Ethan Hunt

Creation

Ethan Hunt is an original character created for Mission: Impossible (1996), a film based on the 1960s tv series of the same name. He is portrayed by Tom Cruise.

Major Story Arcs

Job 314

Ethan Hunt is part of an Impossible Mission Force (IMF) team sent to Prague to stop a rogue agent from stealing and selling a CIA non-official cover (NOC) list. The mission goes south when every member of Ethan’s team is killed (including the rogue agent and Jim Phelps, team leader) and the NOC list gets out in the open. Ethan calls-in to Jim’s superior, Kitteridge, to be debriefed. However, Kitteridge explains that the mission was a mole hunt. He believes the mole has set up a meeting with a buyer, named Max, as an operation codenamed, Job 314. Kitteridge also explains that Ethan is the prime suspect as he is the lone survivor. To clear his name and avenge his team, Ethan falls off the grid.

Believing Job 314 to be a reference to The Bible, Ethan attempts to set up a meeting with Max. She quickly figures out that he is not Job. Instead, Ethan explains the NOC list she received is a fake with a tracker and that he can attain the real list for Job’s price and the identity of Job. Max agrees when Kitteridge and his men show up to detain them, having used the tracker. To retrieve the NOC list, Ethan would need to lead a team into Langley, CIA headquarters. He enlists the help of other disavowed IMF members:

• Luther, a hacker
• Krieger, a pilot
• Claire, Jim Phelp’s wife who by some fluke also survived the mole hunt mission

After successfully stealing the NOC list, Ethan was growing more and more suspicious that the mole could have been on his former team or his new team. While making a strategic call to Kitteridge to inform him of the Max deal going down on the high speed rail line to Paris, he is approached by an injured Jim Phelps. He tries to persuade Ethan that he has been lying low until he could find the team’s killer, but Ethan sees right through him, determining that he was the mole and Claire was potentially in on it as well.

On the train, Ethan used a double mask to pose as Jim so that Claire would reveal her true intentions. She revealed she has been in on the plan but does not want Ethan killed. When Ethan rips off the mask, the real Jim enters to steal the money from the Max deal and kill Claire. Jim makes his exit along the top of the train where he planned to jump to a helicopter flown by Krieger, also a mole. Ethan follows, destroying the plane with an explosive disguised as chewing gum, killing both of his former teammates. Meanwhile, Luther, who is loyal to Ethan, witnesses Max’s NOC download and hands over relevant evidence to Kitteridge, clearing Ethan’s name.

Chimera Virus

Ethan is put a new a mission when a former informant of his, Dr. Vladimir Nekhorvich, tries to send a message to him. He warns that his current employer, Biocyte Pharmaceuticals, forced him to develop a virus, codenamed Chimera, and its cure, codenamed Bellepheron, to be used as a biological weapon. Unfortunately, a rogue agent, Sean Ambrose, posed as Ethan in order to steal the cure. Ethan is asked to recover both the virus and the cure. His team consists of:

• Luther, a hacker reactivated after the Job 314 case
• Billy, a pilot
• Nyah, a thief and former girlfriend of Ambrose.

Nyah learns that Ambrose does not have the virus and is using video of Chimera’s effects to blackmail that pharmaceutical company into handing over a sample. Upon learning this, Ethan plans to break into the company’s lab and destroy it. Unfortunately, one sample is stopped from being destroyed because Ambrose used a double mask to pose as Ethan and trick Nyah into revealing the plan. His attempt to use Nyah as a bargaining chip with Ethan fails when Nyah injects herself with the only remaining sample of the virus. This gives her 20 hours to receive the cure or else succumb to symptoms and start a pandemic.

Ethan is able to get Nyah to safe house while he attempts to steal the cure. By kidnapping Ambrose’s right hand man, Ethan uses double masks to switch identities. While Ambrose executes his own man thinking he was Ethan, Ethan grabs all the samples of the cure and speeds back to the safe house. Ambrose and his men give chase, leading to a fight on a nearby beach. Meanwhile, Luther and Billy retrieve Nyah and bring her to Ethan. Ethan is able to take Ambrose out and cure Nyah just in time.

Rabbit’s Foot

For some time, Ethan has enjoyed semi-retirement from IMF fieldwork, training new agents and settling down with his ER nurse fiancé, Julia. During an engagement party, Ethan is approached by Assistant Director Musgrave that his most prized pupil, Lindsey Farris, was captured by an arms dealer, Owen Davian. He is specially requested to lead a team to rescue her. His team consists of:

• Luther, Ethan’s go-to hacker
• Declan Gormley
• Zhen Lei

Although they are able to get Lindsey, she had a small explosive injected into her head that went off before Ethan could disarm it. Lindsey had made other arrangements though. She sent a microdot directly to Ethan. IMF tech, Benji Dunn, was able to decode the message, showing plans for Davian’s Vatican City trip and Lindsey’s suspicion of Director Brassell. Ethan decides to mount an unofficial mission to retrieve Davian and interrogate him about a device known only as “The Rabbit’s Foot.”

