Mission: Impossible and the enemy within: when the spy changes clients
Phelps, Lane, Walker: almost all of Ethan Hunt’s enemies came out of an intelligence agency. A spy and a professional criminal differ only in the client.
The first Mission: Impossible film (1996) dared to do something fans of the television series never quite forgave: it turned Jim Phelps, the team leader and hero of the original series, into the traitor. Phelps fakes his death, lets his team be killed and frames Ethan Hunt in order to sell the list of undercover agents. Since then, the franchise has repeated the move with almost obsessive consistency.
In Mission: Impossible III (2006), the arms dealer Owen Davian has a mole inside Ethan’s own agency. In Rogue Nation (2015) and Fallout (2018), Solomon Lane is a former British secret service agent who runs a network of spies presumed dead. In Fallout, the CIA agent watching Ethan turns out to be the terrorist they are chasing. The enemy, almost always, is within.
// The theoryA trade that does not ask who for
Deviance as calculated choice is a tradition that studies crime as a profession. It begins with The Professional Thief (1937), in which Edwin Sutherland transcribed and annotated the account of a professional thief, and continues with Peter Letkemann’s Crime as Work (1973). Its central idea is simple: some offenders act neither on impulse nor out of need, but like any professional. They learn techniques, have codes, specialise and plan their careers by weighing risks and rewards.
Mission: Impossible takes that idea to its most unsettling conclusion. A spy’s skills (lying convincingly, getting in where no one can, killing without a trace, disappearing) are exactly those of a professional criminal. The only difference is the client. When the agency stops paying, protecting or convincing, the trade stays intact and looks for another buyer. Security has a name for that risk: the insider threat.
The same hands
Sutherland observed that the professional thief is defined by three things: technique learned from others, status within the group and contacts that protect him. An intelligence agent has all three through training. In Mission: Impossible, the villain does not acquire a new trade by switching sides: he practises the same one for another boss.
Solomon Lane
Read Solomon Lane’s full case file · Crime as a trade →
// The suspectsFive villains, four with credentials
Jim Phelps is the Cold War veteran left without a world when it ends, a case of strain through loss. Owen Davian is the dealer no threat can deter, and the film explains why: someone on the inside guarantees he will not pay. Solomon Lane is the pure case: an agent trained by his country who turns other agents into a criminal enterprise, the Syndicate.
August Walker is the CIA’s hammer, chosen precisely because he has no scruples, who carries that same logic over to the other side. And Gabriel, the villain of Dead Reckoning (2023) and The Final Reckoning (2025), is the exception that proves the rule: he does not come out of any agency, but out of Ethan’s past before he joined one, and he works for an artificial intelligence every agency wants to control.
The result is a franchise about loyalty more than espionage. Ethan Hunt is not the best agent because he has more skills than his enemies, but because he is the only one who never changes clients.
// In the archiveThe Mission: Impossible case files
All five villains have a full case file, each with its theory and the point where that theory falls short. They are gathered in the Mission: Impossible villains hub.
Three key ideas
- Four of the five main Mission: Impossible villains come out of an intelligence agency or have a mole inside one: Phelps, Davian, Lane and Walker.
- The criminology that studies crime as a trade (Sutherland, Letkemann) explains why: a spy’s skills are those of a professional criminal.
- When the agency stops paying or convincing, the trade looks for another client. At heart, the franchise is a story about loyalty.
Sources · further reading
- Sutherland, E. H. (1937). The Professional Thief. University of Chicago Press.
- Letkemann, P. (1973). Crime as Work. Prentice-Hall.
- McQuarrie, C. (dir.) (2018). Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Paramount Pictures.
// Quick challengeWhich theory best explains Solomon Lane?
Frequently asked questions
Who is the villain in the first Mission: Impossible?
Jim Phelps, Ethan Hunt’s team leader, who fakes his death and lets his agents be killed in order to sell the list of undercover agents. In the original television series he was the hero.
Who are the Mission: Impossible villains?
The main ones include Jim Phelps (1996), Owen Davian (Mission: Impossible III, 2006), Solomon Lane (Rogue Nation and Fallout), August Walker (Fallout, 2018) and Gabriel (Dead Reckoning and The Final Reckoning).
What is the Syndicate in Mission: Impossible?
A network of agents from several countries presumed dead or missing, run by Solomon Lane, who use their spy skills to carry out attacks and destabilise governments. It works like a privatised secret service.