Jeremy Renner refused to return for a Mission: Impossible instalment to simply be killed off.

The Marvel star played IMF agent William Brandt in 2011’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and 2015’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation but declined to return for further instalments because he needed to be in America with his daughter.

Despite his decision, Renner wasn’t thrilled by the idea of his character being killed off in 2018’s Fallout.

“I remember they tried to bring me over(seas) for a week so they could kill my character, and I was like, ‘No, you don’t get to do that. You’re not going to drag me over there and just kill my character,’ like get out of here!” Renner said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “If you’re going to do this and you’re going to use my character, you’re going to do it right.”

He jokingly added, “I yelled at (director Christopher McQuarrie), ‘Dude, you’re not going to do this to me like that; you’re not going to do me wrong.'”

The Avengers actor recently revealed to Collider that he would be open to reprising his character now that his daughter Ava is 11.

“It just wasn’t gonna work out then. Maybe now that my daughter is older that could happen. I’d always jump into a Mission: Impossible anytime and back into Brandt,” he told the outlet last month.

Elsewhere in the podcast interview, the 53-year-old shut down speculation that he was supposed to take over from Tom Cruise as the lead of the Mission: Impossible franchise.

“No, it was always Tom’s show, that would be a Tom decision, if he ever wanted to change that narrative,” Renner stated.

The eighth Mission: Impossible film, starring Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames, will be released in May 2025.

© Cover Media