Ethan Hunt is back for another high stakes mission (as someone points out later in the film, it's probably never occurred to him that he has the option to say no), along with trusty IMF teammates Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg). Their assignment is to retrieve three highly dangerous plutonium cores from a man code-named John Lark, who is working with anarchist terror-network The Syndicate (yes, them again) to bring down the free world. Like Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) — the former MI6 agent turned-Syndicate Supreme Leader who was captured by Ethan back in 2015's Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, and who returns to haunt him for this movie — Lark believes that humanity is its own worst enemy, and that a violent catalyst is needed to redress the matter. ("The greater the suffering, the greater the peace," is the mantra repeated throughout.) If the Syndicate acquires the cores in question, they can build nuclear weapons powerful enough to destroy the world as we know it.