Daniel Craig finally talks about his James Bond ending in No Time To Die

(Image credit: Universal)

The No Time To Die ending was pretty seismic for the franchise. We saw, for the very first time, James Bond die on screen. Now, Daniel Craig has finally spilled on what his Bond's final moments meant to him, and revealed the idea to kill off the iconic spy first popped into his head while filming 2006's Casino Royale.

"I had this idea, I wanted to kill him off a long time ago – in Casino Royale – for all sorts of reasons," Craig said while talking to Javier Bardem, who previously played the villain Raoul Silva in Skyfall, for Variety (via ScreenRant).

"One, purely egotistical. I feel like I needed to end what I did on it. I would be only satisfied if I could walk away and there was nowhere else for that to go, that someone else would have to come along and invent something completely different. But also because I thought that was a good way for it to continue, and I knew that the only way to make it work was that it had to be based in love, and every time that we've gone emotionally into this, it pays back every time.

"Skyfall is really a story of [Bond’s] love for [M], it's the relationship between [Raoul Silva] and [M], which is complicated and family-like, toxic. And every time we’ve really concentrated on that it’s paid dividends for us, and I was really keen with this, that that’s the way we had to go. I just tried to make myself involved with the things that mattered… I just knew where it had to end on, what it had to be, and it had to be a worthy death. If he stayed alive he would kill the people he loved, so, therefore there was no argument."

Where exactly the James Bond series goes from here remains to be seen. There are already countless names in the hat to take over as the next James Bond – click that link for the biggest actors in contention – while other ideas have circulated online for how the franchise may continue. We have a debrief on what could possibly be next for James Bond, while we also previously spoke to Tom Holland about his pitch for a young James Bond film – however, that later turned into the Uncharted movie.

Jack Shepherd is the former Senior Entertainment Editor of GamesRadar. Jack used to work at The Independent as a general culture writer before specializing in TV and film for the likes of GR+, Total Film, SFX, and others. You can now find Jack working as a freelance journalist and editor.