Our Biggest Unanswered Questions After the 'Doctor Who' Finale (2024)

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Doctor Who Season 1 finale.

As another season of Doctor Who wraps up, so does another mystery about a companion's true identity or a threat that might just destroy the Earth. This time, two-parter "The Legend of Ruby Sunday"/"Empire of Death" covered both grounds by revealing the origins of the titular companion (Millie Gibson), and bringing back the god of death Sutekh, who made his debut all the way back in the Fourth Doctor's (Tom Baker) era. After searching for her birth mother for eight episodes, Ruby Sunday finally finds her and discovers that she is nothing more than a perfectly ordinary woman, which is actually kind of neat. As for the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), he measures his strength against an entity that isn't just a menace to our beloved home planet, but to the entirety of existence. At the end, with the help of his friends and a little mystery up his sleeve, he prevails, and humanity is saved once more. Ruby says farewell to the TARDIS and leaves to spend some quality time with her birth mother, and the Doctor jumps to the next adventure. The end.

Okay, not the end. All of that is very fine and dandy, but the story of Doctor Who isn't nearly over. Heck, it hasn't been even close to a proper end since 1963! So, of course, there are some cliffhangers lingering in the air, as well as some questions that might still get answered in an upcoming season. Still, the wait is long, and we will have to bide our time as we try to find the correct solution to some serious puzzles. Here are the five most pressing questions Doctor Who better answer when it returns for Season 2.

Doctor Who

TV-PG

Action

Adventure

Sci-Fi

910

The show follows the adventures of a Time Lord, “The Doctor,” who is able to regenerate, and the Doctor’s human friends. The Doctor and his companions journey through time and space in the TARDIS – a time-traveling ship shaped like a police box – saving the universe with a combination of wit, bravery, and kindness.

Release Date

March 17, 2006

Cast

Jodie Whittaker , Peter Capaldi , Matt Smith , David Tennant , Ncuti Gatwa , Christopher Eccleston

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

Seasons

14

Studio

BBC America

Streaming Service(s)

Disney+

We Still Don't Know Who Mrs. Flood Is

This is perhaps the main question on everyone's minds, what with that final scene of Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) standing atop Ruby's roof in winter-y attire, promising absolute terror for the Doctor's future. For a huge chunk of the revamped show's new first season, Mrs. Flood seems to be nothing more than a nosy neighbor to Ruby and her family. A nosy neighbor who, bizarrely, never troubles herself with the new, interstellar developments taking place around her home, but a nosy neighbor nonetheless. Our perception of her starts to shift when Sutekh (voiced by Gabriel Woolf) takes control of part of humanity. Suddenly, she becomes a harbinger of death and doom, fully aware of the horrors that are to come. This can easily be explained, however, by the whole possession thing, but what about that ending, though? What does it mean for her character and for the upcoming Christmas special?

Maybe it doesn't really mean anything, at least on the Christmas front. After all, Anita Dobson herself has spoken about how fans will learn about her character in the show's second season, so maybe Christmas won't be her time to shine yet. Still, there's no denying that Mrs. Flood is much more than a regular human being. Around the web, theories abound: could she be a new incarnation of the Master, or the Rani, or maybe another god in the pantheon from which Sutekh, Maestro (Jinkx Monsoon), and the Toymaker (Neil Patrick Harris) emerged? Perhaps she's an entirely new villain — a villain connected to Ruby's past. Let's not overlook the fact that Mrs. Flood's final appearance has her surrounded by snow, much like what happened to Ruby whenever she thought of the night she was left on the steps of the church on Ruby Road. Is this an omen of sorts? Or is it just a coincidence, and the snow conjured up by Ruby was merely an effect of memory working like a time machine?

Is Ruby Sunday Truly Gone From 'Doctor Who'?

Speaking of Ruby, is "Empire of Death" truly the end of her story? Initially, it sure seems like it: upon finding her birth mom, Ruby says goodbye to the TARDIS in a rare healthy companion exit. There is no death, no memory wipe, not a single individual trapped in another dimension or time period. It is just a heartwarming conclusion to an adventure that we always knew would eventually come to an end. However, showrunner Russell T. Davies has already put a stop to the rumor mill that was producing news of Millie Gibson's departure from the show. Davies has made it pretty clear that "we were ordered for two years of a series off Disney, and we're delivering two years, and the Ruby Sunday story literally spans those two years."

