Bond Villain Dossier: Raoul Silva

"Raoul Silva: She sent you after me, knowing you’re not ready, knowing you will likely die. Mommy was very bad."

Name: Raoul Silva (Tiago Rodriquez)

Portrayed by: Javier Bardem

Appearances: Skyfall

Background

Raoul Silva was a former member of MI6 stationed in Hong Kong’s H division. Raoul exceeded the scope of his brief while hacking the Chinese. As a result, M handed him over in exchange for the release of six agents.

Evil Plot

Silva blamed M for abandoning him, for his torture, and for the disfigurement that followed the failure of his suicide attempt (via cyanide capsule). He arranged for Patrice and other henchmen to steal a hard drive from agent Ronson (killing him in the process). This hard drive had a list of every NATO agent undercover in terrorist organizations around the world.

Three months later, Silva hacked the environmental control system of MI6 headquarters, disabled all the safety protocols, and then caused a gas explosion. He also left M the message “Think on your sins”, making clear the personal nature of the vendetta.

The attack killed 8 people, injured several more, and caused MI6 to change headquarters. Afterwards, Silva leaked the names of five of the undercover agents on the list, who were then terminated. He also threatened to leak five more a week until the list was finished.

Silva’s goals were threefold: Make M feel a sense of failure, confront her personally, and then kill her.

Bond followed Silva back to his island base, where Silva allowed himself and his
laptop to be captured. This gave him the chance to confront M.

Silva’s laptop had a virus on it, which disabled the security system at MI6’s new headquarters and allowed him to escape. James Bond pursued Silva and his henchmen through the London underground.

Bond was able to help M escape Silva’s assignation attempt. Unable to catch him, Bond fled London with M. Silva then followed Bond back to his ancestral home of Skyfall, Scotland. Silva and his men then attacked Skyfall.

Spetre revealed that Silva had received help from Franz Oberhauser. It was not clear how much, or in what form.

Death

Silva tracked M and Kincade inside of the family chapel on Skyfall’s grounds.
Silva then noticed that M had been wounded in the fighting. Raoul gave M his gun,
leaned forward, and told her to “Free both of us with the same bullet.” James
Bond threw a knife into Silva’s back, killing him.

Henchmen

Patrice (portrayed by Ola Rapace)
Severine (portrayed by Bérénice Marlohe)

Trivia

Raoul Silva was  Daniel Craig’s third Bond villain. Auric Goldfinger was also Sean Connery’s third Bond movie villain. Both provide their respective version of Bond with the villain who is the least connected to Spectre (Goldfinger has no connection, and Silva was only given one retroactively in
Spectre).
Silva was played by Javier Barden, the fifth actor in a James Bond
movie to get an Academy award (Best supporting actor, 2007).