Filming is well underway on Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible 6. We don’t know any of the plot details, but in February, McQuarrie said he wants the new movie to be an “emotional journey” for Ethan Hunt:

“I’ve seen five of these movies and I don’t know who Ethan Hunt is. One movie sort of dealt with his personal life; the other movies are about people speculating what’s really going on in Ethan’s head. I want to know who Ethan is in this movie, I want an emotional journey for this character, and Tom really embraced it.”

His approach this time, then, was to say “‘I don’t want to string together a bunch of action scenes, I want to actually deal with character’. So I put Ethan in a bunch of complicated moral quandaries, and I’m trying to find ways to connect them – and then, ironically, the way to connect them was through giant action scenes.”

The movie that “sort of dealt with his personal life” is J.J. Abrams’ Mission: Impossible III where Ethan is engaged to Dr. Julia Meade (Michelle Monaghan), who doesn’t know about his life as a secret agent. In Ghost Protocol, we learned that they had decided to break up because Ethan felt he couldn’t protect her as long as they were together. Now it looks like Julia is back in the picture.

McQuarrie sent out the following photo on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVSg1k4Aczd/

Of course, we have no idea how Julia will factor into the story. She could be part of a flashback, a quick cameo, or a pivotal scene (at this stage of the game, I doubt she’s a leading role). However she’s present, it definitely seems to bolster McQuarrie’s approach that Mission: Impossible 6 will delve into Ethan Hunt’s personal life, and that’s definitely a story worth telling.

Mission: Impossible 6 opens July 27, 2018 and also stars Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Henry Cavill, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Vanessa Kirby, Angela Bassett, Sean Harris, and Alec Baldwin.

via Collider