The Mission: Impossible franchise boasts a high body count across six movies, but which IMF agents have been killed off to date? Beginning with Mission: Impossible in 1996, the titular franchise centers around Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), a key member of the Impossible Missions Force that continually works to avert global, often espionage-inspired, disasters that normal governmental organizations cannot take on. While these IMF agents are exceptionally trained personnel, the Mission: Impossible franchise is nevertheless strewn with IMF casualties across the franchise's 26-year run.
The Mission: Impossible movie series has received widespread critical acclaim as one of the standout action franchises still in production. The most recent Mission: Impossible movie, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, opened to much fanfare in 2018 amid praise for its slick combat sequences and willingness to evolve beyond the bounds of the original Mission: Impossible's more hard-boiled, slow-burn tension. The franchise also has two more films set to release in 2022 and 2023, with both Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8 filmed simultaneously by the series' latest director Christopher McQuarrie.
As a result, the franchise's six installments mean there is inexorably a high body count for the Impossible Mission Force. The first Mission: Impossible movie is by far the most bloody for the IMF, with seven agents dying in a variety of gruesome ways. Here's every IMF agent who has been killed off in the Mission: Impossible movies to date, as well as how each agent died.
Jack Harmon
The first casualty of the Mission: Impossible franchise is IMF agent Jack Harmon (Emilio Estevez), who is killed by one of the traps laid by the traitorous Jim Phelps (Jon Voight). As Ethan and the other IMF agents set up to recover a lost CIA Non-Official Cover list during a political ball in Prague, their plan implodes, with various technological sabotages decimating their ranks. Harmon is the first to perish as the elevator he is hidden above malfunctions, crushing his face as the emergency brake fails to activate.
Hannah Williams
Another of Jim Phelps' original IMF team members, Hannah Williams (Ingeborga Dapkūnaitė) attempts to call off the mission to retrieve the CIA NOC list from the suspected rogue agent Alexander Golitsyn (Marcel Irues) in Prague. Hearing Harmon's screams over the IMF comms, Williams sprints to a car she believes her friend and agent Claire Phelps (Emmanuelle Béart) is in control of. However, as she enters the passenger side, the car explodes, instantly killing her for Mission: Impossible's second IMF agent death.
Alexander Golitsyn
Alexander Golitsyn's demise swiftly follows Hannah Williams' in Mission: Impossible's failed Prague operation. As the suspected rogue agent flees the ballroom, he is tailed by IMF agent Sarah Davies (Kristin Scott Thomas), who witnesses him being stabbed through a grate by an unknown assailant in a dark Prague alley. As Mission: Impossible's narrative progresses, Ethan learns that Golitsyn was acting undercover on behalf of the IMF and pretending to go rogue to lure out the organization's real mole, Jim Phelps.
Sarah Davies
Immediately after tailing Golitsyn, Sarah Davies meets her end in the same alley after radioing her position to Ethan. Ethan rushes to her aid, only to find her with multiple stab wounds as she dies in his arms. This leaves Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt as the apparent sole survivor of the IMF's failed Prague mission, casting suspicion on him as the assumed IMF mole and forcing him to go into hiding from Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny), the director of the IMF.
Claire Phelps
After seemingly miraculously surviving the car bomb that killed her fellow agent Hannah Williams, Claire Phelps finds Ethan at the safehouse and recounts how her husband Jim aborted the mission - a command Ethan did not receive during the events in Prague. Eventually, Claire is revealed to be a traitor to the IMF alongside her husband and another rogue IMF agent Franz Krieger (Jean Reno), forcing Mission: Impossible's penultimate fight scene to unfold aboard a high-speed train. Claire becomes more conflicted as she becomes further embroiled in Jim's deceptions, however, with Claire eventually being shot in the stomach by her own husband as she attempts to save Ethan's life.
Franz Krieger
After being revealed as Jim Phelps' rogue agent who murdered both Alexander Golitsyn and Sarah Davies, Krieger flees to an unknown location mid-way through Mission: Impossible's narrative. He later resurfaces as the helicopter pilot waiting to whisk Jim Phelps away from his meeting with Ethan upon the Eurostar train should anything go wrong. However, while fighting Jim Phelps, Ethan tethers Krieger's helicopter to the train and cuts off the pair's escape before using explosive gum to destroy the helicopter - killing Krieger.
Jim Phelps
The callous mastermind of the Prague mission setup, Jim Phelps meets his Mission: Impossible end at the same time as his partner Franz Krieger. While attempting to board the helicopter, Phelps is stalled by Ethan atop the speeding train, setting up Mission: Impossible's iconic scene in the Channel Tunnel. Although Phelps eventually manages to get the upper hand against Ethan and boards the helicopter, he is killed in the ensuing explosion after Ethan detonates the gum given to him by his late friend Jack Harmon.
Sean Ambrose
The only IMF casualty of Mission: Impossible 2, Sean Ambrose (Dougray Scott) is also the movie's primary villain as an IMF agent-turned terrorist hell-bent on releasing the Chimera virus. Ambrose is killed in Mission: Impossible 2's finale by Ethan Hunt as the pair engage in a gritty extended battle sequence on the beaches of Sydney. Ethan is eventually able to take control of the fight with his former colleague, throwing sand into his eyes before shooting Ambrose multiple times in the chest and back.
Lindsey Farris
Mission: Impossible III's first IMF agent death comes at the climax of the movie's pulsating opening sequence as Ethan saves Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell) from Owen Davian's (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) men in Berlin. Farris and Ethan manage to shoot their way out of Davian's stronghold after she is revitalized with a syringe of adrenaline, and subsequently bee-line for the IMF plane waiting to take them to safety. After boarding the plane, Ethan discovers an explosive pellet implanted in Lindsey's head by Davian, but it kills her before he can disable it.
John Musgrave
The operations manager of the IMF in Mission: Impossible III, John Musgrave (The Morning Show's Billy Crudup) is subsequently revealed to be Owen Davian's second in command and in charge of selling illicit munitions on the Black Market. Musgrave is the second IMF agent death during Mission: Impossible III after he breaks into Ethan's home and takes his fiancee Julia (Michelle Monaghan) hostage in search of the Rabbit's Foot. Musgrave does not bank on Julia's secret training from Ethan; however, with Julia able to disarm one of Musgrave's henchmen before shooting the IMF traitor three times in the chest.
Trevor Hanaway
The final IMF agent fatality to date is Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol's Trevor Hanaway (Josh Holloway), who is murdered by the assassin Sabine Moreau (No Time To Die's Léa Seydoux) for his nuclear launch codes at the start of the movie. As Hanaway makes his way through the backstreets of Budapest, he is taken by surprise and shot point-blank in the gut. Hanway's murder is the last IMF agent's death in the Mission: Impossible franchise despite being the fourth movie in the series, with both Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation and Mission: Impossible - Fallout's smaller IMF teams surviving each film's respective events.
