Is this the end of the road for Ethan Hunt?

It’s been 29 years, but with Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, the long-running spy franchise might actually say goodbye to it central action hero. In fact, the title of the film may indicate that one character, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, may not make it out alive.

“It is, I hope, the satisfying conclusion to a 30-year story arc. I’m pretty confident that people are going to feel that the title was appropriate,” director Christopher McQuarrie told Empire magazine in a just-released interview. McQuarrie has been directing Mission: Impossible movies since 2016’s Rogue Nation, making The Final Reckoning his fourth, and seemingly final, film in the franchise. The first four films were directed by Brian De Palma, John Woo, J.J. Abrams, and Brad Bird, respectively. And, overall, the movie series is a reboot/reimagining of the 1966-1973 TV series created by Bruce Geller.

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But, now, it seems that The Final Reckoning will conclude the cinematic Mission: Impossible story. The previous film, Dead Reckoning Part One, ended on a cliffhanger. Ethan Hunt (Cruise) has the key to defeating the evil AI known as “The Entity” but nothing has actually been resolved since Ethan still needs to find a long-lost stealth submarine, where the AI first became sentient. And, many fans and pundits, including Empire, think that this mission may be impossible enough to lead Ethan to his doom.

“You gotta see the movie,” Cruise told Empire, and compared the film to an epic like The Odyssey, saying the tone is “Homeric.”

If Ethan Hunt does meet his end in Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, the franchise could, in theory, continue without him. Notably, the character of Hunt does not come from the original TV series at all, and was created specifically for the film series. In recent years, some fans of spy movies have noted that Ethan Hunt has started to rival James Bond in the public imagination. And if he does die in Mission: Impossible 8, then Ethan Hunt will be pulling a No Time To Die James Bond move, too. But unlike Bond, there’s no way Hunt will ever be recast. If long-time collaborators Cruise and McQuarrie have decided it is Ethan’s time to go, this reckoning will truly be final.