#like whatever the fuck is going on williams

[friedcheesemogu]

WHY WILLIAM BRANDT IS MY FAVORITE "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE" CHARACTER

This is a presentation I made for my discord last year, mostly for my own enjoyment, hopefully someone else will find it fun.

(I will state up front that it doesn't include anything about "M:I: Dead Reckoning" or any speculation on "Final Reckoning." For reasons.) Grab your snacks, here we go:

Hi. Thanks for coming.

Once upon a time, back in 2011, a friend wanted to go see "Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol." I had seen "MI2" in theaters, promptly forgotten about it, and mostly we were going to this because my friend loved Simon Pegg, and this Jeremy Renner dude was going to be playing Hawkeye in the spring in "Avengers" so we were interested in checking him out. I liked the character of William Brandt a lot, and was very relieved when he wasn't the bad guy.

I then promptly forgot about him for the next 9 years.

In the summer of 2020, my housemate brought home the MI blu-ray set. When he put on MI1, I started off across the room from the TV, slowly crawling closer, climbing over the couch, finally committing to it... and had a great time. I mean, MI2 is hot garbage, but whatever, doves, man. MI3 was solid, and then I saw "Ghost Protocol," and I imprinted on William Brandt. Like hardcore. Like it makes me look stupid.

But I can't talk about him without first talking about...

I. ETHAN HUNT

Have you seen this man? Now you have.

So I see the MI series as a long term character journey for Ethan.

Each movie is different and each Ethan is different, based on where he is in life. (And yes, I know that's also because up until a point they all had different directors, but hear me out).

MI1:

The cocky beginner with nothing to lose. Well... he loses a few things, but by the end of it, he's pretty well set up. He also plans to get out of the game until the very end.

MI2:

Ethan's emo phase. He's becoming better at his job and he knows it, he's careless and rash with himself and with other people. And again he walks away at the end.

MI3:

"I'm trying to be normal." Ethan's gotten older, and is initially out of the field, and he wants to try that, he wants to see if he can have a civilian life with the woman he loves, live in a house, have a dog... He genuinely loves Julia and wants to be with her. Even at the end, I think he still has an idea that he can balance this life with IMF.

But then...

MI4:

This is the turning point. This is the crux of the change.

A friend once said that GP "isn't essential to watch" and my argument to that was, "what the fuck." Let's look into this.

Up until this point, Ethan's attitude has been "I can leave/I want to leave."

In MI3, he even asks Luther to "remember a life before all this," assuming and idealizing that as something better than what he is or what he has when he's with IMF

GP is the first time that Ethan is in it from the beginning. He's not green. He's not on vacation. He's not trying to run. He's been in a Russian Prison for two years and he put himself there. Now we start to see that his priorities have shifted, or at least, his priorities have made it such that he feels/needs/wants to be in the game. And here we find out what he's given up to do it: his marriage, his freedom, his physical and mental wellbeing (inasmuch as Ethan ever thinks about his mental wellbeing, but that's a different post)

At the end, it's the first time we see him walk directly towards another mission instead instead of trying to get away.

This is also the first time he seems to really appreciate his team and hold himself and them accountable to each other. After talking to The Fog, the team that was chosen for him.

...becomes the team he chooses.

(Please take a moment to admire how cute they are, how helpful. Jane Carter, my queen. Benji Dunn, my moppet.)

And part of the team he chooses to finish the job includes that guy that they "inherited:"

He chooses William Brandt.

LET'S LOOK AT THESE FINE BITCHES A FEW MORE TIMES:

*muffled "Crew" by Dessa" playing the background*

This image is my phone case.

Anyway, let's get to the main event: why William Brandt?

II. WILL

I'm gonna refer to him as "Will" from this point on, because this man is my baby. He is tattooed on my thigh. We are close, and every time I think about the fact that he is the only team member who never gets called anything but "Brandt" it breaks my heart. So I'm not gonna do that to him.

Will is unlike any team member Ethan has ever had.

Most people want to work with Ethan. Will would rather be anywhere else. He's an unwilling participant. He doubts his abilities and his usefulness even though he has the training and he knows the job. He's nervous. He's not ready for this. He doesn't want to do it...but he has to. So he will.

Ethan can't read him

Ethan is extremely good at figuring people out, or at least coming up with a rough idea of who they are/what they're after very quickly (traitors notwithstanding). But Will hides his true self perfectly. Well... almost.

