Ncuti Gatwa is leaving Doctor Who after just two seasons
Written by laserteam on June 2, 2025
(The Verge) – After only two short seasons, Ncuti Gatwa’s time as Doctor Who has come to a (rather disappointing) end.
Note: this post contains spoilers for this past weekend’s Doctor Who season finale.
In the final moments of “The Reality War,” the Fifteenth Doctor (Gatwa) sacrificed his current form to save the life of a child, and in classic Doctor Who fashion, the Time Lord’s regeneration process ended with him getting a (sort of) new face. It’s not exactly clear how or why, but the Doctor regenerated into a form that looks a lot like Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), the human companion to the Ninth (Christopher Eccleston) and Tenth Doctor (David Tennant).
This is the second time in recent Doctor Who history that the titular character has regenerated into a body portrayed by a series veteran. Previously, Tennant returned to become the Fourteenth Doctor after the Thirteenth (Jodie Whittaker) regenerated. “The Reality War” strongly implies that the Sixteenth Doctor might have transformed into a Rose Tyler facsimile for emotional reasons. But, notably, the episode’s credits do not specify who her new character is.
The casting news was somewhat surprising coming after an appearance Gatwa made on The Graham Norton show last fall where he said that there were plans for him to begin shooting a third season as The Doctor. At the time, Gatwa’s comments felt like a sign that the BBC intended to keep the Fifteenth Doctor’s adventures going for a while longer. But, curiously, when Gatwa’s interview ultimately aired on television, his comments were edited to remove any mention of a third season. It now seems like the network decided to shift gears rather drastically and focus on playing to Who fans’ nostalgia by bringing back an old face.
It’s not clear when Doctor Who will return and explain the Doctor’s latest face, but the BBC isn’t letting the franchise go dormant for too long. The network also dropped a new trailer for The War Between The Land and The Sea, a spinoff series starring Russell Tovey, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Jemma Redgrave, and Alexander Devrient as a group of people trying to stop a conflict with creatures known as the Sea Devils.
