With the team back in Italy, a ton of set photos from Mission: Impossible 7 have surfaced online, featuring stars Tom Cruise (Top Gun: Maverick; American Made) and Hayley Atwell (Captain America: The First Avenger; Avengers: Endgame) on the run. To make matters even more interesting, it appears as though the duo are handcuffed together throughout the extended sequence.
While we've come to know and love Ethan Hunt (Cruise) over the course of the past twenty-four years, we know absolutely nothing about the mysterious character played by Atwell, who director Chris McQuarrie previously described as a "destructive force of nature," and it appears as though these set photos may have inadvertently confirmed that she will indeed be someone who's not exactly on the same page as Hunt when they cross paths.
However, considering Atwell is behind the wheel in some shots, there seems to be a good possibility that the pair will come to some sort of understanding and work together to get out of whatever mess they've landed in on the streets of Rome.
Mission: Impossible 7 & 8 are headlined by Tom Cruise (Top Gun: Maverick) as IMF ace Ethan Hunt, as well as fellow returning stars Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible - Fallout) as Ilsa Faust, Simon Pegg (Mission: Impossible - Fallout) as Benji Dunn, Ving Rhames (Mission: Impossible - Fallout) as Luther Stickell, Vanessa Kirby (Mission: Impossible - Fallout) as the White Widow and Angela Bassett (Black Panther) as Erica Sloane. Newcomers to the storied action franchise include Hayley Atwell (Avengers: Endgame), Pom Klementieff (Avengers: Endgame), Shea Whigham (Joker), and Esai Morales (Titans), who is rumored to be playing the villain. Henry Czerny (Sharp Objects) has also been confirmed to reprise his role as Eugene Kittridge from the first film.
There isn't much information regarding who else will make up Ethan Hunt's team for his seventh and eighth adventures, but fans still holding out hope that some combination of Jeremy Renner (William Brandt), Paula Patton (Jane Carter) and/or Maggie Q (Zhen Lei) will also return. There have also been rumblings that the likes of Henry Cavill (August Walker) and Alec Baldwin (Alan Hunley) may also be back in some capacity as McQuarrie recently teased, "Any character, dead or alive, is fair game to return."
Both sequels are expected to film back-to-back, with Mission: Impossible 7 set to light the fuse in theaters on November 19, 2021, while its sequel, Mission: Impossible 8, will open the following fall on November 4, 2022.