“It certainly wasn’t meant to skirt anything, but it wasn’t driven by COVID in particular. It was just kind of the way the scene was written. It’s the delight of connecting up that moment, when you come back to it halfway through, with the moment from the beginning was kind of the idea of it. I felt like having Blanc be gay and have a partner just felt like a very natural thing coming out of the first movie. I feel like in general, if you think about Poirot, for example, getting glimpses of the detective’s life outside of the scope of the case is interesting. But I don’t know that I can ever see the movies being more about that. The whole thing is kind of about the mystery itself.”
— Rian Johnson on why Benoit Blanc doesn't appear onscreen with his lover in Glass Onion
MASTER: Do you remember the name experiment, Doctor? The names.
DOCTOR: Ah...
ELANORA: What names?
MASTER: Our names!
DOCTOR: It was just a practical joke.
MASTER: Can we create a perfect tactical pinpoint alteration of the timelines? Wipe both our birthnames clean. Replace them. You, the Doctor. Me, the Master.
DOCTOR: We went too far.
MASTER: So that no one would remember our true names but us. And we succeeded. A half-dismantled TARDIS, a link to the Matrix, time rewritten yesterday, today, and tomorrow.