Mission: Impossible Star Teases Fan-Favorite Villain's Return for New Sequel

Pom Klementieff's assassin might not be as dead as we thought.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One introduced Pom Klementieff's deadly assassin Paris into the franchise, though she would go on to suffer fatal wounds before having a change of heart and helping Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt survive a deadly train crash. Despite the implied death of Paris, Dead Reckoning star Simon Pegg recently shared an Instagram post of Klementieff in which he claims the character is hard to kill, hinting that Paris could be making a comeback. With production on Dead Reckoning's sequel being delayed due to the writers' and actors' strikes, official details on the film's cast have yet to be revealed, leaving fans to speculate about Paris making a return. The sequel to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is slated to hit theaters on May 23, 2025.

"Hard to kill! If you think you've seen the last of Paris... think again," Pegg captioned the photo.

Another positive sign about Paris returning is that Klementieff has been spotted on the set of the sequel outside of this post from Pegg, and while the franchise is known to feature flashbacks, it would seem more likely that Paris survived the events of Dead Reckoning and has been enlisted as one of Ethan Hunt's newest allies.

One death that was seemingly much more definitive, however, was that of Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa Faust, who first appeared in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Despite fan disappointment at the death, director Christopher McQuarrie teased that the Ilsa's franchise departure was a long time coming.

"It was one of the earliest conversations – around the set of Top Gun, we were already talking about it," McQuarrie revealed to Empire Magazine. "Any place you took that character would make less of her. It would suddenly become frivolous, which is something we're always trying to avoid. The character would become frivolous, or she would just become a romantic interest. And it was never about creating a character who was defined by her love story with Ethan Hunt. Their relationship transcends a traditional love story."  

He added, "It's a very heroic death for that character. It is not in any way, shape, or form disposable. It's a noble and heroic death. That, to me, is the hardest thing to find for a character ... Her death was one of the first things we shot. But the reasons came later -- and we were not satisfied the first time I cut the scene together without those reasons in place. As a scene all by itself in a vacuum, [it] didn't work."

The sequel to Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is slated to hit theaters on May 23, 2025.

Are you looking forward to the sequel? Let us know in the comments!

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