Mission: Impossible 7 is still missing a member of the IMF team
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One brings back Ethan Hunt and his IMF team on another world-saving mission, but before its release, fans were wondering whether they'd have a full complement.
Jeremy Renner made his series debut as William Brandt in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, initially as a bit of an antagonist to Hunt. However, he was an IMF agent by the end and in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, he was fully part of the team.
At the end of Rogue Nation, he was by the side of new IMF Secretary Alan Hunlee's (Alec Baldwin) to welcome him to the team. But then Brandt was totally absent from Mission: Impossible – Fallout and wasn't in the cast list for Dead Reckoning Part One.
Was that just a ruse to keep his return a secret though or does Jeremy Renner miss out another mission?
Is Jeremy Renner in Mission: Impossible 7?
We'll cut to the chase: Jeremy Renner does not reprise his role as William Brandt in Mission: Impossible 7.
No reason is given for his absence and Brandt isn't mentioned at all. He's not the only one to miss out as Angela Bassett doesn't return as CIA director Erika Sloane, but considering Kittridge is the new CIA director, maybe it's because that character has been killed off. (In real life, production shifts meant Bassett couldn't return.)
There's no such hint as to where Brandt is now and maybe that's to keep the option open for him to return in Mission: Impossible 8. It's possible that, like with the previous movie, it was Renner's Marvel commitments that stopped him returning.
After various filming shifts, Dead Reckoning Part One started filming in September 2020, continuing into early 2021. Renner was filming Hawkeye from December 2020-February 2021 and with COVID restrictions in place, it's possible that there wasn't the flexibility for him to film both.
It might sound like they would have been able to work out something, but as writer/director Chris McQuarrie explained about Renner's absence from Fallout, it's never that simple when it comes to Mission: Impossible.
"At the time, when the movie started, we didn't really have a screenplay, so it was very difficult for us to say who would be in the movie for how long and on what days, and he had a commitment to Marvel," he explained of the previous movie.
"So there was just simply no predicting. If we had a finished script, we would have been able to say, 'Yes, this will work and we can let you go for this time', but there was just no predicting what those roles were going to turn out to be. It was just an unfortunate case of bad timing."
It's not confirmed this was why Renner missed out on the new movie and there hasn't been any official comment either way. All we know for sure is that Brandt is not in Mission: Impossible 7 and the IMF team is a man light. Again.
For more Mission: Impossible 7 coverage, check out:
• Mission: Impossible 7 review
• How long is Mission: Impossible 7?
• Does Mission: Impossible 7 have a credit scene?
• All you need to know about Mission: Impossible 8
• Who was Kittridge, again?
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One is out now in cinemas.
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