August Walker

"How many times has Hunt's government betrayed him, disavowed him, cast him aside? How long before a man like that has had enough?"

- Walker explaining why Ethan might go rogue, and why they should keep an eye on him. "Why did you have to make this so fucking complicated?"

- August Walker to Solomon lane. "There cannot be peace without first, a great suffering. The greater the suffering, the greater the peace."

- August Walker's manifesto as John Lark.

John Lark, also known as August Walker, is one of the two main antagonists (along with Solomon Lane) of the 2018 blockbuster action-thriller film Mission: Impossible - Fallout.

He was portrayed by the famous actor Henry Cavill (in his first villainous role), who is known for portraying Superman / Clark Kent in the DC Extended Universe films.

Early Life
Although Walker's early life is never discussed, his years of CIA involvement is, albeit vaguely. Walker has been mistreated by his government multiple times, which ultimately led to Walker being driven to the edge, thus creating The Apostles to "save" the world.

Fallout
Walker is a CIA member who at first appears as a slightly cocky yet professional man who is ordered to keep an eye on Hunt and follow his every step due to the fact that he might very well go rogue, but ironically Walker is the one who has already done exactly that, using his position as a CIA Operative to secretly recreate the organization IMF dismantled in Rogue Nation, The Syndicate, now renamed "The Apostles", and Walker is the supreme leader of the organization with his real identity named John Lark, wanting to rescue Lane from prison to make him supreme leader and recreate the Syndicate altogether.

When FBI Director Ericka Sloane meets Alan Hunley after Luther was taken hostage by a group of Apostles members, and she sends Walker to watch Hunt and the IMF, suspecting that the IMF will go rogue in a near future. Walker and hunt go on a plane to skydive into a concert and make a deal with the White Widow who is a weapons dealer dealing weapons with John Lark. As they are skydiving however Walker dives early and is struck by lightning. Once they arrive, Hunt pretends to be John Lark after killing the true John Lark in order to get information from the White Widow. Walker and Hunt fight Lark, but both of them nearly die, until Walker beats him unconscious. Walker and Hunt have to copy his face, to make a mask when they are meeting with the widow. A group of drunk frenchmen come and start rambling as they think they are having a gay orgy, and when they leave Lark wakes up again and brutally beats both Walker and Hunt, before finally being shot by Ilsa Faust.

Hunt makes a deal with the widow to get to interrogate Lane. But as they are driving, Ilsa comes and repeatedly shoots at Hunt and Walker's car which Lane is sitting in, this is revealed to be because if she doesn't kill or arrest Lane, the MI6 will make her wanted and she will be regarded as much of a threat as Lane. When they are interrogating Lane, he gives a speech about Lane and how he will destroy his life, with Walker looking more annoyed than anything, a possible foreshadowing of Walker actually being the true John Lark who is cooperating with Lane and being frustrated at Lane's personal vendetta against Hunt. Benji disguises as Lane in order to distract the true John Lark, who is revealed to be Walker himself, who comes and starts shouting at Lane for "making things so fucking complicated". As they are discussing the IMF, Walker realizes that it was Benji he was talking to all along, and becomes shocked. He instantly aims his gun against Benji, preparing to kill him, but Hunley comes and forces Walker to admit himself as Lark. Walker at first seems to be calm, and lies by saying that he is just "undercover". This proves to be false when Walker fatally stabs Hunley while he's ordering his henchmen to shoot every IMF Agent they see in the room.

Walker calmly walks away from the room using the shootout as a distraction, but Hunt eventually starts chasing him. Walker manages to outwalk him however, and takes the elevator up to the roof of a building where Hunt hangs onto the elevator. Hunt is furious at Walker and starts shouting at him, but it doesn't work, and Walker calmly provokes him by threatening to kill Julia. He is captured by a helicopter also including Lane, which is going to Kashmir, where the two are holding a terrorist attack. Walker's true goal is also revealed; the plutonium he and Lane has collected will be used to create a huge explosive which will blow up in Kashmir, ruining the water supply and ultimately killing a third of the world's population, so that the world powers will work together and the dread will eventually cause peace due to how much fear it spreaded and the world powers finally coming together to fix something.

