What Happened To Kittridge Between Mission Impossible 1 & MI 7?

WARNING: The following contains SPOILERS for Mission: Impossible 7.Eugene Kittridge’s 27-year absence between the 1996 original film and Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One raises the question of what happened to him during that time. Kittridge (Henry Czerny) was the Director of the Impossible Mission Force in the first Mission: Impossible movie in which he wrongfully accused Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) of being an IMF mole. Originally, the Mission: Impossible movies began as standalone adventure films without much connection between each installment, making the lack of recurring roles in the sequels somewhat typical and expected.

Kittridge’s reemergence in Mission: Impossible 7 and planned appearance in Mission: Impossible 8 make him a key figure of the Mission: Impossible franchise once again. Ethan and his team have encountered many traitors inside the IMF, including Sean Ambrose in Mission: Impossible 2 and Musgrave in Mission: Impossible III. This consistent betrayal gives weight to Kittredge’s suspicions regarding his agents His absence from the franchise for over two and a half decades suggests that he chose to stay away from the IMF until the Mission: Impossible 7 AI threat called the Entity became a global issue which he could not avoid.

Kittridge Left IMF After Mission: Impossible & Was Replaced As Director

Following the first Mission: Impossible‘s ending, Kittridge left the IMF and was replaced as Director. Mission: Impossible III sees Theodore Brassel (Lawrence Fishburne) as the head of the independent espionage agency. Later, CIA director Alan Hunley (Alec Baldwin) took over as IMF director at the end of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation before returning for Mission: Impossible – Fallout, in which he was killed off by main antagonist John Lark (Henry Cavill). Hunley’s death could have meant the return of Kittridge as the IMF director, however, the character reemerges instead as the Director of the CIA succeeding Erica Sloane (Angela Basset) who appeared in Fallout.

In an interview with /Film, Czerny also stated that Kittridge has been watching Ethan over the last 25 years, adding that Ethan is like fire and “if you let fire do what it wants, you’re in trouble.” After their run-in during the events of the original Mission: Impossible, according to Czerny, “Ethan schooling Kittridge on who the mole really was, and catching the mole, was the springboard to 25 years of Kittridge going through different agencies so he wouldn’t be schooled again.” This means in Mission: Impossible 7, Kittridge was set to return with a new set of skills and awareness with an attitude that he won’t be fooled again by Ethan Hunt, which of course is exactly what ends up happening in Dead Reckoning Part One.

What Dead Reckoning Part 1 Reveals About Kittridge’s Life After Mission: Impossible

Dead Reckoning Part One reveals that Kittridge still worked inside the elite level of the American intelligence community, however, he likely chose to stay away from the IMF after the events of the first movie certainly left a bad taste in his mouth. As the CIA director in Dead Reckoning Part One, Kittridge likely intentionally kept his distance from Ethan Hunt and everything associated with the IMF, choosing to focus on more centralized and less daunting and risky missions. A photograph of Erica Sloane in Mission: Impossible 7 also implies that the former CIA director stepped down from her position to pursue a significant role in politics, which from the picture could have been the United States Presidency. By this logic, Sloane could have appointed Kittridge as the new CIA director in her absence in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.