Warning: This article contains spoilers for No Time to Die.Léa Seydoux teases that her James Bond character could very well return for Bond 26. The French actress, who burst onto the international film scene in the early 2010s in films like Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Blue is the Warmest Color, first appeared as Bond love interest Madeleine Swann in 2015's Spectre. A psychiatrist and daughter of SPECTRE member Mr. White, she and Bond fell in love and had a child together named Mathilde. It's not until the events of 2021's No Time to Die that Bond learns about his child, at which point Rami Malek's villain Lyutsifer Safin infects him with nanobots that would kill Madeleine and Mathilde if he ever touched them.
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So far, nothing is known about what the next James Bond movie is going to look like. As No Time to Die featured the death of Daniel Craig's James Bond and the end of the actor's 15-year tenure in the role, the most important step will be to cast a new Bond actor before building a movie around the performer. While producers (and the end credits of No Time to Die) assure fans that a new film is indeed coming, so far there has been no official announcement, while names as far afield as Tom Holland, Henry Cavill, Idris Elba, and even Ryan Reynolds have been suggested.
This week, Deadline had the opportunity to speak to Seydoux at Telluride. When asked if she might return for future Bond sequels, she raised the point that her character is very much alive. While she admitted that "this is like fake news" because she hasn't officially been approached, she said that "who’s to say that Madeleine won’t be back?" Read her full quote below:
"After all I’m not dead. It was James who died, not Madeleine. So, who knows? Maybe I’ll be back.
"This is like fake news, right? But if we’re serious for a moment, Madeleine drives away with her daughter right at the end because James has saved them. There’ll be a new Bond because Daniel’s Bond died but who’s to say that Madeleine won’t be back?"
Madeleine is indeed one of many surviving characters who could potentially be returning in Bond 26. However, her appearance would signal a major change in the Bond mythos, as typically the characters who reappear in other Bond films are Bond himself, tech wizard Q, MI6 boss M, American agent Felix Leiter, and M's secretary Moneypenny. While the Craig Bond films were unusually interconnected for the franchise, typically each Bond film has a distinct cast from the other, with the occasional exception of those characters only.
Judi Dench's M has appeared opposite multiple Bonds, for instance. However, it's possible that the producers are looking to take Bond in an entirely new direction for Bond 26, which could mean abandoning the ensemble cast they have built since 2006's Casino Royale. However, if they decide to throw themselves full force into the theory that "James Bond" is a code name and replace the superspy within the canon of No Time to Die, Seydoux and Madeleine could very well return.