How Baron Samedi Is Still Alive After James Bond Kills Him In Live & Let Die

Live and Let Die‘s supporting villain Baron Samedi seems to survive certain death, but there’s a reason that the James Bond character makes it out alive despite the odds. Live and Let Die is an odd addition to the James Bond franchise. Released in 1973, this uneven, campy outing was the first movie to star Roger Moore as 007. Although its storyline was loosely adapted from Ian Fleming’s novel of the same name, Live and Let Die was reworked during production to cash in on the blaxploitation boom. This led to creative decisions that aged poorly as the franchise leaned into the sub-genre’s most notorious clichés.

In a mistake that the upcoming James Bond 26 would do well to learn from, Live and Let Die prioritized following genre trends over sticking to Bond’s original appeal. As a result, Moore’s version of 007 ended up working with a comically incompetent southern cop as he tried to take down Kananga, one of the franchise’s most ludicrously cartoony villains. Live and Let Die’s plot mostly centered on a drug trafficking operation run by Kananga, but Kananga’s henchman, Baron Samedi, injected some unlikely supernatural shenanigans into the busy story. Baron Samedi was linked to a thinly sketched voodoo cult whose role in the story only became clear during the finale.

Baron Samedi Could Have Survived Bond’s Attacks In Live & Let Die

At first, Baron Samedi appeared to be a henchman for Kananga. However, after Bond shot Samedi only to discover that he was duped by a clay figure, it became clear that Live and Let Die’s Kananga wasn’t the movie’s strongest villain. This was later reaffirmed when Bond tossed Samedi into a poisonous snake pit, only for the ending of Live & Let Die to reveal that he survived this ordeal. As the closing credits began, Baron Samedi was seen in front of Bond’s train laughing, implying that the character escaped a pit of snakes without so much as a scratch. This seemed like a superhuman feat, but it was canonically justified.

Baron Samedi avoided getting shot by using smoke and mirrors to trick Bond, but his escape from the snake pit is harder to explain. He may have known how to handle snakes, he could have been immune to their venom, or he might have had a handy vial of antivenin on his person. However, the real reason that Baron Samedi survived the snake pit has more to do with his existential nature than these specific circumstances. In Voodoo lore, “Baron Samedi” is the Iwa (spirit) of the Dead. The Bond villain could have been a spirit and not a human, which would explain his survival.

There Is A Supernatural Explanation For Baron Samedi’s James Bond Survival

Although Baron Samedi is Bond’s only supernatural villain, there is no denying the fact that the character is more than mortal. Although Baron Samedi is often depicted as a skeleton, the character seen in Live and Let Die otherwise aligns with traditional depictions of the Haitian Iwa. He wears the trademark top hat and tails, has the classic trickster persona of Baron Samedi, and seemingly possesses the spirit’s supernatural powers. As such, Live and Let Die leaves viewers to presume that Baron Samedi is actually a Haitian spirit rather than a flesh-and-blood human, even though this detail undeniably feels out of place in a James Bond movie.