I love James Bond. People who know me are often surprised by this, considering my anti-imperial, anti-monarchy, and pro-unilateral disarmament sentiments, but I counter with this: nostalgia. Put simply, my dad loved James Bond, his dad loved James Bond, and this genus soon passed down to me.
I hosted a James Bond-themed birthday party when I was about 8 or 9, where my best friend and I dressed up as Bond and Q (he was happy to play the iconic gadget-man while I took the spotlight) and we watched Live and Let Die. I collected all the trading cards, I subscribed to the official magazine, I was Bond-pilled through and through.
You naturally reappraise the things you love as you age, but I’ve still got a soft spot for all things 007. Excited to play IO Interactive’s First Light this month, I dove back into the movies to remind myself exactly what makes Bond, Bond. And one thing, or, should I say, one woman, is the only constant through each iteration: Tracy.
Patrick Gibson Is The Only Bond
The first rule of Bond Club is you do not reference any other Bond. The second rule of Bond Club is you do not reference any other Bond. We don’t know exactly how Eon is going to approach the continuity after killing off Craig’s iteration ofBond in No Time to Die, but the worst possible option is staring directly down the camera and saying, “This never happened to the other fella.” I’m glad no Australian actor has ever done that in their opening scene. Ahem.
Other than Lazenby’s disastrous debut, Bond has never once referred to previous iterations of the character. Heck, before Craig we barely referred to the plots of previous films, other than pinning a SPECTRE badge on a series of unrelated villains. Craig’s films follow a regular continuity, but First Light need not recognise that, least of all because this is a similarly structured reboot.
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Bond fans will argue until the cows come home about who this character actually is. Is James Bond an honorary title and these are all different men who have the same job? Do the actors just want to do something else after a while and they need someone else to play the role? While I suspect Craig-Bond’s death will force the studio to embrace the former theory in future, all prior Bonds had just one thing in common: their wife.
The Tracy Problem
Despite there being little-to-no continuity to the James Bond films before Craig’s run, there are two clear periods of Bond’s life: pre-Tracy, and post-Tracy. The one saving grace of Lazenby’s tragic film is his marriage to Diana Rigg’s iconic Bond girl and her subsequent murder at the hands of SPECTRE in the movie’s closing scene. It’s a devastatingly emotional moment that stands out in the canon and has impacted nearly every Bond since.
Note: The iconic line that marks her death, “We have all the time in the world”, is repeated at the start and end of No Time To Die, foreshadowing both Bond’s breakup with Madeline and his death.
While Bond doesn’t stop his lothario antics pre-, post-, or even during his relationship with Tracy, his demeanour and treatment of women drastically changes after he falls in love for the first and only time. There were references to Tracy in Moore, Dalton, and Brosnan films as Bond pauses, changes the subject, or double takes when love and marriage are discussed. Despite his proclivity for procreation, post-Tracy Bond bears little resemblance to Connery’s love-them-and-leave-them persona.
Moore dealt with the tragedy with camp dryness, Dalton provided the grit, and Brosnan landed somewhere between the two. You could attribute this to audiences changing over the decades, but there is a clear character arc here, too. Bond is broken, and the 13 post-Connery films show that Tracy weighs heavily on his mind. This is particularly obvious at Felix Leiter’s wedding in Licence to Kill, where Dalton presides as best man, and in The World Is Not Enough, where Brosnan’s Bond finally seems to feel that he’s found a new Tracy in Elektra King, when in fact he’s found another Blofeld.
Does First Light Need A Tracy?
It’s important for Patrick Gibson to put his own stamp on Bond. Each actor has their own brand of suave sophistication, and Gibson will undoubtedly make the role his own. But how he and First Light’s writers approach the Tracy problem is another thing entirely.
First Light follows a young Bond, so it’s obviously set pre-Tracy. This makes for a more reckless Bond, a Bond who cares less about collateral damage. He has not loved, and maybe doesn’t believe he ever will. It’s a blank slate, but also makes for more exciting gameplay—expect similarities to Daniel Craig’s Bond at the start of Casino Royale.
First Light could introduce Tracy or, like Casino Royale, could introduce a pseudo-Tracy. Vesper Lynd is Craig-Bond’s Tracy, and also happens to be the best Bond girl (mostly because she’s written like a real character and not just a plaything to be abandoned). But I suspect that First Light won’t have a Tracy at all.
While this game will have gadgets and villains and saving the world like the films, I think it will also set up a larger plot, leaving a trail of blood-soaked breadcrumbs for us to follow into a sequel or DLC. It will focus more on action rather than emotions, and while I hope any female characters will have Vesper-level complexity, I doubt IOI is going to introduce Bond’s wife in his first outing.
Maybe Gibson’s Bond doesn’t need a Tracy. Maybe it would be cool to see another interpretation of her. But the most important thing First Light needs to remember is that Gibson is playing a pre-Tracy Bond, a reckless spy with no care for collateral damage. It’s an exciting prospect from both a gameplay and storytelling perspective and, if it nails this, we’re in for a thrilling adventure that leaves plenty of room for character growth in potential sequels.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 88/100 Critics Rec: 96%
- Released
- May 27, 2026
- ESRB
- Teen / Blood, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence, In-Game Purchases
- Developer(s)
- IO Interactive
- Publisher(s)
- IO Interactive
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Action, Adventure, Stealth
