed to happen before someone was offered the choice to join the IMF. Before that moment, IMF missions’ briefing messages always implied there was a choice to be made, but Mission: Impossible 7 dispelled that assumption by sharing Ethan Hunt’s story.

Mission Impossible 7 Reveals How Tragic The IMF Made Ethan Hunt's Life

Mission: Impossible 7 established Gabriel as a villain because of his connection to Ethan’s past, as not only did he kill Marie, someone Ethan cared for, but also managed to implicate Ethan, who was viewed as Marie’s killer. In broaching Gabriel and Ethan’s connection, though, Mission: Impossible 7 also revealed that becoming an IMF agent was offered to Ethan only as an alternative to prison. This way, Gabriel shaped Ethan’s life, as it could never again be separated from the IMF and the consequences working as an IMF agent entailed.

The forced opportunity of joining the IMF came from a traumatic moment in Ethan’s life and any Mission: Impossible movie could catalog the multiple times enemies infiltrating the IMF or even its very foundation caused Ethan’s suffering. Operating as disavowed agents often had Ethan and his collaborators risk their lives unnecessarily because of how the IMF refused to be implicated in their missions. Ethan couldn’t have a family, and Julia’s arc from Mission: Impossible III to Mission: Impossible – Fallout proved that Ethan’s affiliation to the IMF put her life in danger as his wife twice, and even caused her to fake her death, besides causing Julia and Ethan’s divorce.

Related: Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 Cliffhanger Ending Explained

How The IMF Condemns Agents To A Lonely Life

Mission: Impossible 3 introduced Julia as Ethan’s fiancée only because Ethan had taken a step back and started training agents instead of being one. While he was brought back into the action by Musgrave who eventually proved to be the mole, even training other people didn’t save Ethan from suffering, as his own ex-trainee Lindsay ended up dying in the field. Mission: Impossible 6 might have confirmed Julia’s safe and rewarding life away from Ethan, but it also highlighted how Ethan’s loved ones could only be safe from the IMF and his enemies if they faked their deaths and changed identities.

Through the various Mission: Impossible movies, Ethan’s usual crew became his loved ones, because having civilians among his loved ones only put them in danger. However, even if IMF operatives were better prepared at handling the threats, their link to Ethan still jeopardized missions or put them in harm’s way. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation almost had Benji blow up because Solomon Lane wanted Ethan to bring him the contents of the Red Box, and Mission: Impossible 6 caused Ethan and Benji to lose the plutonium so that they could save Luther.

Ilsa Faust’s death in Mission: Impossible 7 makes her the first casualty, but only one of the many who suffered attempts at their life from Ethan’s enemies. With their choice to become an IMF agent not truly being a free choice, the IMF essentially condemns its agents to a lonely life. Indeed, if their loved ones aren’t killed by their enemies, IMF agents have to avoid letting people in, subjecting themselves to a solitary life, as being close to them can amount to a death sentence.

Impossible Missions Never Gives Agents A Free Choice In Mission: Impossible

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Grace being the other central character of Mission: Impossible 7 who still wasn’t an agent, despite displaying characteristics that would make her a successful one, gave the film the chance to reveal how Ethan became an IMF agent. However, when Ethan, Benji, and Luther gave Grace the chance to make Ilsa’s sacrifice count by choosing to be part of the Sevastopol key retrieval mission, they also revealed the IMF pattern of selecting new agents. All of them had to make the same choice Grace faced, as the IMF selected them for their uncommon qualities, but also for their problems with the law.

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Having to choose between prison and joining the IMF made their choice not free, making it easy for the IMF to use its agents carelessly, as by design, the IMF wouldn’t be held responsible for their death or capture. While the choice promised freedom in the sense of no prison, Ethan’s story proved that some freedoms were clearly curtailed, as surrounding himself with loved ones was impossible. It also makes the iconic “Should you choose to accept it” lose significance, as even if it was so quintessential that villains like Solomon Lane quoted it, it never left any real choice to IMF agents, and Grace’s recruitment in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One proved it.