Without going into spoilers, Briggs will definitely return in “Part Two,” and there’s a lot going on at the end of the first movie that will likely inform how he’ll act in the follow-up. It would seem natural that we learn more about him and his relationship with Hunt. So Shea Whigham revealing something now would pretty much constitute a spoiler.
With that being said, the actor spoke a bit more extensively about his role in the movie and what he wanted from the character. Whigham wanted to return to classics like “The Fugitive” and “Midnight Run” for his part of the film, setting the bar high for himself:
“I told them there has to be a reason why I’m chasing [Ethan]. Otherwise, he’s not going to play for two and a half hours, have an egg on his face in every country, I just miss him. So I just wanted to augment that without explaining anything. He didn’t want to explain it, other than to possibly go into the next one. But also, man, I wanted to honor the ‘Midnight Run’ of everything, ‘The Fugitive’ of everything. I love paying homage to movies that I love, so we sprinkled some of that in there and I just wanted to make Briggs a wild card. By any means possible, she had tried to assimilate Ethan, being real and personal deep down.”
“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is now in theaters.