Since the genre shifted off the page and onto the realm of the silver screen, the great game of espionage has always been presented as a gentleman’s game. Most spy films revolve around boys wielding gadgets, guns, and their weaponized ideations of duty and national security. For the longest time, if a woman were present, it was as either a helpless sexualized object to be overcome like an obstacle, or won like a trophy (the earliest Bond girls are a perfect example), or they were the “honeypot,” a cinematic representation of a very real policy that forced regular women to seduce enemies of their state to gain secrets (Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is probably the best film centered around this).The first few films in the Mission: Impossible film franchise are like a case study of this trend. Thandie Newton’s alluring thief Nyah quite literally fills the honeypot role in M:I-2, and Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) civilian wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan) is kidnapped in M:I-3 and dangled like a damsel-in-distress by Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s ruthless villain. Paula Patton’s vengeful IMF handler in M:I-4 was a step in the right direction but literally never appears again; it wouldn’t be until the fifth film, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, that we’d be introduced to a character who shattered the expectations of the female spy on-screen and became one of the best characters in the entire genre in the process.Taking over from Brad Bird’s immensely well-received Ghost Protocol, Christopher McQuarrie stepped up to the plate with Rogue Nation with a self-assured confidence that’s immediately recognizable from the film’s jaw-dropping opening plane heist — it’s as if the movie wants to reassure you that it's taking the momentum of the last installment and flying with it. In that regard, it’s the first film to truly bridge an interconnected story built off previous events — after accidentally destroying the Kremlin in pursuit of their last target, the IMF is disbanded by the U.S. government and Ethan is hunted down by the CIA, right as he begins to investigate the existence of a malicious network of former intelligence operatives teased at the end of Ghost Protocol known as the Syndicate.For his first time with the franchise, McQuarrie perfectly nails the scale and stakes — in true Mission: Impossible fashion, everything feels on the razor’s edge of danger, and the audience is consistently on the edge of their seat as Hunt is constantly improvising to account for his team being outplayed at every turn. Nowhere is this more exemplified than in the film’s showstopping Vienna opera house sequence, a masterful Spielbergian orchestra of crescendoing stakes, dueling objectives, and unpredictable complications. Watching Ethan try desperately to fight off a would-be assassin above the catwalk during a performance, as Benji unwittingly jerks the controls of the platforms, all the while the music of the opera matches the tension of the scene — in less adept hands it would be chaos, but under McQuarrie’s eye it becomes nothing short of artful.The Vienna opera house setpiece is a true highlight in a series filled with breathtaking setpieces. | Paramount PicturesAnd there, in the midst of it all, is Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), an unpredictable stick of dynamite tossed in the mix waiting to blow up the expectations brought to an M:I film. Even though she’s introduced 20 minutes earlier, it’s her moment at the opera house — dressed in a sheer one-shouldered gown and constructing a sniper rifle out of a wind instrument — that causes audiences to lean forward in curiosity. It’s here that viewers recognize her presence isn’t business as usual, and she’s not simply one of the paper thin female characters the franchise is littered with. Ilsa Faust doesn’t demand your attention, she steals it and runs away with it for the rest of the film.She’s draped in a mysteriousness that’s absolutely intoxicating — you’re never quite sure of her allegiances until the movie reveals them, and like Hunt, that mystery draws you closer and closer into her orbit. Her shifting nature is complimented by her staggering resourcefulness and capability — she requires absolutely no hand-holding, and whether or not she’s helping or hurting Ethan’s mission, it’s clear she’s just as skilled as he is in the arts of combat and deception. She’s a wild card but her capricious actions are absolutely crucial to the IMF’s ultimate success — without her, Ethan might have died in a dimly lit torture cell, or drowned underwater in the process of stealing a highly-secured data ledger from a power plant.With just one appearance, Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust quickly became one of the best depictions of a female spy in the history of spy films. | Paramount PicturesWhen it’s finally revealed that she’s a former British intelligence operative, abandoned by her government deep undercover, you understand implicitly that she’s Ethan’s absolute foil. They’re both weaponized assets, their dedication to the well-being of humankind manipulated and used by their respective governments for their own ends; chess pawns whose only purpose is to serve. Together, they represent the much-needed thematic heart of the series, and tragically parallel the conception behind the Syndicate itself: what happens when those toys of Western interests discover their own agency?Before the end of the film, Ilsa offers Ethan a simple choice: stay a cog in a manipulative machine or walk away. Naturally, Ethan refuses. That moment doesn’t just decide his fate, but hers as well — much in the same way that Ilsa and Ethan complement each other, revealing a common understanding of the world in each other, Ilsa complements the franchise too, and revitalizes the spark that was precariously close to flickering out. She can’t just walk away after one outing, the mission needed her far too much. If Tom Cruise’s death-defying daredevil of a superspy is the frontman of the series, then Ilsa Faust is the rejuvenated beating heart of its final half.Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is streaming on Netflix.