Until he was actually fighting for his life, Ethan and the others assumed Will was just baggage. The fact that Ethan pauses mid fight to notice Will breaking a dude's leg is notable, because that's the moment he realizes he's misjudged him completely. Will has the ability to blend in and not seem like a threat, when the truth is, he's as fast as Ethan and can more than hold his own.

This scene is so fast that even though I've watched it about 436 times I still can't follow their hands and MY GOD it's so sexy I want to throw my computer across the room.

Will can pass in both the political world that Ethan shuns and on the field. He works with Hunley while simultaneously subverting him. He's able to do the field work in Mumbai and play along flawlessly in London in "Rogue Nation."

There is no literally reason for Ethan to say "you tell me yours, I'll tell you mine" in that tone of voice while they look each other up and down unless...

Anyway.

2. Will has real and believable pain and guilt

Will spends all of GP working with someone whose life he feels responsible for ruining. Whose wife he feels responsible for killing. He's haunted by Croatia and it's visible on his face when he talks about it to Jane and Benji (thank you Jeremy Renner). His emotions are crippling in a way that has never been addressed before, because they bring up what Ethan has only started to accept at this point: the cost of what they do is that you can lose people, forever. You can lose your faith in the job, in yourself, and sometimes that breaks you. Will, for all his high position, skill, and intelligence, considers himself a failure.

It's also worth noting that he and Jane are interesting parallels: they were both in charge of missions where they fucked up and now have to face their mistakes directly to fix them. But Jane is able to take her anger and her pain and turn it around; it takes Will years to even face it, and that's only under duress. That he rises to the occasion is to his credit, but it's hardly unreasonable to be so shaken by how you've failed that it takes a very long time to pick yourself back up.

3. Loyalty

Something I feel Will never really gets credit for is his loyalty to so many things, even at the cost of his sense of self.

He's loyal to IMF - he never left. Even when he was at his lowest, he did something else within the agency. He committed himself to this and he's going to do it, no matter how much it hurts.

He's beyond loyal to Ethan. Without him, Ethan might not have made it away from Hunley or survived the events of "Rogue Nation." In the tie-in comic "Torn Asunder", it is heavily implied that Will is the one who warns Ethan of when Hunley is getting close. He's on the inside making sure Ethan can stay one step ahead. It's true that Ethan ultimately reaches out to Benji, but that's because Will has a cover that's so deep Luther calls him "a sellout." He's also willing to play the part of the traitor successfully because he's kept Hunley at bay for so long. He also straight up kills someone with a car to save Ethan and Benji (and no one ever thanks him for any of this, by the way).

But he's also one of the few people who ever says "no"

For all his loyalty and commitment to Ethan, he's willing to argue with him -over the briefcase with the codes, over jumping, over what the hell Ethan means when he says "do you see" in the parking lot after Benji is kidnapped- to a point that it becomes more of a fight.

Will is not always right in these situations (or right by the standards of the insane people on the team), but he does have to have things explained, have to be persuaded that this is not some crazy bullshit. He wants the details because he knows those matter -that's his job, to find them, know them, and analyze them. It may seem like he's doubting Ethan when he asks "what happens if you don't make it back," but he's making a reasonable request of someone he knows isn't actually superhuman. Will is well aware that they are both fallible humans, and he takes that into account.

He's just so interesting...

4. Will and Ethan's relationship

Will is Ethan's foil. He left "this life" like Ethan tried so many times, but didn't actually leave any of it behind. He is what Ethan could be if he let the entire weight of his whole life on him (which I'm not saying he should do, not until he has time for a whole lot of therapy) and went "oh my god, what happened, what have I done?"

Will knows how to play by the rules, and thereby how to break them; Ethan breaks the rules to play by his own. Will knows the cost and -for better or worse- lets that keep him from acting; Ethan hopes that if he acts enough it'll balance what it's cost to do it.

Something I think about a lot is this: it's not entirely clear if the Serbian hit squad that "killed" Julia was an actual group of people acting independently or whether the entire thing -and therefore Ethan killing six people- was set up by Ethan and the Secretary. If it's the latter they allowed Will to shoulder the entire blame for the incident (which is super fucked up, by the way). Regardless of whose "job" it was to protect Julia, IMF and Ethan threw Will under several buses. Once he knows this, he could use this against Ethan at any point -a reason not to trust him, a bargaining chip to get what he wants- but he doesn't. Will keeps Ethan's darkest secret and is trusted with it, possibly even before Luther. And he protects it, protects Julia, protects Ethan. Ethan asks Will to compromise everything he is while knowing that Will has the means to destroy him, and Will does it, because he'd rather put himself in danger than betray him. I think that says a lot about him (and again, a simple "thank you" would have been nice).

