'Mission: Impossible': Who Is Ethan Hunt?

Though the series predates the crew we met in the 1996 movie, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is certainly most synonymous with the Mission: Impossible franchise. The latest installment, Dead Reckoning Part One, suggests the Ethan we’ve come to think we know has a colored past, one these movies will uncover. Hunt, the “for the greater good” hero type always somehow gaining and losing the trust of his agency, is a criminal who kept his freedom in exchange for joining the IMF. A mysterious moment involving series newcomer, Gabriel (Esai Morales) and a woman named Marie may have led Ethan into the force’s arms and set off his history of desperately trying to protect women in his crossfire. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it,” used to come with a flimsy suggestion of danger — the missions almost a challenge for the agents. This installment’s twist on the story changes that choice to suggest the agents are choosing missions over imprisonment for their crimes. This feels like a retcon, one slapped into a franchise where squeaky-clean agents like Hunt and Lindsey Farris (Keri Russell) end up at the whims of slippery leaders like Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) and Musgrave (Billy Crudup). IMF agents are trained to weather near any storm, to disappear like ghosts, and are trusted with the world’s most dangerous secrets. (The fact Ethan is almost always being threatened with imprisonment and being disavowed while carrying out his missions makes me think the stakes really aren’t that high for him but alas). Perplexed by what seemed to retcon and change the connotation of most of Ethan’s actions thus far, I wanted to dive deep into what I thought I knew about everyone’s favorite IMF agent. So, who is Ethan Matthew Hunt?

It’s easy to explain away Ethan’s history as an IMF ghost story. “These guys are trained to be ghosts. We taught them to do it.” But he does have some canon history. There’s a biography of Ethan Hunt floating around online that delves deep into his life as a farm boy from Wisconsin who attended the University of Pennsylvania before joining the army, fighting in Desert Storm, then applying for the CIA. Then while at the CIA, Colonel Briggs recruited him for the IMF. But not all of this is film canon, so let’s explore its possible origin.

Hunt is introduced in the first Mission: Impossible as a member of Jim Phelps’ (Jon Voight, taking over a role played by Peter Graves in the TV show) IMF team. Not much of Hunt’s past is mentioned save for his dairy farmer parents who are used as pawns in a ploy to frame Hunt for being the mole. When Hunt is on the run from the IMF, he recruits two disavowed former IMF members in Luther (Ving Rhames) and Kreiger (Jean Reno), a shifty bunch who are suggested to have been criminals. Does this support Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning Part One’s suggestion that the IMF recruits criminals? Maybe.

In a dossier shown briefly in Mission: Impossible- Ghost Protocol there are notes that confirm Ethan’s parentage, that he served in the army, and his time at the University of Pennsylvania. Here, it states he was recruited for the IMF by Colonel Briggs (a character from the 1966 TV show played by Steven Hill). These dossiers also confirm Benji and Luther were recruited by Briggs and incriminates them all in the thieving of a smallpox vial. Sure, the phony smallpox bit could suggest the entire dossiers are bogus, but there’s no real reason to suspect their basic backgrounds to be fudged. As these exist within the film, it makes sense for them to be accepted canon.

What might not be canon are special features. In the special features of the first film, there is a six-slide breakdown of Ethan Hunt. According to this, Hunt was born in Madison Wisconsin and trained by Jim Phelps. He’s an expert in makeup and accents allowing him to impersonate most anyone, which he began to learn as a childhood passion to escape the “seclusion” of farm life. He studied linguistics, theater, and drama at the University of Wisconsin (not Pennsylvania) and then attended CIA training. During his time there (though there’s a lack of physical evidence), it’s believed he pulled off a massive prank by dressing as a commanding officer at a graduation ceremony and refusing to shake any hands. As a result of the prank, he caught the eye of Phelps who recruited him to the IMF. His first action was to recruit Sarah Davies (Kristin Scott Thomas). Again, a “just for fun” special feature might not suggest in-stone canon, but this serves as more to support the clean history of a highly skilled CIA agent, even if this time, he attended a different school.

Then there’s the 1996 novelization of the first installment. While the ubiquitous Hunt bio suggests he fought in Desert Storm, the only reference I could find in the book suggests it was another character who had that gig. But there are more clues about Ethan’s life before joining the IMF. Describing the moment after Ethan fleas from Kittridge accusing him of being the mole, it reads, “It had taken every ounce of Ethan’s professionalism and training to prevent him from reaching across that restaurant table and ripping Kittridge’s larynx right out of his throat. Even so, he found it hard to believe that a man of Kittridge’s experience would seriously entertain the notion that an IMF agent with Ethan’s decorated background would compromise his family, colleagues, and integrity, all for a paltry one hundred and twenty-seven thousand dollars in his mother’s bank account.” It stands to reason he wouldn’t be so dumbfounded if these were the actions of a man who was only in the IMF to avoid jail time. The book also suggests Ethan had been in the IMF for five years (not three as was suggested by the special features), confirms he was raised on the farm, and also has Ethan grappling with the idea of choosing to leave the IMF, something Dead Reckoning Part One’s addition would render undoable.

If we’re being absolute completionists, the 1996 movie also has a companion comic book (that comes with its own wild stories about Cruise and Hunt), but the book is difficult to track down and nothing suggests it fills in any extra Hunt blanks.

So who is Ethan Hunt? With most of his story coming from unreliable sources, stories extra to the film, and now what feels like a thin retcon, it’s hard to know for sure.