Without getting into spoilers, Briggs is absolutely going to be back in “Part Two,” and a great deal happens at the end of the first film that will probably inform how he’s going to act in the follow-up. It would only seem natural that we’re going to learn more about him and his relationship to Hunt. So Shea Whigham revealing anything now would pretty much constitute a spoiler.
That said, the actor did speak a bit more broadly about his role in the film and what he wanted out of the character. Whigham wanted to harken back to classics such as “The Fugitive” and “Midnight Run” for his part of the film, setting the bar quite high for himself:
“I told them that there has to be a reason why I’m chasing [Ethan]. Otherwise, it’s not going to play for two and a half hours, to have egg on my face in every country, that I just miss him. So I just wanted to ratchet that up without explaining anything. I didn’t want to explain it, other than going into, possibly, the next one. But also, man, I wanted to honor the ‘Midnight Run’ of it all, ‘The Fugitive’ of it all. I’m big on paying homage to films that I love, and so we sprinkled some of that in there and I just wanted to make Briggs a wild card. By any means possible, he’d tried to take Ethan in, with it being real and personal underneath.”
“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” is in theaters now.