Warning: This article contains moderate spoilers for Doctor Who: “The Giggle.”
Doctor Who ended its trio of 60th anniversary specials in the perfect way, with one foot affectionately in the past and one very much ready to run into the future. As well as a companion from the classic series coming back, we got Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor making his grand debut as he took up the baton (or sonic screwdriver) from David Tennant’s Fourteen in a most unique fashion.
What’s more, we also got Neil Patrick Harris playing the Toymaker, one of the most powerful villains in the Whoniverse’s pantheon who hasn’t been seen on screen since 1966. And yet, despite his immense reality-warping abilities, we learn in special 3, “The Giggle,” that there’s someone out there who’s even more powerful. So who is “The One Who Waits?”
The One Who Waits sure sounds like Doctor Who‘s next big bad
When playing a game of cards with the Doctor in the episode, the Toymaker makes clear that he’s serious business by listing off his impressive accomplishments.
“I played them all, Doctor. I toyed with supernovas, turned galaxies into spin tops. I gambled with God and made him a jack-in-the-box. I made a jigsaw out of your history,” he intones. “The Master was dying and begged for his life with one final game and when he lost I sealed him for all eternity in my gold tooth.”
And yet, the Toymaker admits there’s one being in the whole universe that he fears. “There’s only one player I didn’t dare face, The One Who Waits,” he teases. “I saw it hiding and I ran. That’s someone else’s game.”
Elsewhere in “The Giggle,” the Doctor describes the Toymaker as an “elemental force,” while the character himself reveals that his physical form is but “a face-concealing a vastness that will never cease.” In other words, this guy is a big deal, and yet this mysterious One Who Waits has even him sweating.
Seeing as this is the second time in three episodes that we’ve had an ominous bit of foreshadowing, presumably The One Who Waits is the same enigmatic foe that The Meep from “The Star Beast” described as “The Boss.” At that point, we thought they were talking about the Toymaker himself, but clearly that’s not the case anymore. Although why a villain who terrifies a man who can gamble with God would hire a two-bit criminal like The Meep as his lackey is a whole other mystery.
There are various cosmically powerful species from Doctor Who history that The One Who Waits could belong to — the Eternals spring to mind. No, not the Marvel ones; an ageless godlike race from the 1983 story “Enlightenment.” Although, having said that, The One Who Waits does have a very He Who Remains ring to it. If Ncuti Gatwa’s Time Lord teams up with Tom Hiddleston’s Time God in some future Loki crossover on Disney Plus, we will not complain.
