Had to be. We saw the Master fall, literally at the Master’s hand in 12’s penultimate episode. The Master died in that generation ship caught near that black hole, by the master’s own hand.
It was done as an epic tragedy where in the end, Missy did change, “turn good” and intend to go back and help the doctor, which enraged the John Simm master so much he’d rather kill herself than allow it, meaning the doctor succeeded in fixing his friend, and yet he will never, ever, know.
Any new Master we see now, without a lot of exposition, has to be assumed to be the Master between John Simm’s and Missy. The connotation of that death scene was very explicit.
On the one hand, yes. And it does make a good tragedy.
On the other? We’ve seen the Master be turned into a cat person, exterminated by the Daleks, sucked into the Eye of Harmony and be dragged back into the Time Locked end days of the Time War (although I suppose that could be where he regenerates into Dhawan and kills all the Time Lords).
Don’t rule out Missy’s successor returning, is what I’m saying…
Edit: oh, also, since Missy has at least vague memories of meeting herself when she was Simm, she’s had a while to figure out a solution.
I agree its possible, but from a narrative sense tread carefully because if Missy survived that moment she’d have to be a changed person, at the very least a frenemy of the doctor if not a full on ally, not burning his favorite world just to get a rise out of him, or it would undercut Missy’s entire, multi season arc of being rehabilitated.
Why bring her back from that epic high, when you can pull from post simm, just to stunt her back to being a rabid, unrepentant sociopath, and retcon the doctor’s hard earned victory. Literally an entire season revolved around her trying to earn the doctors friendship back as a sociopath, and then the entire season after next revolved around her facing her own execution and being changed by the doctor until she herself acknowledged it to himself, meaning it wasn’t a lie.
I might be in the minority here, but I think retconning hard earned, character defining/shaping/progression arcs is a bad thing. I actually disagree with the decision of undoing the doctor’s decision to genocide his own people for the good of the universe. It was beautiful in the moment, but that was a core trauma of the revived show, and deflates the shadow of the great time war he spends his days living in survivor’s guilt under imho.
Had to be. We saw the Master fall, literally at the Master’s hand in 12’s penultimate episode. The Master died in that generation ship caught near that black hole, by the master’s own hand.
It was done as an epic tragedy where in the end, Missy did change, “turn good” and intend to go back and help the doctor, which enraged the John Simm master so much he’d rather kill herself than allow it, meaning the doctor succeeded in fixing his friend, and yet he will never, ever, know.
Any new Master we see now, without a lot of exposition, has to be assumed to be the Master between John Simm’s and Missy. The connotation of that death scene was very explicit.
https://youtu.be/Xd2NNNKXeZo?si=LZpU7J56JOKmjMmS
On the one hand, yes. And it does make a good tragedy.
On the other? We’ve seen the Master be turned into a cat person, exterminated by the Daleks, sucked into the Eye of Harmony and be dragged back into the Time Locked end days of the Time War (although I suppose that could be where he regenerates into Dhawan and kills all the Time Lords).
Don’t rule out Missy’s successor returning, is what I’m saying…
Edit: oh, also, since Missy has at least vague memories of meeting herself when she was Simm, she’s had a while to figure out a solution.
I agree its possible, but from a narrative sense tread carefully because if Missy survived that moment she’d have to be a changed person, at the very least a frenemy of the doctor if not a full on ally, not burning his favorite world just to get a rise out of him, or it would undercut Missy’s entire, multi season arc of being rehabilitated.
Why bring her back from that epic high, when you can pull from post simm, just to stunt her back to being a rabid, unrepentant sociopath, and retcon the doctor’s hard earned victory. Literally an entire season revolved around her trying to earn the doctors friendship back as a sociopath, and then the entire season after next revolved around her facing her own execution and being changed by the doctor until she herself acknowledged it to himself, meaning it wasn’t a lie.
I might be in the minority here, but I think retconning hard earned, character defining/shaping/progression arcs is a bad thing. I actually disagree with the decision of undoing the doctor’s decision to genocide his own people for the good of the universe. It was beautiful in the moment, but that was a core trauma of the revived show, and deflates the shadow of the great time war he spends his days living in survivor’s guilt under imho.