Warning: This article contains spoilers for No Time To Die
No Time To Die director Cary Joji Fukunaga reveals alternate iterations of James Bond’s death in the film. Daniel Craig returned for his fifth and final outing as Bond in No Time To Die, which also stars Léa Seydoux, Ralph Fiennes, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, Ana de Armas, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, and Ben Whishaw. The film marks the 25th entry in the Bond franchise, which began in 1962 with Dr. No starring Sean Connery.
The central plot of No Time To Die revolves around a blood-borne nanobot virus that attaches to an individuals DNA, affecting a target and their relatives, but harmless to all others. The bioweapon is controlled by Malek’s Safin, a vengeance-seeking terrorist seeking to destroy the Spectre organization and anyone that gets in his way, including Bond. Things get personal when it’s revealed that Bond’s estranged lover, Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann, had a daughter shortly after they broke up, who may or may not be his. The end of the film finds Bond chasing down Safin, who has kidnapped Swann and her daughter and is preparing to launch a number of missiles loaded with the nanobot bioweapons, leading to a solution that ends Bond’s life.
In an interview with Variety, Bond producers, along with Craig and Fukunaga, discussed the controversial ending, saying that it was something that had been mentioned as early as Casino Royale, but the method of Bond’s destruction was not set in stone. “How he meets his end wasn’t decided yet. It was just the fact that he would, so the question then became how to do it,” said Fukunaga, noting that “there were many iterations” of how it would happen. The director noted that one of those iterations was “blowing him up in a rocket,” but another involved what he calls “an anonymous bullet.” He explains:
A bullet, like an anonymous bullet, I remember that one. But it just seemed like a conventional weapons death didn’t seem appropriate. Given how much he had been able to escape from everything else, the fact that it would just be a bullet that always had your name on it from the beginning, as a sort of the thematic element seemed, while realistic, for Bond it had to be something even beyond that — like the impossible, impossible situation.
Craig’s demise as Bond is the first time the character has died in any of the 25 films since the franchise began, but apparently it was something he had specifically asked for after completing Casino Royale, saying that’s the way he’d “like it to go” to close out his tenure as the character. While it seemed to be forgotten about as the movies continued, when it got to No Time To Die, Bond producers noted Craig’s reluctance to return again and felt that “the best way to end this whole thing” was to kill him off, ultimately setting Craig free of the role.
The post-credits of No Time To Die say, ironically, that James Bond will return, which is obvious, of course, as Bond has been a mainstay cultural icon since the character debuted onscreen. The hunt for a new Bond is supposed to begin in 2022 and there have been numerous calls to cast a person of color or a female, although producers have said that they don’t think a woman should play James Bond. Regardless, Bond will certainly be back in one form or another, but for Craig the suit is in the closet for good.