So, maybe, instead of wondering whether Ruby Sunday will come back, we should be asking ourselves how she will return. Her goodbye seems pretty definitive, after all. Sure, at first, she makes it seem like she's just going to catch up with her mom for a while before hopping back on the TARDIS, but it soon becomes clear that she just doesn't want to upset the Doctor. Once he tells her that it's all okay, she leaves to enjoy the life that she always dreamed of. With all that in mind, what could possibly make her return to a life of adventures through time and space? It is also known that another companion, played by Varada Sethu, will also be joining Team TARDIS, so maybe she will have something to do with Ruby's return. Or maybe it's all connected to Mrs. Flood...

Will the Doctor Be Reunited With His Granddaughter Susan?

Another character whose return has been long awaited by Doctor Who fans is Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford), the Doctor's granddaughter and very first companion — or assistant, as they were called back in the day. Callously ditched by her grandfather (William Hartnell) on Earth after falling in love with a human freedom fighter in the 1964 serial "The Dalek Invasion of Earth", Susan is thought to be dead by the Doctor, killed by the Master-induced explosion that wiped out all the Time Lords in "The Timeless Child". However, upon running into a villain who uses her name to lure him into a trap, the Doctor is clearly emotional and hopeful, so maybe not all is lost. It wouldn't be the very first retcon in Doctor Who's history for the showrunners to bring Susan back. Just think of all the times the Master and even the Time Lords as a whole have died and then returned. So, with all the mentions of Susan this season — the Doctor also tells Ruby about her in "The Devil's Chord" — could Russell T. Davies be planning a return? Carole Ann Ford sure is on board with it, and, in her own words, "the mind boggles with all the many ways Susan could come back."

Will the Doctor Find His Own Birth Family?

The Doctor's Gallifreyan family isn't the only one that has been lurking in our minds, completely absent from view. During the Thirteenth Doctor's (Jodie Whittaker) era, it is revealed that the Doctor is not originally from Gallifrey, but from an unknown planet. Much like Ruby, he is a foundling, taken to his adoptive planet by a scientist called Tecteun (Seylan Baxter), who wipes his memory and experiments on him to extract the power of regeneration that was then passed to other Time Lords. In a nutshell, without the Doctor, Gallifreyan society as we know it might never have existed. But what happened to the other societies in which this regeneration power was seemingly common before the Doctor's encounter with Tecteun?

Now, the new Season 1 of Doctor Who was all about the importance of finding one's origins. Ruby's adoption story could have gone many ways, but the writers chose to give weight to her reunion with her birth mother. All of that with Ruby having a good relationship with her adoptive family. Thus, we can only imagine how finding your roots must be important for someone like the Doctor, who was always mistreated by those who raised him. Will Season 2 of the show pick up from where Season 1 left off concerning biological and adoptive families, then reveal the Doctor's true identity? Thematically speaking, at least, it would make a lot of sense.

What Happened to the Master?

Now, this question is perhaps related to our very first one, but if Mrs. Flood turns out to be someone else entirely, we will still have the matter of what happened to the Master (last seen played by Sacha Dhawan) to contend with. On the brink of death, he lost a game to the Toymaker and, as punishment, was miniaturized and imprisoned inside a gold tooth. This is revealed to us in "The Giggle," the very same special in which the Fourteenth Doctor (David Tennant) bi-generates into the Fifteenth. Together, the two Doctors manage to beat the Toymaker at his own game and banish him from this world. As he disappears, though, his gold tooth remains behind and is last seen being picked up by a mysterious hand. Whose hand is it, and what plans does its owner have for the Master? The classic villain is as quintessential to Doctor Who as the Daleks and the Cybermen, so could he be brought back for Season 2? Season 1 was all about keeping the most overused Doctor Who baddies at bay, but maybe Davies will have a different approach for his sophom*ore run. Either way, what happened to the gold tooth remains a mystery.

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