Up until 1996, Mission: Impossible was best known as a popular TV series that aired from 1966 to 1973, but then the property was brought to the big screen, where it’s thrived ever since. That first Mission: Impossible movie got off to a pretty brutal start though, as the members of Ethan Hunt’s IMF team were killed one by one, including Emilio Estevez’s Jack Harmon. But as it turns out, Tom Cruise regretted killing off Estevez’s character and tried to bring him back for another movie.
The actor known from The Outsiders and The Breakfast Club learned this straight from Cruise himself, recalling how a year after Mission: Impossible came out, the star of the blockbuster franchise had told him, “Man, we made such a mistake killing you off.” Emilio Estevez then stated Cruise had been looking for a way to fit him into 2000’s Mission: Impossible 2, saying:
