Doctor Who season 11: Will Pearl Mackie return? Bill’s not dead…

Will Pearl Mackie return to Doctor Who season 11? It’s certainly a good question, especially after the finale brought her story full-circle. Heather was there in the beginning, and now, she and Bill have a chance to travel the universe together. It has a Clara Oswald – Ashildr feel to it, with the main difference being here that Mackie was only around for one season. Even by Companion standards, that’s a fairly small shelf life.

Ultimately, the good news is that the closing minutes of the season 10 finale appear as though they should be taken literally, or at least fairly so. Bill is not exactly dead, but she is not exactly fully human anymore, either. There was no fully taking back what happened with the Cybermen. She gets to do her own thing, and if she comes back, The Doctor may not be the same Doctor anymore. We know already that a regeneration is coming, no matter how hard that Twelve may be fighting it. He sees the beginning of a new cycle upon him, and there’s fear. It is not death, but it is the unknown. This is one of the few things that The Doctor does feel some sort of concern over. He can handle the changing seasons, but not any change within himself.

In getting back to the future of Mackie, showrunner Steven Moffat had the following to say on the Doctor Who aftershow that he created the ending in such a way that there can be a little bit of ambiguity moving forward as to the future of the series:

“So, she doesn’t die. She nearly dies. She nearly dies and she becomes something else. And we leave it in such a way that … I don’t know [about] future plans, I’ve kept away from them. I put it such that, because Heather does say look I can put you back on Earth if you want to go back and make chips, she could. So any of those are [things that could happen in the future]. I kinda think in my head she flies around the universe with Heather. That’s what she does.”

Chris Chibnall is coming aboard as the new showrunner, and clearly one of the things that Moffat most wanted to do is give everyone a clean slate. Peter Capaldi is leaving, Michelle Gomez’s incarnation of The Master is seemingly gone, and we’re now left with a super-mysterious special where the only thing confirmed is that we’re getting an opportunity to see David Bradley stop by as his version of the first Doctor, played by William Hartnell so many years ago. In order to push the series further, Moffat is looking back now into the past.

Want some further news regarding the future of Doctor Who?

Rest assured that we have no intentions to deprive you of that! You can see more of the latest pertaining to the series just by heading over to the link here.

Meanwhile, feel free to share in the comments whether you think Pearl Mackie’s time on the series is done. (Photo: BBC.)