Character Analysis
Shot Through the Heart, and She's to Blame
Fast and reckless, Tilly Masterson intrigues Bond. He's not angry when a woman tries to kill him—he's turned on.
Bond first meets Tilly when she honks at him and speeds around him on the narrow, twisty highways of Geneva. Reckless driving: check. Then, when spying on Goldfinger, Bond is almost shot by Tilly's sniper rifle. Attempted murder: check. Bond runs her off the road and takes her to a mechanic, where she lies about her name. Deceit: check.
This woman is a triple threat, and for Bond, that makes her a perfect ten.
Unfortunately for Tilly, she is awful at everything. It turns out she is trying to kill Goldfinger, not Bond—but she's such a terrible shot that she misses the large criminal by half a kilometer. When she's aiming at Goldfinger, he's buying fruit from a roadside stand operated by children. Does she not realize she could have shot a child instead?
Tilly is blindly driven by revenge. Her sister, Jill, was killed by Goldfinger, and she wants the man dead to avenge her sister. Bond too wants to avenge Jill, and that desire brings him and Tilly together in a temporary alliance.
Sadly, Tilly isn't good at running, either. When she runs from Goldfinger's thugs, Oddjob kills her with a well-placed throw of his hat. Yes, his hat. Her sister died after being painted in gold; Tilly herself dies from being whacked by haberdashery. Jill must be flaunting her comparatively glamorous death over her sister in the afterlife.