In addition to clashing with Esai Morales’ Gabriel and the AI system known as The Entity, 2023’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning saw Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt being pursued across the world by Jasper Briggs and Degas, intelligence agents respectively played by Shea Whigham and Greg Tarzan Davis. Among the things we know about Mission: Impossible 8, previously known as Dead Reckoning Part Two, is that both these characters will be back, and for Whigham in particular, it sounds like shooting the upcoming 2025 movie was especially enjoyable. That’s because director/co-writer Christopher McQuarrie “delivered” on a request the actor had for Mission: Impossible 8, and I’m pumped to see it onscreen.
While talking about his new movie Lake Gorge with THR, Shea Whigham spent some time discussing Mission: Impossible 8, which began filming in March 2022 and is still rolling cameras, in part due to the delays caused by the SAG-AFTRA strike. During his time on Dead Reckoning, Whigham asked McQuarrie to craft a specific kind of scene for him to perform in the follow-up, which he described as follows: