Bond falls victim to what I am now calling “Steve Rogers Syndrome,” where a main character throws away his found family (which the audience has become much more attached to) in favor of a bland, boring, nuclear/heterosexual life. Just because Bond doesn’t get his “happy ending” doesn’t mean that he doesn’t fall into this trope.
I think a lot of people would agree with me when I say that Bond & Madeline have no chemistry. They had no chemistry in Spectre and they continue to have none in NTTD. And yet, we’re supposed to care about their relationship because 1) the narrative (i.e. Bond) tells us, instead of shows us, that he loves her, and 2) there is a child (which the narrative also tells us that we should care about).
But the truth is that Bond doesn’t trust Madeline. Not really. The second he’s attacked by Spectre, he immediately blames her and doesn’t even question if he’s wrong (and she doesn’t really try to convince him otherwise). Now, you may chalk this up to Bond not trusting anybody, but here’s where we get to the found family: because he does trust his MI6 family, implicitly, immediately.
He trusts Eve enough to tell her about the scientist, Feliks, what happened in Cuba, etc., and to ask for her help. He trusts Q so much that he gives him the flashdrive he recovered in Cuba, he stays with Q in his apt while he’s in London, he places his life in Q’s hands multiple times throughout Skyfall, Spectre, and NTTD. He trusts Mallory - even after knowing his shadiness with Herakles, he still trusts him enough to go back under his command. He even trusts Nomi after only a few days of meeting her - enough to trust her to have his back on the island, enough to trust her with Madeline and his child.
So the fact that Bond doesn’t trust Madeline is a huge, huge red flag. To me, the “trilogy” of Skyfall, Spectre, and NTTD were all about establishing Bond’s support system and family within MI6. In Casino Royale and QoS, he really only had M, and no other connections to MI6 beyond her. But starting with Skyfall, he begins to build a support network of people he does trust in MI6, and the audience begins to trust them (and love them) along with Bond.
This simply doesn’t apply to Madeline, because Bond doesn’t trust her, and so the audience is never shown why we should trust her or love her.
