This article contains major spoilers for No Time To Die
Given that it’s still the highest-grossing Hollywood blockbuster to have been released since the end of 2019, until at least the end of this week when it gets overtaken by the unstoppable Spider-Man: No Way Home, then the chances are high that you’ll be familiar with what goes down at the end of No Time to Die.
Daniel Craig’s tenure has offered a greater sense of continuity than any other era of 007, and the shadows of Casino Royale still loomed large in the background fifteen years later. In an effort to outline that the franchise was starting from scratch when the next actor inherits the tux, director Cary Joji Fukunaga only went and blew up cinema’s most famous secret agent.
No Time to Die marked two significant firsts for Bond, in that he was revealed to be a father for the first time before sacrificing himself to die onscreen, so it’ll always have a place in the history books. Speaking to Empire, Fukunaga addressed the ending of the 25th installment for the very first time.
“In my first meeting with Daniel and the producers, they said that’s how they wanted the story. They felt that was an ending. I was like, ‘Well, it’s a result of an ending, but we don’t know what happens. It has to be earned’. I was really struggling, because it couldn’t be conventional action. It couldn’t just be a demonic device, it had to be tied into the central theme of the story.”
Given that it was the focal point of his very first meeting with Craig and the producers, it was evident that Bond was never going to make it out of No Time to Die alive, regardless of who ended up wielding the megaphone, but at least the next creative team has a completely blank slate to work with.