While in Kashmir, Walker sets the bomb on and prepares to blow it all up. He takes the helicopter to fly away, while Lane wants to stay at Kashmir, having become a nihilist after being imprisoned and endlessly interrogated for years. Hunt knocks two helicopter drivers unconscious and steals their helicopter, and prepares to fight Walker one final time. Walker grabs a machine-gun and starts shooting at Hunt, until Walker gets acid on his entire face which brutally burns it and drives him insane. They start fighting at the top of the mountain when the helicopter crashes, and the hook leaves them dangling at the mountain. Hunt manages to climb up from the rope of the hook, but the hook leaves the grip, impaling Walker's head which causes him to fall down and burn in the fire of the helicopter wreck, dying for good.

Personality
Walker is surprisingly polite and kind for a feared CIA Assassin, so feared in fact that Luther has to mention to Hunt how dangerous Walker can be. This is demonstrated in the bathroom fight scene, where Hunt and Walker fight a fake John Lark, and Walker brutally throws the man around the room without barely any effort. As mentioned above, aside from being surprisingly gentle, Walker is also well-intentioned in all of his goals. Him wanting to cause a massive, world-destroying, nearly omnicidal terrorist attack is because he wants to see the world finally coming together to help each other in stopping the attacks, which will finally bring peace, or at least he thinks so. It is shown multiple times before he is revealed as Lark that Walker actually seems to agree with Lark's theory, which also proves that Walker isn't doing it for fun as Lane is, but because he genuinely wants peace, which is similar to another villain in the franchise. Yet Walker is also very cocky, which kind of comes with the job. Walker seems to enjoy fighting people, once again shown in the bathroom fight scene where he looks like he's enjoying wrecking the mook. Hunt and Walker can be seen as good and evil counterparts, due to both being agents for their respective organizations, both are quite charismatic and smart, despite their high intellect they are both very good fighters and seem to enjoy fighting, and they are both surprisingly nice for the careers they have chosen. Hunt is the anti-hero who saves the world from terrorists and other dangerous people, and Walker is the anti-villain who wants to commit terrorism in order to save the world from dangerous people existing.

Walker is also highly manipulative, being able to manipulate everyone into thinking that he was merely trying to help the IMF when in reality he was manipulating them for his own gain all along. This could very well qualify Walker as a sociopath, due to having facades he smoothly uses to fit into the crowd, combined with other factors such as his disregard for human life, killing Alan Hunley simply because Hunley happened to be in the way when Walker was rescuing Lane. Another sociopathic tendency Walker has is his lack of empathy, as, despite having gotten to know the IMF and getting a somewhat friendly relationship with them, Walker has no problems betraying them and feeling nothing as he does that. Walker is shown to be easily angered when in stress, as at the end of the film, as he is trying to kill Hunt, he screams "WHY WON'T YOU DIE". This does not mean that he is not a complete sociopath though, his affable side is still there and he is still surprisingly nice for a genocidal terrorist, which is further pushed by Walker's quite sympathetic death, being impaled by a helicopter after falling down from a cliff, not even a villain like Walker deserves such a brutal and painful death. Walker is shown being protective of his associates, especially his partner Solomon Lane, who he protects at all costs during the climax when he rescues him from prison. killing anyone who gets in their way.

An interesting thing about Walker's character that is worth to mention is how he is always well-intentioned. When he's babysitting the IMF's operation, it is understandable where Walker is coming from as Hunt is showing more and more signs of losing his sanity and becoming a loose cannon, an example being when Lane is in a hospital bed and Hunt loses his temper and seems to want to fight him, which is especially evident since Lane is defenseless at that point and Luther has to hold Hunt back to stop him. At the climax, when it's revealed that Walker is the extremist John Lark, he still keeps his well-intentioned goals, as all he wants is to do an act heinous enough for the world powers to finally agree and come together to stop something, believing that it will cause peace. This is different from his master, Solomon Lane, who seems to only care about hurting Ethan as much as possible.

Trivia

 * Cavill is the third Superman actor to play a villainous role; the first was Christopher Reeve (who played Lawrence Muller in TV movie Bump in the Night) and the second was Brandon Routh, who played Daniel Shaw in Chuck.