And of course there's this:

Ethan's life has never been more literally in anyone's hands than Will's. For all the ways Ethan fails to trust him for most of GP, Will doesn't hesitate for a second to jump out the window to save the life of the man who ruined his. And he was fast enough to do it, which I think says a little about his skill level.

(Mad props to Jane too, let's not forget her.)

III. Saturn take the leap

*"Hero" by Faouzia playing gently in the foreground*

Will is the kind of character I find endlessly fascinating. He's got so much going on under the surface, but the surface is so artfully crafted that it's distracting. He's withdrawn, but he's not shy. He's physically adept, but the suit makes you think otherwise. He's obviously very intelligent, and also capable of being a complete salty dumbass jerk. He's sad, and he hurts, but when he's challenged he doesn't back down. He's been watching Ethan's back for a long, long time, and because he didn't get a stupid ending in Fallout, I want to believe he still is.

A word from our sponsor:

If you please, Mr. Cruise:

And I'm so sorry that I've forgotten the source for this one, but it leads me into one of the final, most important points:

DAT ASS

*Janelle Monae's "Yoga" plays loudly and aggressively*

OH HELL YEAH THAT IS MY TWENTY DOLLAR PEACH RIGHT THERE

IV. Thank you!

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope you found it at least a little interesting. Most of this was pieced together from notes I wrote last March that I understood then but past me did not account for future me and so I had to rewrite and rethink some of it. But William Brandt came out of obscurity to conquer my heart and become one of my all-time favorite characters. I sleep with a picture of him next to my bed. Yes I am grown up and pay taxes. This is the form my adulthood has taken.

I'm nervous about coming back to tumblr and still trying to find my footing, but one of the reasons I love fandom and fanfiction because there's so many more stories that can be told outside of the movies., and I want to make them and find them and hear about them. What has Will been doing since the end of RN? Are he and Jane besties? Do they all have movie nights where Benji picks the movie and everyone is like "why have you done this to us?" Let me talk to you about my canon divergence fic where among other things Ilsa is still alive and she and Will are not fond of each other... I personally love Will/Ethan as a ship, and I've dedicated my heart to it (AoT, anyone?), but there's so many options for everyone to pick their favorite character, favorite ship, whatever, and go deeper into them that we get to in the bursts of two to three hours they're on the screen. I'd love to talk with people about them and I'm hoping that I'll get the chance here. And then I can also mention my Mission Impossible dollhouse...

But for now, again, thanks. I really love William Brandt, the end.

[redhoodie1723]

the imaginary carlos and charles beef that some fans are convinced is going on is giving Netflix DTS trying to convince us that charles and sebastian were mortal enemies that prayed on each other’s downfall nightly

[first-ex-wife]

It’s not gonna let us go, why won’t you listen to me?

The Evil Dead (1981), dir. Sam Raimi

[teddybeartoji]

i wish my gender was a detective from like any detective show/film from the 90's

[gregmarriage]

it’s officially december 1st, only one more month of this hellscape!

[spring-lxcked]

anybody: is an asshole to rae

william immediately:

( @florietiae )

[bylertruther]

the usage of tentacles in stranger things is so graphic lol like 🤨 i know what u are, bro(s)......

[fazgoo-connoiseur-1987]

Hi! Purple Ballora Anon here lol

I was catching up on your blog and noticed a few posts about Bill not having a set motive.

One thought could be that the start of his spree was likely caused by trauma. Either his son dying or the overwhelming stress of trying so hard to be normal finally crashing down on him when his wife leaves the picture or his first spring lock accident.

With an already present fear of death and irrational thought process, ya get a perfect disaster. That and his vicious amount of jealousy.

Later in the story , specifically during the 30 years of isolation, he just loses his actual reasoning. The solitude driving him mad and his memory being damaged. He no longer can make the connections he once did. Those things don't matter anymore as the idea of putting them back together completely skews one way. His obsession had already started losing meaning, but the solitary confinement really solidified the loss.

Either way, I'm a big fan of Springtrap not really being WILLIAM as much as it is whats left after all those years. Bitter, confused, feral violence with a splash of memory skewing. I like the open endedness of the character's motive because it let's us imagine endless possibilities. It's what made the first appearance of Springtrap so memorable.

