“What on earth?” Doctor Who fans react to confusing teaser image after Mrs Flood’s identity was finally revealed

DGIX

May 19, 2025

Contains full spoilers for the Doctor Who episode “The Interstellar Song Contest”.

There’s a lot to unpack here, Whovians, as Doctor Who just aired a huge reveal that might change the course of this season entirely.

The most recent episode had everyone shocked, as we finally found out who Mrs Flood was after weeks of being tormented. In fact, showrunner Russell T. Davies has been teasing her identity since Christmas 2023, when actress Anita Dobson made her first appearance and broke the fourth wall and revealed that she knew what a TARDIS was.

Now, we know why, and it’s worth the wait because Davies has just brought back an iconic villain in the form of The Rani, a renegade Time Lord from the Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey.

Viewers watched as Mrs Flood began to bi-generate, splitting into two figures; one played by Dobson, the other by Archie Panjabi.

“Our name is the Rani,” Panjabi’s version reveals, with Dobson seeming to be subservient to the newcomer. Panjabi added: “She’s become a Rani, while I’m the Rani – the definite article, so to speak.”

If the return of The Rani wasn’t shocking enough, a teaser image for the next episode has got everyone freaking out, with one post on X generating over 800 likes with plenty of confused viewers sounding off in the thread below.

It’s The Rani with a baby. Yes, “what on earth?” is one way of putting it!

WHAT ON EARTH??? #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/LbLRRDh1MPMay 19, 2025

What are the leading fan theories about this teaser image?

Ruby Sunday standing on a street at night in Doctor Who season 2

(Image credit: BBC/Disney+)

Naturally, fans have sprung into action with many trying to figure out what this image could mean.

A few have suggested she could be the mother to the space babies, from the episode of the same name, but there’s one theory in particular that really caught my eye.

As fans know, Ruby Sunday was abandoned as a baby, but there’s still a lot of mystery around what exactly happened. In emotional scenes, she reunited with her birth mother, Louise Miller, but is there about to be a further twist in the tale?

Is The Rani holding baby Ruby in that promotional image? It’s certainly a strong theory, with many pointing out that the cloak she’s wearing looks a lot like the one in the flashback scenes where baby Ruby is left behind. If that is The Rani, then things just got very interesting indeed.

We’ll have to wait until the next episode arrives on Disney+ and BBC iPlayer, on May 24.