Aided by his previous team, Ethan successfully kidnaps Davian, but Davian’s team quickly catches up to them and rescues their boss. Knowing Ethan’s identity, Davian is able to kidnap Julia and convince Ethan to steal The Rabbit’s Foot for him in exchange for her life. Still suspicious of Brassell, Musgrave helps Ethan escape IMF custody after Davian’s escape and arranges for his team to meet him in Shanghai for the heist.

After delivering the Rabbit’s Foot, Davian’s team kidnap Ethan to interrogate him over whether it was the legitimate Rabbit’s Foot or not. They go as far as to fake Julia’s death to get a genuine reaction from Ethan. After which, Musgrave reveals that he, not Brassell, is working with Davian and continues to interrogate Ethan over whether his cover is secure or not. Angry, Ethan breaks out of his restraints and tracks Julia's location, however, he is in immense pain due to the explosive injected into his brain. Despite the pain, he fights off Davian and Musgrave and frees Julia. Once freed, he instructs Julia to disarm the bomb using a defibrillator and then revive him.

With the Rabbit’s Foot in IMF custody, Ethan finally goes on his honeymoon with Julia.

Ghost Protocol

To protect his wife, Julia’s death was faked and Ethan was put in a Russian prison for the unsanctioned slaying of her murderers. This was information only shared with the highest authorities within the IMF. However, when an assassin kills an IMF agent and steals nuclear launch codes for a nuclear strategist named Hendricks, who seeks to trigger a nuclear war, Ethan is broke out of prison to lead a mission to recover the codes. His team consists of:

• Jane Carter, whose boyfriend was the agent killed
• Benji Dunn, who recently passed his field agents test
• William Brandt, a disgraced field agent who took a desk job.

Their first attempt to recover the codes was unsuccessful and led to the destruction of the Kremlin. With the IMF taking the blame, the President initiated The Ghost Protocol, disavowing the entire agency. Despite this, the IMF Secretary still gave Ethan a final mission to recover the codes and stop Hendricks. Thus, he takes his team to Dubai where they plan on faking both handoffs in different hotel rooms in the Burj Khalifa. In one room, Ethan and Brandt will buy the real codes from the assassin, and in the other, Jane will sell fake codes to Hendricks. In order for this to go swimmingly, they need to break into the tower’s security system, which needs to be done physically without IMF resources. This forces Ethan to scale the tallest building in the world and physically tap into the network.

The plan goes wrong when Hendricks brings an expert to authenticate the codes, forcing them to hand over the real codes. Afterward, Ethan gives chase but loses Hendricks in a sandstorm. Using connections he made in the Russian prison, they find a lead that Hendricks was buying an old Soviet satellite from an Indian business tycoon. Their attempts to interfere with the satellite signal failed, leaving Ethan’s last chance to track Hendricks and hope there is an abort function on his interface. After a lengthy fight in a fancy parking garage, Ethan is able to abort the nuclear detonation.

Rogue Nation

Since stopping Hendricks’ attempt at nuclear war, Ethan and his go-to team members, Luther and Benji, have been investigating The Syndicate, a rogue nation made up of clandestine agents from a variety of foreign agencies. This investigation is hampered when the CIA Director, Alan Hunley, convinces a Senate subcommittee to decommission the IMF, forcing the agents to either retire or transfer to the CIA. Luther retired and Benji and Brandt accepted the transfer. Ethan opted to go underground again and continue investigating The Syndicate.

Eventually, he recruited Benji to help him follow a lead at the Vienna Opera where they attempted to stop the assassination of the chancellor from Austria, with a double agent within the Syndicate, Ilsa Faust. She reveals to them that the leader of the Syndicate is rogue MI6 agent, Solomon Lane, and she has been planning a heist on a secret guarded server where the digital ledger, full of Syndicate agent names, is kept. It required Ethan to spend 3 minutes underwater with no scuba equipment to change security parameters which nearly killed him. After successfully stealing it, Faust betrayed Ethan and Benji and brought the ledger to her contact in MI6, Chief Atlee, who had it erased.

