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Turns out, the title Mission: Impossible has a deeper meaning than simply the onscreen story involving super spy Ethan Hunt — at least, that’s what series star Simon Pegg believes. For him, each movie has a secret, impossible mission attached: namely, making the movie itself.

“Every Mission: Impossible I’ve ever done has had a parallel Mission: Impossible running alongside it, which is making Mission: Impossible,” Simon Pegg told The Hollywood Reporter about his time on the series. “The goals and the challenges we set ourselves always seem impossible in the outset, and yet we find a way to do it. With all the films, we just muddled through them. We put our heads down to meet the challenges, and we figured shit out. We were always going to get there; it’s just a question of how.”

That’s been especially true of the last two movies in the franchise, it turns out.

“We shut down in February of 2020 for obvious reasons, and we started up again in November, in Norway, with a very rigorous set of protocols in place to make sure that everybody stayed safe. That was challenging and it made things difficult, but we got through it. You just adapt,” Pegg said about COVID restrictions during the making of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning. “The pandemic was obviously the greatest [challenge], and then the writers’ and actors’ strikes delayed the beginning of shooting The Final Reckoning, which was frustrating but necessary.”

Post-strikes, however, Pegg said that the Final Reckoning shoot “was a lot freer” and “the most enjoyable shoot of all of the Missions that I’ve done.”

And if it happens to be the final Mission, as has been teased…?

“I feel like The Final Reckoning is a really satisfying culmination of these films. It feels like an end to me,” Pegg says. “McQ expertly went into the past and looked at the preceding movies, and he saw how he could find an origin for the Entity — and how Ethan’s refusal to ever sacrifice anything would impact the events that have led to this. So that all wraps up in this film, and for me, it does feel like an end.”

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is in theaters May 23.

For more, here's how to watch all the Mission: Impossible movies and TV series in order.