hope this is ok to ask. may i pick your brain for a moment on dead wife luther? how do you think ethan might process his grief for luther in particular in comparison to other 'dead wives' (jack harmon and claire and the girl in the record shop spring to mind, but ofc everyone else too)
yes you MAY! and incidentally i appreciated your tag about him, luther's one of the characters that i go crazy over and imo he doesn't get the same level of care generally in fandom as benji or ilsa. which is INSANE given his pivotal role in the franchise.
I feel like with this new addition to MI theres a lot that I need to reevaluate in terms of how the text portrays ethan's close relationships and his "dead wives." The ones that are pointed out in this film in particular are interesting--Ilsa, Julia, and Marie (come to think of it, kind of shocking how that one really didn't go anywhere. Maybe cut for streamlining purposes in an already packed movie. And as a side note, looking at the pair of movies I still wish Ilsa's death had gotten more time.)
To me the closest similarity to Luther's death is Ilsa, with Julia as a close second. These are people who take responsibility over their own choices and refuse to let their deaths be slotted into Ethan's internal narrative of being innately harmful. Obviously Julia doesn't really die--but for franchise purposes, she's still a dead wife, a casualty of proximity. Both she and Ilsa walk into their fates with all the relevant information, simply because it's their choice to make. Luther says to Ethan, I have no regrets, and neither should you. He knows the life he's in--he was in it before Ethan showed up and he would have stayed in it if Ethan had walked away, even though that was never in the cards. He forces Ethan to forgive himself for his death, and I think that's an incredible, beautiful expression of how much he loves Ethan and how well he knows him.
I think the thing that devastates me the most about Luther's death is what it means for Ethan to truly be the last person of his time left alive. Not technically--Kittridge is still there--but emotionally, Luther dying means that Ethan has far outlived his expiration date. Luther and Ethan were peers in a way that Ethan hasn't truly experienced with anyone else. This is another parallel with Ilsa, because I think her role was the closest to matching Luther's in terms of acting as a colleague with equal experience and skill, although her age meant she had an edge of naivete that Ethan didn't anymore. I'm going off on tangents. The point, to me, is that in MI1 we are introduced to the world of lies, the leader of your team who you love like a father who frames you for murder, his wife who seduces you and treats you like a child, the government who doesn't care if you live or die, and when Ethan meets Luther there's a fucking honest connection. They trust each other with no reason to. Their friendship forms the foundation of the entire franchise and all the team formations that follow. Their friendship makes Ethan as we know him possible.
I love how much care Luther put into his last message to Ethan--I love how much this movie focused on what a rare, insane talent he was--I love that he told Ethan he loved him. I wanted him to call Ethan "baby" like he did in mi3 (was it mi3?) but we can't have everything. In terms of how Ethan can grieve Luther and still live...it's hard to imagine what's keeping Ethan upright at this point. As a man who has always lived for his friends rather than himself, it's incredibly punishing to see him exit the movie alone. Before the movie was out when we were still speculating I remember telling @callmearcturus and @interropunct that I didn't think Ethan could keep living if Luther died. The conclusion we decided on was that either they would all die or they would all live. Probably the only one of them, we thought, who could survive without the others (although forever changed) would be Luther himself, because of his well established lone wolf tenacity. I think Luther anticipated that his death would take away one of the last pillars holding Ethan up, and I think that's part of why he planted the message. He wanted Ethan to outlive him. I don't know how I feel about Luther canonically believing in Heaven--but I do respect how earnestly he and the movie seem to mean his sentiment, a deep desire for the two of them to see each other again that almost has nothing to do with a belief in any religion's God or afterlife.
To be honest, personally, I think Luther's death marks the end of Ethan as we know him, although I don't think Ethan realizes that yet at the end of the movie. I don't think Ethan is willing to stop fighting, and I don't think he's going to stop living. But I think Luther was more of Ethan than he was--Luther was there for all the things Ethan couldn't talk about--Luther trusted him implicitly at his craziest--when Luther saw his own death as inevitable, Ethan refused to even imagine it. I made the dead wife joke lol, but Luther is more than his wife. That's his best friend. Ethan's going to carry his memory everywhere so he doesn't lose him. And because Luther took great care to absolve Ethan of his death, that memory is one that will bring more comfort than guilt. That's love baby!
