One of the more compelling ideas in Skyfall is the exposure of MI6’s undercover agents in a storyline that briefly opens the door to the wider, shadowy world of British intelligence before quickly getting back to Bond’s personal journey. As a plotline, the human cost of espionage is a compelling premise that the franchise has flirted with before to varying degrees and with varying success.

You see it clearly in GoldenEye, where the betrayal of 006 transforms the concept of “the double-oh program” from an abstract organization into something fraught with resentment and moral ambiguity. For once, Bond isn’t just up against a random villain, he faces someone like himself, from the inside – similar to Silva in Skyfall. And the same occurs in Spectre, with the consolidation of global surveillance under C and the looming irrelevance of human operatives, which Bond has to tackle directly.

Taken together, these moments reveal just how close the series has come to examining MI6 as a larger institution. As much as I’d welcome a deeper dive in future movies, it feels unlikely that this will resurface as a central storyline anytime soon.