Thankfully, Benji had made a copy, and with help from Luther, who had teamed up with Brandt to find Ethan before the CIA did, they determined it is a digital MI6 red box that is locked with the UK Prime Minister biometrics. Lane would blackmail Ethan into unlocking it by kidnapping Benji and leveraging his life. Using a double mask of Atlee, Ethan gets close to the Prime Minister during a meeting with Hunley and Brandt. There, he is able to drug the PM and use his biometrics to unlock the red box, revealing a £2.4 billion slush fund for off-the-books operations started by Atlee. Knowing Lane will use it to fund the Syndicate, Ethan memorizes the accounts and destroys the only copy. He then trades his life for Benji’s and tricks Lane into pursuing him, luring him into a trap.

With Lane imprisoned and the Syndicate broke, Hunley convinces the Senate subcommittee that his initial arguments were part of a cover story, and the IMF should be reinstated.

Fallout

Ethan is given a new mission to prevent three stolen plutonium cores from falling into the hands of a man named John Lark, who had written a manifesto about peace requiring first a great suffering. He has hired The Apostles, remnants of The Syndicate, to steal if for him. Ethan and his go-to team of Benji and Luther were posing as buyers when The Apostles crashed the meeting. They forced Ethan to choose between Luther and the plutonium. Ethan chose Luther. Due to this failure, the new CIA director, Erika Sloane, forced them to work with one of her agents, August Walker, in order to keep an eye on them.

Together, Ethan and Walker attempt to grab a man they believe to be Lark at a Paris nightclub and take his place in the meeting with arms dealer, Alanna Mistopolis (daughter of Max). Before they could create a Lark mask, Lark regains consciousness and fights them to a standstill only to be killed by Faust, who was also tracking the plutonium. Forced to meet Mistopolis without a mask, hoping she never met Lark, Ethan went in and made a deal with her: the plutonium for Solomon Lane. The team, now joined by Faust, jailbreak Lane during a prison transport, but at the IMF safehouse, Walker is tricked into revealing his identity as Lark.

Lark kills Hunley, releases Lane, and escapes with a CIA task force infiltrated by members of The Apostles. Ethan and his team track them to a medical camp by the Siachen Glacier. Ethan believes they are going to set off all three nukes in this secluded area to poison the water source for India, Pakistan, and China. The medical camp also happens to be the current workplace of Ethan’s ex-wife, Julia. While his team starts disarming the bombs, Luther determines they have a failsafe that will cause the other two to blow if own is disarmed. This requires Ethan to secure the trigger mechanism from Lark who is already escaping by helicopter. Ethan gives chase and eventually sends Lark over the edge of a cliff after they crash land.

In the aftermath, Lane is re-captured and handed over to MI6, finally clearing Faust’s name for good.

The Key to the Entity

Ethan receives a new mission brief from former IMF Deputy Director, Kittridge, who is now the Director of the CIA. He tasked Ethan with hunting his old friend, Ilsa Faust, who had attained one half of a special key related to an advanced Russian submarine, lost at sea. It was run with state-of-the-art A.I. that had grown sentient. This Entity had been targeting the intelligence and defense of every major nation and needed to be stopped. However, Ethan confirmed his suspicions that the American Intelligence Community was looking to control it. So, Ethan faked Ilsa's death and arranged for her to reunite with his team: Benji and Luther.

They planned on selling their half of the key to a buyer who had the other half. With the other half, they'd be able to confirm both halves were real and could track the location of the lock it opens. Unfortunately, their plan was interrupted by two different players: Grace and Gabriel. Gabriel was a spy from Ethan's pre-IMF past who was working with the Entity, but Grace was a simple thief hired by Alanna Mistopolis to retrieve the key. Alanna already had the other half and set up the sale as a trap.

Ethan decided to make an asset out of Grace, offering her more money if she helps him secure the keys. This time they set up a face-to-face sale with Alanna at a nightclub, however, the nightclub had been taken over by the Entity and was full of its agents, including Gabriel and martial artist named Paris. Alanna rejected all their offers, leading to a chase through Venice. Manipulating their comms, The Entity led Ethan into a trap with Paris, and Ilsa and Grace into a trap with Gabriel. Ethan fought Paris but spared her life. When he made it to Ilsa and Grace's location, Isla was dead.

Although distraught, Ethan formed a new plan to interrupt Alanna's sale on the Orient Express. Using a mask, Grace would replace Alanna and make the sale, allowing Ethan to recover the key afterward. Alanna's buyer turned out to be Kittridge, whose plan was to force the keys into the open so that he could buy them for America and the greater good. Gabriel and Paris also snuck on board, sabotaging the breaks and bombing a bridge the train was due to cross. After Grace's cover is blown and Gabriel makes his getaway, Ethan and Grace attempt to save the people on the train.

Unfortunately, Kittridge still planned to arrest Ethan. He was forced to abandon Grace on the train and parachute to safety with the keys.