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Options: Luke, Sam, Tom, Alexander

(AJ is not an option since it includes his last name (Jeremy) so only the A (Alexander) is an option >:3)

And the fact that the theme is: fierce, unrelenting hope and trust especially in the face of insurmountable odds? I fear I may be thinking about this series for the rest of my life.

The first 3 ish movies are spent slowly beating ethan down. He starts out as this cocksure kid at the beginning of mi1. And then he's betrayed by his team leader who he trusts more than anything and is forced to watch and listen to every single one of them die, including Claire and Jim by the end.

He watches another imf agent go rogue (which absolutely could have been ethan in a different timeline given everything that had just happened to him) resulting in more people around him getting hurt, Nyah the most.

He tries so hard to get out, and gets a brief glimpse at normal happiness only for that to be ripped away from him as he watches his wife get kidnapped and tortured (3 does insane things for his character).

So we meet him at the beginning of ghost protocol in prison having had everything ripped away from him again and again. And now he's in prison. And yeah, we know Julia is alive, but the cruel irony of knowing your wife is alive but you can never be near her again goes crazy hard.

But the beauty of the series is that it's been slowly planting people in Ethan's life over these three movies to trust. And they're not trustworthy because Ethan already knows them. He essentially picks them randomly. Luther, selected off the list of disavowed agents ,ends up becoming his greatest and most reliable friend, his brother. Benji because he's the only one available and willing to help him in an absolutely insane endeavor to save his wife.

And we get to 4 and Ethan is back in the field with the ghost protocol team (whom I love but man are they team cringe fail). A team made up of the man who lives with the guilt of thinking he got Julia killed, a woman who is a walking time bomb due to the grief of losing someone she loved, and a man who is in the field for essentially the first time.

And Ethan takes a look at all of that baggage, including his own and says fuck it, this is my team and they are going to make it through this. And they do; by the skin of their teeth and a second left on the clock they make it. Ethan choses to trust the first full team since the first movie when all of them were ripped away from him.

Rogue nation gives us Ilsa who everyone distrusts immediately, except for Ethan. Ethan is once again betrayed by his government and so is Ilsa. And Ethan knows what that's like and thus Ilsa is part of the team.

Fallout tests that trust as Ilsa is forced to work against Ethan for half of the movie. But fallout is also one of the first times these themes are explicitly stated with "hope is not a a strategy. You must be new".

Ethan has been betrayed countless times, lost so many people close to him, and had the shit kicked out of him so many times he probably has a little brain damage. And yet he keeps getting up, he trusts and he hopes, because that's the only thing standing between them and the end of the world.

We get to dead reckoning and he constantly tries to work with Grace, to protect her, to get her out. Even though she is absolutely working against him at every turn. Anyone else would not work this hard to protect someone who is being this actively antagonist to their goals. But Ethan is not the same man as the kid who lost his team so long ago. Ilsa is ripped away from him. He keeps losing people and just keeps going, because hope and trust is all he has now.

And it's really all hammered home in final reckoning. He just had to walk away as he watched his oldest and closest friend let himself die to save an entire city and he immediately asks Briggs to, please just work with him, while actively crying because of the friend he just lost. (And no Briggs, he's actually never gotten used to losing people, ever. That's what makes Ethan, Ethan. It's BECAUSE he cares so much). He spends most of this movie really just begging people to trust him, to trust each other, to give him a chance to stop the entity despite the odds being insane. Because he's been shown time and time again, that trusting in those around you, however foolish it may seem is what saves the day in the end.

Over the course of 30 years they managed to beat Ethan down and build him back up as this character built on love and hope and care for the people around him. This doesn't even begin to talk about all the small moments of compassion throughout the series (the one in fallout with the French police woman always sticks out in my head).

everyone but me is wrong about them

I’m obsessed with their character arc

They got done dirty by the fans

They got done dirty by the creator/s

Wasted potential

[In all caps] Adoption papers adoption papers filing the adoption papers

I am constantly going insane rotating them in my brain like a fork in a microwave

They work better as part of a dynamic

The popular ships for this character suck

Overrated

Constantly listening to songs and holding them up like a paint swatch

[In all caps] I want to study them like a cockroach

[In all caps] free space

What’s wrong with them (affectionate)

What’s wrong with them (derogatory)

Not enough screen time

Too much screen time

I would never want to meet them [never in caps]

They’ve never done anything wrong in their life [heart emoticon]

My opinions would be relieved by most fansas akin to hitting a wasps nest with a baseball bat

This is the best character in the work

I like them but I don’t really think about them much

I don’t really have much to say abt them

I actively dislike them

[In all caps] biting and killing and maiming them and death and violence

I Am Once Again Posting Web Lonks

https://soap2day.to/ tv + movies

https://twist.moe/ anime

http://mangakatana.com/ manga

https://libgen.is/ books (includes textbooks!)

an entire fake season of the show had to be made up to make a single companion’s timeline possible

the last story of the entire run involves the master turning into a cat furry

a companion nearly gets eaten by a giant clam

there is an entire season where every villain is the master but in different ludicrous disguises. one time he summons satan

one time the production team forgot colin baker tied to a pole in the woods

tom baker’s scarf was supposed to be normal scarf-length, but the person who bought the yarn had no idea how much yarn you need to make a scarf and bought way too much, and the person who was hired to make the scarf wasn’t told to stop. so she just. didn’t

the fifth doctor had a robot companion who had to be abruptly written off the show after the only person who knew how to operate the robot died

there is a serial where people are eaten by inflatable furniture and people complained to the bbc that it was too violent

an alien exiled to a boys’ boarding school on earth was convinced to kill the doctor by a man with a bird shellacked to his scalp. he failed so badly at killing the doctor that he became a companion instead

UNLIMITED RICE PUDDING

The Master once dressed up as a Scarecrow and stood in a field. The Doctor and his companion walked by by PURE CHANCE and the Master took that as an excuse to drop the disguise and throw together a plan that involved causing a minor inconvenience to established history. There was no logical way he could have known the Doctor would be in that place at that time. He just felt like being a scarecrow and freaking out birds I guess

That same story has someone turned into a sentient tree

The Seventh Doctor once distracted three Lovecraftian beings from before the dawn of time with a magic show who were running a Murderous Circus staffed by homicidal clowns until his pyromaniac lesbian companion could throw him a hippies magic pendant which shot lasers at the gods and killed them.

That same story had a Space Werewolf and a British Explorer From Space 

The Sixth Doctor’s companion Peri had a timeline so effing convoluted that an entire audio drama was made about how time travel had genuinely created MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF HER because it was the only way to explain all the contradictions

The Fourth Doctor painted the words “This is a Fake” behind the Mona Lisa as part of a plan to stop an alien art thief from wiping humanity from existence

The Seventh Doctor once fought a Homicidal Bertie Basset who worked for Margaret Thatcher in Space and killed people with deadly sweets. He defeated him with lemonade.

Ace literally has a girlfriend in almost every story she’s in. It’s not even subtle. In one story they literally had her and her Girl of the Week dressed in tuxes together.