'Mission Impossible 7' director defends KEY character death

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One has many shocking twists and turns. Still, none matched the heartbreaking death of MI6 agent Ilsa Faust, played by Rebecca Ferguson. But the director Christopher McQuarrie said it was necessary.

During an interview with Empire, the filmmaker said, "It was one of the earliest conversations. We were on the set of Top Gun, we were already talking about it," adding, "We knew that that emotional arc was of a certain emotional tone... Ilsa is a wonderful character, and a character of which I am enormously proud, and Rebecca is an actor of such unmitigated power and presence."

The 54-year-old added, "And yet, where we had gone with the character from Rogue to Fallout...[the] place you took that character would either make less of her, it would suddenly become frivolous... or she would just become a romantic interest, and it was never about creating a character who was defined by her love story with Ethan Hunt. Their relationship transcends a traditional loving story... They're doomed to be together and yet doomed never to be together... It felt like that story was looking for its resolution and so we said this has got to happen."

McQuarrie also said that Faust's death made the stakes higher in the film.

"What really needs to happen in the story is the stakes have to be real; they can't be implied," he continued.

"We have to have the courage to let [Ethan] fail and it has to cost, the mission has to cost, and without that, the villain simply will not have a threat…what you're seeing in the escalation of the story is what it costs Ethan personally in Venice."

Meanwhile, Ferguson joined the hit Mission Impossible series from the 2015's Rogue Nation.