The Spectre of all Conclusions

If the ending of Spectre came as a surprise, the mystery is unravelled by visiting the ghosts of James Bond's past. Spoiler alert!

Younger viewers who have seen the new James Bond film may wonder about Spectre, the mystery organisation at the heart of the movie. At the end of the movie, the head of Spectre even reveals to Daniel Craig's Bond that Spec-tre was the true villain in all his other movies. Those we thought were the bad guys in Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace and Skyfall were all Spectre agents.

This is interesting but also mystifying. At no stage did any of these villains suggest that they worked for anybody else, let alone Spectre. Moreover, in Quantum of Solace, the villain headed a criminal organisation that sounded a lot like Spectre. Even the screenwriters of these films gave us no hint that Spectre was behind everything. There is a good reason for that: they didn't know that Spectre was supposed to be involved. When the films were written, Spectre was no longer part of the Bond universe. Nobody was even allowed to mention it.

Baffled?

Some explanations may be in order. When Ian Fleming created James Bond, he based his stories on his own work in intelligence during the WWII. So the villains had either German roots, or owing to the Cold War hysteria of the time, worked for Moscow. Bond's nemesis was not Spectre but SMERSH, a soviet agency dedicated to killing Western spies. Fleming was obsessed with TV and the movies. He was desperate to get into the TV business and served as a consultant when the The Man from U.N.C.L.E.TV show was being developed. Eventually, the series people threw him out and a lot of unpleasantness followed.
It was during this time that Fleming met Kevin McClory, who promised to get a Bond film made. By then, Fleming had sold the rights of Casino Royale to an American TV network, which turned it into a one-episode special about 'Jimmy' Bond, an American spy. This was a disaster, so Fleming hoped that that McClory would help him land a proper TV deal.
The two men collaborated on a screenplay, but failed to find any buyers. Eventually, Fleming turned the screen-play into a novel called Thunderball and did not give McClory any credit. McClory sued and a long legal battle that went on for years started. Thunderball introduced Spectre, and Fleming went on to incorporate the organisation in many of his future novels. An early judgment in the McClory suit meant that Fleming had to add a little note at the beginning of all future Thunderball editions stating that it was based on a screen treatment co-authored by McClory.

In the interim, James Bond had finally found the film fame he deserved in the Sean Connery movies. The producers were so taken with Spectre that they even rewrote the plots of such books as Dr No for the screen to include Spectre. But when it came to making the movie of Thunderball, they had to strike a deal with McClory for coproduction of the movie. McClory now owned the film rights to Thunderball and undertook not to remake the film for ten years. When that period ran out, McClory remade Thunderball as Never Say Never Again with Connery returning to the role.
The legal tussles continued, but the courts ruled that Spectre and its head, the sinister Ernst Stavro Blofeld were McClory's creations and the film's prod-ucers had no right to use them. So, Spec-tre, once a leading element in the Bond movie universe, was dropped forever. McClory tried making Thunderball a third time but nothing came of that enterprise. After Skyfall was written, the producers of the Bond movies finally came to an agreement with McClory's lawyers. A large sum of money was handed over and they finally owned the rights to all of McClory's creations, from Spectre to Blofeld.
They were so overjoyed by this victory that they named the next film Spectre and brought Blofeld back. But how to explain the absence of Spectre, once Bond's principal adversary from the earlier films? Simple. They added dial-ogue to this movie so that Blofeld could claim that all the other villains that Dan-iel Craig had faced were actually his sidekicks. For younger viewers who may be confused by Spectre's sudden appear-ance, that's what really happened.
So, will Spectre be back? I am pretty sure it will. The logical end for the movie would have been for Bond to kill Blofeld. I still remember that memorable opening scene in Diamonds Are Forever, when Connery's Bond pushes Blofeld into the fire and says, "Welcome, to hell, Blofeld!" But of course, Bond does not really kill Blofeld, only one of his doubles. And sure enough, Blofeld reappears later in the movie to torment Bond and plan world domination.
My guess is that in a future Bond film, perhaps even the next one, Blofeld will escape from British custody and assume control of Spectre again. Daniel Craig has repeatedly declared that this will be his last outing in the role. So Craig's Bond may not be back.
But Blofeld lives forever.