[Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for No Time to Die.]
No Time to Die finds a streaming home on Amazon Prime this month. It will be available to stream - for no additional charge - on June 10th. Be sure to watch it before you read this ending explainer. Otherwise, why bother watching the film?
In its finale, the latest James Bond movie No Time to Die goes where no James Bond film has gone before: it kills James Bond. A classic character who has been in 24 prior films (not counting two unofficial entries) and been pretty much invulnerable to this point finally dies, and while it’s a bit of a convoluted way to get there, it’s a fitting ending for the more tragic, human Bond of the Daniel Craig era.
To recap, the reason why Bond dies is a bit of a slog. First, while trying to reopen the blast doors so missiles can strike Safin’s base and destroy the bioweapon, he’s shot in the back twice by Safin. Then, during a fight with Safin, Safin uses a specific poison on Bond that makes him a carrier that would kill anyone he came in physical contact with. So Bond is both bleeding out and even if he managed to get off the island, he’d still be stuck with poisonous nanobots for the rest of his natural life. Also, the blast doors need to be reopened, or else the bioweapon could fall into the wrong hands if the island isn’t destroyed. Bond makes his way back to the tower to reopen the blast doors as the missiles are on their way. He makes one last call to Madeleine telling her that she and their daughter will be safe and that she has “all the time in the world,” a callback to his words to her at the beginning of the movie (which itself is a callback to the tragic death of James Bond's wife Tracy Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service). Then the missiles hit the island and Bond is blown up along with everything else.
While that’s a long road to get to killing Bond, it does feel like it accomplishes two things. For starters, it makes No Time to Die the definitive ending of Daniel Craig’s tenure as James Bond. Hit by 50 missiles on screen doesn’t leave a question mark that he survived, and that’s probably how Craig wants it. The Bond movies are a huge physical demand, and now he’s got a new franchise that he can entirely call his own with Rian Johnson’s Benoit Blanc series. Good for Craig.
It’s also a fitting conclusion for this iteration of Bond. The Daniel Craig Bond was always steeped in a bit of tragedy from the moment he lost Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, and while there were other women along the way, this was a Bond who was usually fighting against his own broken-down body (Skyfall) and increasingly obsolescence in an increasingly interconnected world (Spectre) to where he’s straight-up retired by the time you get to No Time to Die. This is a Bond who’s looking for a way to exit the world that doesn’t want him anymore, and while a relaunch of the series would probably do well to change that up with a more enthusiastic 007, it’s a fitting conclusion that this Bond should sacrifice his life as a way of finding peace.
Speaking of the next Bond, it should be noted that the credits end (as they often do) with “James Bond Will Return”, and I’m sure that’s true. There will be a 26th James Bond movie, but what that movie will look like is unknown at this time. We know a new actor will be cast in the role, but we don’t know if it will be a full reboot that throws out everything from the Craig era or if they’ll try to reboot it in-world by making “James Bond” a mantle that gets passed down as a code name (keep in mind that in the Craig era, “James Bond” is his real name). No matter how Bond returns, it looks like Craig is absolutely done and he gets to go out in a way that no Bond has before.