No Time to Die delivered a superb conclusion to Daniel Craig's tenure as James Bond, though one of the movie's stranger moments came when 007 visited Q's home and learned he was waiting on his male date to arrive. There's nothing abnormal about that, of course, but the scene came across like a superfluous way to add a gay character to the franchise.
Like Joe Russo playing a survivor of the Blip in Avengers: Endgame who we learned was gay through some heavy-handed dialogue, many have questioned why No Time to Die made Q gay, only for it to have no real bearing on the story. As it turns out, actor Ben Whishaw agrees with that sentiment.
"I’m very happy to admit maybe some things were not great about that [creative] decision," the actor recently told The Guardian. "I think I thought, ‘Are we doing this, and then doing nothing with it?’ I remember, perhaps, feeling that was unsatisfying," Whishaw added, saying he believes the idea still "came from a good place."
"For whatever reason, I didn’t pick it apart with anybody on the film," he continued. "Maybe on another kind of project I would have done? But it’s a very big machine. I thought a lot about whether I should question it. Finally I didn’t. I accepted this was what was written. And I said the lines. And it is what it is."
We thankfully live in a time where there is a greater level of representation on screen, so there being a gay character in the James Bond franchise has been welcomed. However, by putting an established character like Q in that role, people understandably expected more, and the way the scene was handled made the "reveal" feel more like lip service than one with any real weight.
It's unclear where the series goes from here, but a new 007 is going to be cast soon. Whether cast members from the Craig-era like Whishaw return obviously remains to be seen.
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