OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
Henry Cavill’s “bicep reload” from Mission: Impossible – Fallout has become one of the most talked-about and memed moments in recent Hollywood history. The 2018 film, packed with intense stunts and high-octane action, saw Cavill facing off against Tom Cruise in a bathroom brawl. Amid the chaos of punches and flying fists, Cavill’s character, August Walker, paused to reload his arms—by flexing his biceps like a man preparing for war. It was a moment that instantly went viral, with the internet gleefully declaring Cavill was “reloading” his muscles as if they were weapons.

While it’s become one of the most iconic images from the film, Cavill has now shared the truth behind this viral moment, and it’s not quite as planned as it may seem.

In a recent interview, Cavill explained that the infamous arm-pumping sequence was, in fact, an unscripted improvisation. “I’ve seen so many conversations about this on Reddit where I managed to punch a pocket square onto my shirt and grow a beard,” he joked, referring to the hilarious online reactions. But then he got serious about the moment that took the world by storm.

Cavill continued, revealing the real reason behind his “reload.” “It was a very intense fight scene. We’d actually been shooting it for about three weeks at that stage, which is a long time in comparison to things like The Witcher, where you have a day,” he said. Repetitive motions, especially in action scenes, can take a toll on the body, and Cavill’s biceps were no exception. “Everything starts to get quite sore after a while, because it’s a lot of repetitive motion, and the connective tendons in my biceps were getting sore, so I had to warm them up before I threw punches,” he explained.

Rather than letting the discomfort affect his performance, Cavill took a moment to literally “warm up” his muscles, flexing his arms as if he was prepping them for battle. “I’d literally do that to warm them up, and I did it once and I thought, oh god that probably looks really stupid, I can’t believe I did that,” he admitted. But what he thought was an accidental misstep quickly became a highlight of the scene.

After the take, director Christopher McQuarrie wasn’t bothered by the move at all—in fact, he loved it. “I did another take without doing it, and [Christopher McQuarrie] is like ‘Why didn’t you do that thing? That was really good,’” Cavill shared. “And I was like ‘That was good?’ And he said ‘Yes, definitely do that.’”

And so, the “bicep reload” was born—not as a pre-planned stunt but as a spur-of-the-moment solution to muscle fatigue, which then became one of the most enduring visual symbols of Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Cavill’s flexibility and willingness to turn a moment of discomfort into a defining characteristic of his character only adds to the raw intensity of the scene, showing that even the most viral moments in film can come from real-life solutions to behind-the-scenes challenges.

In the end, Cavill’s bicep flex didn’t just help him power through a grueling fight scene—it helped him make a lasting impact on pop culture. And while the internet may have run wild with memes and theories about the move, Cavill remains humble about how something so simple became an iconic part of his action star legacy.

So, the next time you catch a glimpse of that “bicep reload” scene, you’ll know the real secret: it wasn’t about reloading muscles—it was about keeping them warm for the next big punch.