007 First Light’s first villain is Lenny Kravitz, and I bet he’s not going to get away

What do Telly Savalas, Christopher Walken, Sean Bean, Yaphet Kotto, Sophie Marceau, Donald Pleasance, and Lenny Kravitz all have in common? They’re all Bond villains—or at least, they will be: A leaked trailer has revealed that Kravitz will be the face, hair, and spectacularly chiselled abs of Bawma, an elusive target a criminal mastermind in the upcoming 007 First Light.

Kravitz’s role in the game was presumably meant to be revealed at tonight’s Game Awards, but slipped out early in a now-deleted message posted to the official 007 X account—whoops: “He rose from nothing, broke free, and built his own Kingdom of Aleph. Introducing Bawma, the largest black-market dealer in the Western Hemisphere who’s as charismatic as he is unpredictable.”

“I am sometimes asked: ‘Bawma, how is it that you hear every whisper in every corner?'” Kravtiz croons in Bawma’s big reveal, which has also been taken down but remains available for viewing on other, unofficial sites. “And I answer, ‘I have built Aleph with my will, my blood, my whole self. This city is an extension of my being—my body. But today it became infected’.”

Lenny’s cure, it seems, is to lower the source of the infection into a pit of hungry crocodiles (or maybe alligators, I can’t tell), a classic Bond villain move.

And then, to prove he’s both serious and evil, and also that it really is crocs (or gators) and not just a bunch of sea bass and some oversized tubby toys in that pit, he throws in another guy as an appetizer. I can’t help thinking that ol’ Len could’ve saved himself (and a horde of other international criminal masterminds) some headaches by starting with Bond—like Frank Castle once said, if you want someone dead, don’t play games, just kill ’em—but that’s the way it goes in the world of Double Oh Seven.

There’s not much to see, really, but the reveal is interesting nonetheless for the way it makes 007 First Light seem far more akin to IO’s Hitman series than the Bond franchise. The studio has rolled out numerous celebrities over the years as “elusive targets” in its Hitman games, including musicians—Eminem is the current elusive target, in fact, available until December 31—and former Bond villains including Sean Bean and Mads Mikkelson, who actually reprised his Casino Royale role.

Now we’ve got another B-lister turning up as another bad guy, to inevitably get up to some unhappy hijinks before ultimately meeting his demise at the hands of Agent 007. I get that big-time licenses can be very valuable, but the more I see of 007 First Light, the more I wonder why IO bothered. It’s not even like Bond needs an origin story.

It also doesn’t really need more pits filled with ravenous, deadly marine life.

It’s possible that I’m being a little too hard on 007 First Light at this still-very-pre-release stage, and admittedly I haven’t seen a whole lot of it. I’m also perpetually annoyed that Timothy Dalton doesn’t get the props he deserves for his turn in the Bond role, and maybe that’s a factor too. But come on, the man was great.

007 First Light is set for launch on March 27, 2026. I’ll update this post with the trailer once IO Interactive makes it official.

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