This is really good but we have very very different ideas on it (which is part of the fun imo). Those posts weren't me saying I don't have my own ideas about why Bill does the things he does (I do) it was about how deeply and consistantly I am disapointed by Scott's writing and his refusal to commit to literally anything- particularly the main villain's motive.

Also this is totoally a personal preference thing but I'm really into the idea that Bill going off the deep end was incredibly preventable, and that it's ulitimatly his own decision to do so. It hightens the tragedy (and is generally just more interesting to me) if it's his fault and his fault alone. Obvs I think his attitudes are informed by things that have happened to him (as all attitudes are) but they are not the cause of the awful things he does- William is.

A massive, massive thing to me is giving characters the autonomy to make their own bad descisions. Obviously it can be compelling to strip them of that autonomy and have things heavily infulence what they do- but generally I prefer their actions to be their own.

[the-knife-consumer]

One thing I really like is the idea that springbonnie hates William just as much as William has (probably) grown to hate it.

[ladyseidr]

actually at a point where i just forget what happens to jeremy in canon sometimes. my brain is just like "oh i love him so much <3 isn't it great that nothing bad happened to him— [ remembers playing fna.f2 ] —in an. in an AU. that nothing bad happened in my au. he's fine."

[chipistrate]

Mmm UCN duo (Cassidy and Andrew) but Cassidy leaves after awhile to help out with the whole mess going on with modern fnaf and just leaves Andrew to deal with Afton cause like. yeah he's got it covered Cassidy can leave for a few years and Andrew will still be doing what he does best👍

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

Theyre going to think I like canon and purely canon if I keep going on like this

[the-acid-pear]

Why did my cooking dream get hijacked by my brain making a William Afton oc and au what was that about.

[cosmoknightchaos]

Grabs you

Hiii I’m here to ask the silly questions for the oc ask thingy.

11. 20. 2.

The urge to ask half the super silly questions

It's okay!! We love silly questions!!

2. Your newest OC

I believe that would go to Tristen Kannaroe! The bitch himself. My most recent art of him is from October, though I think his concept was coined a bit earlier than that.

11. Would you consider yourself nice to your OCs?

Nervously glances at the Wtss cast

It depends! Certain characters I treat nicely while others I want to see burn alive. Entropy and Sky are probably the nicest I am to any of my OCs, with Paisley not far behind them. However, we also have characters like William Sonemeir (A scientist who developed advanced war technology and unbeknownst to him turned his dead son into a sentient war machine), Creator/Evan Sonemeir (Will's kid, died and reborn as a war machine), Kannaroe (Tortured for all eternity for simply following orders, though to be fair he does deserve it), and Flower.

I'd say for the most part I'm not nice to OCs, as the best characters are formed by putting them through hell and seeing how they survive. But for the most part I try to give happy endings and help characters move past the trauma I give them.

Except for Kannaroe and Flower. They don't get happy endings because I fucking hate them.

20. An OC regret

Not many! As mentioned on a previous ask, if I don't like anything about a character I'll rework them pretty quickly, so I tend to work out all regrets until I go back to liking the character again. I'd say my biggest regret right now is underutilizing Entropy and Kannaroe. Kannaroe moreso, since Ets has Rtth and a definite appearance in both side stories I plan to release as part of the Wtss Director's Cut, while Kannaroe got completely annexed and exists solely within my sketchbook and that one bit of Rtth. But they both have very good reasons for being underused, so I don't regret it that much.

[floral-hex]

I try not to hype up anything I do, but my brain is abuzz. abuzzy bee. Got given a gift card for a crappy clothing store (thankful, but I mean, hard to find good items), so I finally bit the bullet and ordered a denim jacket. Now begins the slow process of bleaching, dying, and decorating. Finally going to live out my very simple dream of having a cool denim jacket

[braveburned]

was talking about this earlier with ash but the longstanding narrative I'm building for gregory in my head. by the time he's in high school he's got enough of a combination of awareness of the horrors and survivors guilt from being the first / only kid to survive everything going on at the pizzaplex that the moment he's old enough to he goes behind michael's back and gets a job at a nearby fazbear location — essentially falling into the same cycle michael found himself in of feeling compelled to do something because he knows too much

ultimately, his goal is to wipe whatever remains of glitchtrap from the company's files since it becomes clear that someone is trying to keep the AI around