Warning: SPOILERS for No Time To Die.
Although Daniel Craig's James Bond answered to two spymasters codenamed M, Craig's James Bond movie canon. In the Bond universe, M is the powerful head of MI6 - also known as the British Secret Service - and M directly oversees the Double 0 section and its elite agents like James Bond, who are authorized with a license to kill.
In Craig's rebooted canon, when Bond earned his license to kill in Spectre and No Time To Die.
No Time To Die features another special M Easter egg. The movie reveals that MI6 headquarters in Whitehall has portraits of two previous Ms; Judi Dench and the M played by Robert Brown. In the previous Bond continuity, Brown was M in four films and oversaw two 007s, Roger Moore in Octopussy and A View To A Kill and Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights and License To Kill. Brown died in 1989, a few months after License To Kill's theatrical release. However, by virtue of his portrait appearing in No Time To Die, Brown's M officially s the canon of Craig's Bond movies, and the character is likely the immediate predecessor of Judi Dench's M.
Click here to watch James Bond: 20 Things You Missed In No Time To Die at YouTube.
With three of Bond's Ms now part of Craig's continuity, this leaves the original M, played by Bernard Lee, as the odd man out. Lee played M for nearly two decades across eleven movies and three different Bonds - Sean Connery, George Lazenby, and Roger Moore - answered to him. Lee died in 1981 before his scenes as M in For Your Eyes Only could be filmed and producer Albert R.Broccoli forbade M's recasting after that film. Brown, who previously appeared as iral Hargreaves in The Spy Who Loved Me, was then cast in the role in Octopussy, although it was never made clear if Brown was playing the same M as Lee or a new character.
Lee was actually the first M to receive a portrait in a Bond movie with 1999's The World Is Not Enough, which was the third 007 movie starring Judi Dench as in the role. Meanwhile, before Robert Brown's M got his tribute in No Time To Die, Dench's version had the distinction of being the only M who appeared in both the original James Bond continuities. Like Brown, Dench's M also oversaw two James Bonds: Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig. Why Lee didn't also receive a portrait in No Time To Die isn't known but it's possible that implying there were a total of four Ms across five Craig Bond movies may have been considered too many.
It's not clear if Ralph Fiennes will be asked to reprise M in the next outing, which will have to be a reboot considering Daniel Craig's exit from the role with No Time To Die. If Fiennes does return, he would follow Judi Dench's lead as an M who spans two different Bond canons and perhaps someday, Fiennes portrait will hang in the office of the next James Bond's M.
