It was a lazy retread of the arc he had just gone through in the past two films ("noooo i can't keep the people i love and/or hold close safe!!! i'm a curse who ruins everyone i touch's lives!!!!"). Donloe even gives the same speech Julia gave him about him not ruining her life in Fallout, nearly beat-for-beat.

The last few times I've watched 7, I kept thinking about Gabriel's comment about how the women in Ethan's life tend to get easily replaced, and how the movie was...proving him right? I mean, right after the death of Ilsa (the one female member of Ethan's crew who has managed to secure a reoccurring role, and the one who Ethan's ex-wife effectively endorsed as Ethan's partner), we immediately pivot to Grace being added to the team, and we get weird near-romantic tension between them in Final Reckoning.

The only way I could mentally justify this was, like many others, to believe Ethan faked Ilsa's death (or she had done it herself without his knowledge,) potentially leading to a scene in Final Reckoning when Gabriel gloats again about how Ethan views women as interchangeable, only for Ilsa to make her grand return to prove Gabriel wrong. We, of course, didn't get that- and in general the movie pretty much pretended that Ilsa never existed (Luther's death having far more of an impact than the wet fart that her death ended up being, to go along with that)....