Doctor Who: Who could be ‘The One Who Waits’?

The first two proper episodes (discounting the Christmas special) of Doctor Who season 14, starring Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, have reached Disney Plus and BBC iPlayer, meaning that viewers are now able to dig deep and overanalyze everything for clues about what’s to come. 

If there’s one thing that Whovians do really well, it’s looking beneath the surface to find foreshadowing. This week, there’s one thing that’s got a few fans talking—The One Who Waits. This as-yet-unknown character was mentioned during The Giggle, which aired back in December, but the moniker comes back up during this week’s second released episode, The Devil’s Chord.

I’m going to hedge my bets and say that The One Who Waits is not a confirmation that Amy and Rory (the Doctor’s companions from the time of the Eleventh Doctor, portrayed by Matt Smith) are about to return. Yes, Rory was known as “the boy who waited”, which is a very similar moniker, but not quite the same. 

Now that’s out of the way, there is a theory floating around Twitter and other corners of the internet about the identity of The One Who Waits. Buckle in because this one is a bit of a ride. 

During The Devil’s Chord, during a discussion with Ruby on a London rooftop, the Doctor talks of his Granddaughter Susan, who he says is currently living with a previous version of himself on the other side of the city. He also admits to Ruby that he currently doesn’t know what became of Susan after the Genocide, which took the lives of all Time Lords except himself. 

At the end of The Devil’s Chord, before we’re assaulted by a slightly out-of-place song and dance number, the Doctor breaks the fourth wall and winks at the camera after saying, “There’s always a twist at the end.” Still with me? Good.

Now, if you dig a little deeper into the casting of this series, you’ll find that there is actually an actress called Susan Twist in the cast, and this is where things start to get really interesting. Susan Twist has had a very short cameo appearance in every single one of Ncuti’s episodes so far, one of the 60th Anniversary Specials with David Tennant, and, according to the sneak peek clip that is available for the next episode, Boom, she’s in that one too.

I’ve raked through all of the episodes so far and pinpointed her character in all of them:

• Wild Blue Yonder 
  • Twist plays Mrs Merridew, who speaks to Isaac Newton before he heads down to the apple tree 
• The Church on Ruby Road 
  • She appears in the crowd at the pub where Ruby is playing the keyboard, saying, “give it some welly!” before asking for Gaudete, a Christmas carol from the 16th century, which would make sense if she was around at the time of Isaac Newton.
• Space Babies
  • She plays Comms Officer Gina Scalzi, who appears on the monitor inside the room where Jocelyn is hiding
• The Devil’s Chord
  • Twist appears as one of the tea ladies in EMI Studios, which would later become Abbey Road Studios. She says she wishes she could be “Margaret Lockwood”. What a woman, indeed.

According to the cast list for Boom, which is written by Steven Moffat, Twist will appear again, though her role is simply called “Ambulance”.

There are unconfirmed rumors that Twist will play a bigger part in the future of the series, taking the also unconfirmed role of Susan Triad. She will be the head of a company named Triad, which has already been name-dropped during the 60th anniversary special, The Giggle when Mel Bush is attempting to align the satellites. Remember, this is an unconfirmed rumor, but I’m counting nothing out of possibility.

So what’s the theory here? Well, we know that The One Who Waits has some connection to both the Toymaker and Maestro, considering the apparent relation between the two and the fact that they both issue a warning to the Doctor about The One Who Waits. It’s also been revealed, though in the Doctor Who audiobooks rather than the TV show, that the Toymaker has a sister who goes by the name of Hecuba.

Hecuba, otherwise known as “The Queen of Time”, would be able to traverse through time in order to appear at any moment, which would explain why Twist’s characters never look as though they’ve aged, regardless of how many years in the past or future she appears. It would make sense, then, to assume that Hecuba, if that’s who this turns out to be, has been waiting a long time to confront the Doctor for whatever reason, likely in retaliation for what happened to her brother. 

Whether or not this theory turns out to be true remains to be seen, but it’s definitely interesting to dive deep into Doctor Who and find the connections or even just speculate. There’s no telling what could happen in the coming episodes, with Russell T Davies (who is responsible for writing the vast majority of this season’s episodes) well known for putting twists and turns in his writing.