Ethan Hunt has been through a lot over the course of the last six Mission: Impossible movies, both physically and emotionally. We mostly remember the physical trials like hanging from buildings and HALO jumping out of airplanes, but we should not forget the, perhaps equally, perilous love life of Ethan Hunt. But if fans are hoping for any sort of happily ever after, writer/director Christopher McQuarrie is indicating that’s just not where things can go for Tom Cruise’s character.
Ethan Hunt has had romantic entanglements throughout his on-screen life and he’s even been married, but at the current place in the story, the romantic tension is between him and Ilsa Faust, played by Rebecca Ferguson. The trailer for Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning: Part One, hints that the pair may be getting closer in the new film, but director Christopher McQuarrie told Empire that he has little interest in this being a conventional love story, and things are far more complicated. He explained…
What we've really baked into the narrative is that the closer someone gets to him, the more dangerous it is. I was never really interested in creating a typical love interest for Ethan,. Once that relationship consummates, that relationship is over. The simple fact of the matter is you're not making Mr & Mrs Smith, you're making Mission: Impossible, and so the challenge comes in creating a relationship that is always evolving and never quite reaching what is a somewhat mundane resolution. I'm much more interested in seeing characters who could be – and maybe even would be – but can't because of the very nature of what they do. So, if I could distill it… it's complicated!
Based on everything we know about Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning, both parts, it is expected to be the end of the story, at least for Tom Cruise, but if fans were hoping Ethan and Ilsa would ride off into the sunset together, that seems unlikely based on what McQuarrie is saying here. He finds the conventional resolution of the relationship mundane, and if Mission: Impossible is anything, it’s never mundane.
This will probably upset some fans who are strongly invested in this particular relationship. Especially following the ending of Mission: Impossible - Fallout. That film saw a resolution to the relationship between Ethan and his former wife Julia, where she has moved on with her life and is happy. This could have been seen as a way to clear the way for Ethan’s new romantic interest, and while that element will clearly be part of the new films, it sounds like the fact that Ethan and Ilsa can’t be together will be what that story is really all about.
Still, whatever romantic future Ethan Hunt does have, it sounds like it will be with Ilsa. If anybody is worried that the new character played by Hayley Atwell is meant to get involved in a romantic story with Ethan Hunt, you can relax. While Cruise and Atwell were romantically linked during production, McQuarrie says the characters will have a very different relationship.
