The posters tend to put Bond in front with the gun. The films themselves are less sure who is protecting whom, and more than a few of his narrow escapes were someone else’s doing.
So here are seven times a Bond girl saved his life. We ranked the moments, not the women: how immediate the danger was, and how little Bond could still do about it. The bottom of the list is “backup arrived.” The top is “he was, medically speaking, in cardiac arrest.” Spoilers throughout.
7 to 5: Backup arrived
7. Aki, You Only Live Twice (1967)
Bond had just left Osato’s office building in Tokyo when assassins opened fire on him in the street. Aki pulled up, he jumped in, and she got him out of there. It’s the least dramatic rescue on this list, and she still had to do it in a hail of gunfire while he caught his breath in the passenger seat.
6. Tracy di Vicenzo, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)
After skiing off Piz Gloria with half of Blofeld’s staff behind him, Bond ended up hiding in a crowd at a Christmas ice-skating carnival, exhausted, with Irma Bunt’s men closing in. Tracy found him there, got him into her car and drove straight through a stock-car race to lose them. Bond proposed to her not long after, which is the correct response to that level of driving.
5. Natalya Simonova, GoldenEye (1995)
Bond had just won his fight on top of the antenna cradle, which left him stranded hundreds of feet above the dish with the whole structure about to explode. Natalya showed up in a commandeered helicopter, and Bond jumped aboard moments before it went. The programmer had already handled the satellite. Then she handled the transport.
4 to 3: No good options left
4. Pussy Galore, Goldfinger (1964)
This is the rescue nobody sees happen. Goldfinger’s plan relied on her pilots spraying nerve gas over Fort Knox to kill everyone guarding the gold. Instead, she switched the gas for something harmless and tipped off the CIA. So when Bond ended up handcuffed to an atomic bomb inside the vault, the soldiers outside were still alive to come and get him. She never set foot in the vault. The rescue party exists because she made the call.
3. Pam Bouvier, Licence to Kill (1989)
Pam saves Bond more than once in this film, starting with a shotgun at the Barrelhead bar, but the one that counts came at Sanchez’s burning drug lab. Dario had the upper hand and Bond was heading for a cocaine grinder. Pam shot Dario. Bond did the rest.
2 to 1: Seconds from the end
2. Domino, Thunderball (1965)
Bond lost the final fight. On the bridge of the runaway Disco Volante, Largo got the upper hand and had a gun on him. Then Domino, freed by Largo’s own nuclear scientist, put a speargun bolt in Largo’s back. She had her own reasons, since Largo had killed her brother, but the result was the same: one dead villain, one surprised secret agent.
1. Vesper Lynd, Casino Royale (2006)
There is no closer call than this one. Poisoned with digitalis at the poker table, Bond staggered to his car, injected himself with lidocaine, strapped on the defibrillator and went into cardiac arrest before he could get it to work. A wire wasn’t connected. Vesper found him, spotted the loose wire, connected it and shocked him back. Then he went back inside and finished the game.
The thank-you cards
Count them up and Bond owes his life to two pilots, a programmer, a Treasury agent, two getaway drivers and a woman with a speargun. The thank-you stationery budget at MI6 must be enormous.