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It was announced back in January that Varada Sethu would be joining the cast of Doctor Who for its next season as the latest companion for the Doctor, making the actor’s appearance in the third episode of this year’s season feel all the more surprising and important: a year before anyone expected, we had a chance to meet the new companion.

Except, as it turned out, we didn’t.

Announced during the Doctor Who panel at San Diego Comic-Con 2024, Sethu’s new companion will be called Belinda Chandra… which is very definitively not Mundy Flynn, the character she played in ‘Boom,’ the Steven Moffat-written episode from this season. Belinda’s name was the sole detail that series showrunner Russell T. Davies was willing to share with the Hall H crowd during the Friday morning panel, but it’s already enough to suggest that she’ll be an entirely new character — and one, I suspect, that originates from the present day, instead of the far-future that Flynn belonged to in ‘Boom.’

If true, that detail could be enough to “explain” the double-casting; there’s precedent for an actor to play a character and their own descendent in Doctor Who, with Samuel Anderson playing both Danny Pink and Orson Pink, Danny’s descendent a century in the future, during 2014’s season of the series. Anyone upset about Sethu playing two characters can imagine a connection between the two in that manner.

Sethu won’t be the only new actor joining the season; Millie Gibson also revealed that she spends a lot of time in the next season playing opposite Jonah Haurer-King, although his character’s identity wasn’t revealed. Is Ruby getting a love interest of her own next year? Time will tell… although that’s always a risky thing to say about a show based around time travel.

Doctor Who returns this Christmas with a special episode, and then a new season in 2025, on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ internationally.

Get a fuller San Diego Comic-Con experience with a full rundown of our SDCC 2024 stories, as well as all the big SDCC 2024 news, how to make the most out of San Diego Comic-Con, and the real burning question: how much does it actually cost to go to SDCC?