Before you go into a panic, Daniel Craig will still play James Bond in the next film.

This time, however, he might not be playing 007.

According to The Guardian, a source at the Daily Mail says that the 25th bond film opens with Bond, retired in Jamaica, called back into action to fight a new villain played by Rami Malek.

Then there’s another scene where M says “Come in 007”, and, instead of Craig, “in walks Lashana Lynch who is black, beautiful and a woman,” the source said.

Yes, she is all those things.

More from Vox:

…even if the rumor is true — while the popular UK tabloid is known for playing fast and loose with facts, major outlets have carried the report as all but confirmed — and Lynch is the new 007, she’s not the action hero of the new film. That’s still Craig’s Bond. To be blunt, even if giving a woman of color the venerated title sounds great in theory, in execution, it seems like it may be a bald-faced attempt to address the optics of Bond’s typically homogeneous casting without actually letting Lynch take over the role of 007.

The rumor mill has yet to spoil whether Lynch’s character survives to the end of the film, but the gossip emphasizes that rather than being placed in the center of the action, she’s also framed as a love interest for Bond.

Here’s the thing, though – casting Lynch as 007 isn’t the only change to the franchise.

The newest writer to join the screenwriting team is Fleabag creator and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Astonishingly, Waller-Bridge is only the second credited woman screenwriter in nearly 60 years of James Bond films; the first was longtime film veteran Johanna Harwood, who doctored the screenplays for 1962’s Dr. No and 1963’s From Russia With Love and received co-writing credits for both films (over the objections of her male co-writer).

So it really comes down to how all of this handled. In the meantime, social media is divided, although the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

John Scalzi – accurate. There are, however, some very sad men out there:

And my personal favourite:

Judge Joe Brown looks like a pretty fragile character.

As for Giulio Cescato. Hell yes, to a character named Dick Aplenty!

I’ll be very disappointed if this doesn’t happen.

[sources:guardian&vox]