The latest No Time to Die international TV spot plays up the relationship between James Bond and Blofeld. The last go around for Daniel Craig as Bond, No Time to Die both introduces a new villain in Rami Malek's Safin and brings back Christoph Waltz's Blofeld for a second appearance.
A frequent foe of 007 in the '60s Bond movies starring Sean Connery, Blofeld became the quintessential Bond villain, even though he was played by multiple actors including Donald Pleasance and Telly Savalas. When the character was resurrected for the modern-day Bond movies in Spectre, producers took Blofeld beyond the one-dimensional supervillain crafted for the older movies and created an entire crazy backstory that made him Bond's adoptive brother who at one time faked his own death, and revealed that the villains of the previous three movies had all been trying to kill Bond in an elaborate revenge plot. The film's climax saw Bond sparing the life of his one-time brother, allowing Blofeld to return for No Time to Die.
It remains to be seen what role Blofeld will play in the new movie (how exactly he fits into the plot is being kept a secret), but a new international TV spot for No Time to Die hints that the character's plans may not have been foiled in Spectre after all. The brief moment shows Bond and an imprisoned Blofeld facing off and Blofeld saying "James. Fate draws us back together" in a way that seems somewhat menacing in context. See the clip in the space below (via SF Studios Norge):
That Blofeld's line is followed by voiceover from Malek's Safin, as well as a brief glimpse of the mysterious masked character, might imply that the newest Bond villain is one last agent of SPECTRE who is still on the loose and looking to finish carrying out Blofeld's master plan, including killing Bond. Indeed, fan theories cobbled together from clues in prior trailers have posited that both Safin and Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux) were actually SPECTRE agents at one time, or at the very least have some connection to each other. That No Time to Die brings back both Swann and Blofeld strongly implies that everything set up in the prior movies is going to get a big payoff in the new film.
With No Time to Die representing the end of the Craig era as Bond, it would surely make sense to wrap up the whole Blofeld revenge plot arc (even if it was clumsily retconned into the rest of the series with Spectre) and bring some kind of closure to the Bond/Blofeld relationship. How that relationship might also connect back to Swann and Safin is anyone's guess at this point. If this all begins to seem a bit overly involved for a James Bond film (the older films treated plot as nothing more than a means to deliver action), it's worth also mentioning that No Time to Die reportedly carries the longest runtime of any movie in the series, which seems like further confirmation that the new film has a lot of plot to churn and a lot of resolution play out.
Source: SF Studios Norge
