May Day

Background

During the film she kills Achille Aubergine, Sir Godfrey Tibbett, Chuck Lee and an unnamed Taiwanese tycoon aboard Zorin's skyship, escapes Bond by parachuting from the Eiffel Tower, and has sex with him, dominating him by being on top. When she fights Bond at the end of the film in Zorin's mine she realises Zorin has left her to die and, declaring that she thought the creep loved her, chooses to side with Bond, helping him move a bomb clear of the mine with a handcar and willingly driving it out herself as it detonates, killing her.

Former Bond girl Barbara Bach, who played Anya Amasova in The Spy Who Loved Me, suggested Jones for the role, and B. J. Worth was her stunt double on the Eiffel Tower. Lisa Funnell notes that May Day was privileged in the film's promotion, standing back to back with Bond on posters that asked whether he had finally met his match.

Commentators have discussed her at length as a dominant black woman in the series. James Chapman calls her a highly problematic character whose challenge to Bond's masculinity is never properly resolved, so that she is "simply too problematic to be allowed to live"; Kristen Shaw sees her coded as animalistic, non-human and deviant. Travis L. Wagner reads May Day as a distinct postcolonial subaltern Other who resorts to brutish feats of strength to express her thoughts. Charles Burnetts treats her as the high-watermark of the "fluffer" character whom Bond seduces earlier in the movie and who serves only to keep him aroused until the primary Bond girl arrives, while noting that she dominates the first half of the film and turns the gaze upon Bond himself. Many agree she overshadows Stacey Sutton, and Screen Rant rates her the bravest of all the Bond girls.