Slow Horses made Jack Lowden TV's most lovable failed spy. That's why he'd be a better Bond
Amazon's final screen tests start this week with three names on the list. I'm rooting for the one whose character gets yelled at by Gary Oldman for a living.
The James Bond search has reached the screen-test stage. Per Deadline, the final tests begin October 23, with Jack Lowden, Callum Turner, and Josh O'Connor named as finalists, plus a fourth actor the studio is keeping unnamed. The Hollywood Reporter's version of the story names only Lowden and Turner.
The logistics, briefly: the tests were pushed from earlier in October so all the finalists could shoot in the same window, and they're expected to wrap within a week. Producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman narrowed the field with director Denis Villeneuve, Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) is writing, and Pascal has said the announcement should come before the end of 2026. Filming is targeted for 2027, with Puck's Matt Belloni reporting a 2028 release.
Amazon paid $8.45 billion for MGM with Bond as the crown jewel. The screen tests starting this week are its first casting decision with full creative control of the franchise.
The case for the screwup
My pick is Lowden, and the reason is the thing that superficially disqualifies him. On Slow Horses he plays River Cartwright, a demoted MI5 agent whose every season starts with a humiliation and runs on his refusal to accept it. Four seasons of that turned him into the most beloved failed spy on television — and the public campaign started before the shortlist did, with Richard Osman saying in August that Lowden was "strongly considered" and Gary Oldman, his Slow Horses co-star, endorsing him a few weeks later.
The fan logic is simple enough to fit in one YouTube comment under ScreenRant's casting video: "He's great on Slow Horses. I am all for it" (48 upvotes).
The deeper argument is about what the next Bond is for. Daniel Craig's run worked because it let Bond bleed, grieve, and get fired; the franchise has already learned that a 007 who can lose something is more interesting than a tuxedo that always wins. Lowden has spent four years proving he can play exactly that register — competence wrapped in catastrophe — and he'd walk into the role with the audience already trained to root for him at his lowest.
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The honest counterargument
The same baggage cuts the other way, and a commenter under the same video said it plainly: "I'm not sure if I can still look at him as the serious James Bond after watching Slow Horses lmao." Typecasting is a real risk when your defining role is a man who once botched a training exercise so badly it's the show's founding joke.
And the competition is serious. Turner has been the tabloid favorite for over a year, O'Connor brings the prestige-cinema profile, and the unnamed fourth finalist could be anyone — Jacob Elordi, reported in "pole position" back in May, met with Villeneuve earlier this year and is conspicuously absent from the named list. The tests wrap within a week, the decision is expected soon after, and by Pascal's own deadline we'll have a name before the year is out.
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