Now the Daniel Craig era of the James Bond franchise has come to an end with Casino Royale, which served as both an origin for Bond while retooling the series from top to bottom.
This paid off both critically and commercially, with Craig's Bond seen as one of the best of the entire series. Quantum Of Solace's Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) and Christoph Waltz's Blofeld both proved to be disappointments.
Now that Craig's James Bond arc is complete, it's a little strange to look back and realize what an enormous impact the character of Mr. White, played by Jesper Christensen, had. White first appeared in Casino Royale, where he introduced main villain Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) to Lord's Resistance Army Steven Obanno, but after the former loses the latter's money, Mr. White is dispatched to personally executes Le Chiffre. This has the effect of saving Bond from Le Chiffre's vicious torture, but White later blackmails Vesper into exchanging money for 007s life, leading to her death and hardening Bond to the reality of the spy game.
Bond catches up to Mr. White in the movie's finale, where he shoots him in the leg and Craig's 007 first declares he is "Bond. James Bond." In Quantum Of Solace, it's through the interrogation of Mr. White that both Bond and Mi6 first learn of the mysterious Quantum organization, for which White is both a leader and assassin. White later escapes custody and is still loose by the end, though an alternate finale reportedly saw Bond killing Mr. White. Christensen then became a very rare villain actor to return for a third Bond outing time in Spectre, which revealed Quantum is a sub-organization of Blofeld's SPECTRE itself.
Mr. White is revealed to have been poisoned by Blofeld after a falling out between the two men and is dying when Bond finds him. In exchange for information, Bond promises to protect White's estranged daughter Madeleine (Lea Seydoux), with who James later falls in love. It also appears that outside of his life as an assassin, White was once a loving husband and father, but his poisoning of a family on SPECTRE's orders led the sole survivor - Safin - to later seek revenge.
No Time To Die opens in 1998 on Safin arriving at White's home to kill him, only to find he's not there. Instead, Safin kills his wife and almost murders young Madeleine. Safin later returned as a villain whose plan threatened the world, which was an indirect consequence of Mr. White's actions. For a character who didn't have much screentime throughout the Daniel Craig run, he's directly or indirectly responsible for many of its major events, from Vesper Lynd's betrayal to Bond meeting White's daughter Madeleine or even his inadvertent creation of Safin.
