It was never real.
Q was an invention of a bored/paranoid/delusional South African, hijacked by a sleaze bag (American) hiding out in the Philippines (ask yourself why he is really in the Philippines of all places) in order to draw traffic and attention (then $$$) to his janky ass site.
This was amplified by Russian intelligence services and spread massively to other media with the intent to foster distrust in the American political system.
At the same time, other movements on all sides of the spectrum (BLM, Antifa, etc.) were similarly amplified by Russian intelligence.
The entire intent was to distract and divide the populace while being allowed to plunder and weaken the US government.
In a similar way, through massive manipulation in social media (Russians are experts at this) the population was mind fucked into voting for Trump (Clinton was an extremely flawed candidate to begin with, so, this made the job easier).
Since the late 90's Trump has been dependent on Russian money, which financed his last return from bankruptcy. In addition to him being quite dependent financially, there is quite a lot of rather unpleasant activity on the part of Trump that Russia has amassed clear evidence of and this has obviously influenced his behavior.
Stop for a second and consider all of the massive wins that Russia was allowed under the Trump administration.
And these are just the ones you know about. The enormous hacking operation was just the tip of the iceberg.
Back to the point... to distract and divide. Russia is the master of manipulating a population into turning on themselves. Highly-effective and plausibly deniable.
So...
Q was a LARP, amplified by Russian intelligence with the intent to distract and divide.
The ultimate goal was to seed distrust in the US government on the part of citizens.
Trump was similarly amplified with the intent to create chaos and also further polarize a nation.
Again, ultimate goal was to distract and divide, and weaken the government by seeding distrust.
It was extremely successful.