30 Years Later, One James Bond Prediction Has Just Come True

In 1995, in the first Pierce Brosnan-led James Bond film, GoldenEye, Bond was locked horns with his new boss at MI6, partly because M was, for the first time ever, a woman. And for thirty years, in real life, that concept remained fiction. Even when Judi Dench was running MI6 in the Bond films — from 1995 to 2012 — there was still a man running the famous U.K. spy agency. 

But now, the Bond prediction that a woman would head MI6 has become reality. As reported by the BBC, Blaise Metreweli will become the first female boss of MI6, taking over from Sir Richard Moore. Metreweli has been part of MI6 since 1999, meaning she would have first started working in intelligence the year The World is Not Enough was in theaters, a movie in which Judi Dench's M was very much in the action.

Ironically, Metreweli's previous position at MI6 was that of "Q," which is the "head of the crucial technology and innovation division," according to the BBC. Although Metreweli's last name begins with M, that won't be her official designation when she takes over at MI6. Instead, she'll be known as "C," which indicates she is the chief of MI6.

In reality, Ian Fleming based much of the inner workings of MI6 on his own experience working in intelligence. Many of the earliest Bond novels described the MI6 of the 1940s and 1950s with a reasonable degree of accuracy. The character of M was created by Fleming and was noted for his apparent coldness but also for the loyalty that he commanded. The M of the Bond novels was also, at one point, depicted as a health nut. In the novel version of Thunderball, he sends Bond to a health retreat to get a full detox.

Judi Dench's M was similarly intolerant of James Bond's shortcomings, saying to him in GoldenEye that he was "a sexist, misogynistic dinosaur." But of course, M is also the whole reason that Bond succeeds at anything in those films.

The rest of the MI6 workers are not publicly named. Upon getting the job, Metreweli said she was "proud and honoured" to lead. No word yet on what kind of bourbon she'll be drinking when she has to give her field agents a serious lecture. 

Related: James Bond's Next Official Job Is Positively Shocking