TV Recap: “The Reality War” Brings Season 2 of “Doctor Who” to a Mostly Satisfying Conclusion, Along with Some Massive Surprises

An era comes to an end in the Season 2 finale of Doctor Who, “The Reality War." Will the Doctor be able to save all his friends and stop the Rani’s plan to bring back Omega, the creator of the Time Lords? Find out in my spoiler-filled recap of “The Reality War."

After a brief recap and the title sequence, we cut back to the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) falling to the ground from the Rani’s Bone Palace. Behind him, a portal begins to appear and out of it pops Anita (Steph de Whalley) from “Joy to the World" – who is now working at the Time Hotel. The clock strikes midnight, and everyone appears to reset with Ruby (Millie Gibson) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) waking up in their beds. Anita reveals that May 24th never arrives and that the wish world resets to 7 a.m. on May 23rd at midnight, every night.

The Doctor talks about how much Anita has changed, and she shares that she’s been looking for him ever since she started working there. We then get three great scenes of Anita looking for the Doctor, where she finds the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) playing a game of chess, the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) being interrogated by the Daleks, and the Fifteenth Doctor dancing with Rogue (Jonathan Groff) – which she seems upset by, as in “Joy to the World," she definitely developed some sort of feelings for the Doctor.

The Doctor wants Anita to take him to the Bone Palace, but Anita is unable to do so as it's surrounded by a threshold. Instead, she takes him to John Smith’s house, where Belinda wakes up without him. Every time the world resets, it gets a little more bumpy – so people compensate for that in their minds. The Doctor is still insistent that his daughter Poppy is real, even snapping at Anita when she suggests she isn’t real. The Doctor comes down the stairs, shedding John Smith’s outfit and miraculously transforming into an outlandish outfit much more befitting of this incarnation. They take Belinda and Poppy to the Time Hotel, where Belinda’s memories come back and Poppy is still real.

Cut to UNIT, where the Doctor and Anita open a number of portals into the room and are able to remind all of the UNIT personnel of who they really are. All of them regain their own minds and realities, while the Vlinx explodes into the room out of a box crate. Rose Noble (Yasmin Finney), Donna’s trans daughter, returns from out of nowhere, as Conrad (Jonah Hauer-King) couldn’t imagine a trans person in his “ideal world." The Doctor introduces UNIT to Belinda, and the miraculous fact that the two have a daughter. There’s still a few missing, so Kate activates biotrackers in Shirley (Ruth Madeley), Mel (Bonnie Langford) and Ruby to remind them of themselves and bring them back to UNIT.

The Rani (Archie Panjabi) is trying to get her plan fast-tracked, and uses Conrad’s control of the wish world to try and find where the Doctor went. Everyone is back to normal at UNIT and the Doctor catches everyone up on the Rani and Conrad’s plan. This is when the Rani arrives at UNIT, being reunited with Mel (who fought off against the character in the 1987 story “Time and the Rani"). The Rani reveals how she escaped the destruction of Gallifrey – through the use of a Time Ring, a more crude way of time travel. She has been tracking the Doctor for years, mainly through the form of Mrs. Flood (her previous incarnation, played by Anita Dobson) – who was neighbor to both Ruby and Belinda.

Planning to bring back Omega from the Underverse, the Rani tries to recruit the Doctor to join her efforts, as after all, they are both Time Lords. He of course refuses, explaining that Omega is actually pretty insane (as his previous appearances clearly proved). The Rani wants to create a new race of Time Lords from the DNA of Omega. New lore about Time Lords is revealed here, that they are all infertile, making Poppy’s existence even more intriguing. If they destroy the wish world, then Poppy would cease to exist – something Belinda does not want to happen under any circumstances.

Returning to the Bone Palace, the Rani tries to buy more time by setting the bone beasts on UNIT Tower – which begins an all out assault between the two forces. The Doctor begins to hatch a plan. Belinda and Poppy enter into a zero room underneath UNIT Tower, which keeps them free from space and time – with the hope that when the wish world is destroyed, that Poppy will remain. Meanwhile, the Doctor pilots the Rani’s hoverboard to UNIT to transport himself to the Bone Palace. Ruby gets given a teleporter, where she's to teleport to Conrad and take control of the God of Wishes.

The Doctor arrives too late, as the portal has locked onto its target. Meanwhile, Conrad knew Ruby would be coming, pointing a gun at her as soon as she arrived. All is ready, and the Rani opens the portal to Omega – who comes out looking nowhere near as expected. A hulking skeleton of a human form, Omega has become exactly what he wanted to be, his own legend – the mad god. He picks up the Rani and devours her, while Mrs. Flood is able to escape via the Time Ring. The Doctor is, rather easily, able to defeat Omega by blasting the power of the vindicator straight into him – sending him back to the underverse.

Meanwhile, Ruby gains the God of Wishes and wishes for Conrad to be happy and for the wish world to come to an end. The Bone Palace begins to disappear, and Ruby reappears on the TARDIS – which was part of the structure the whole time. The Doctor too finds the TARDIS, making a final wish of “no more wishes" before piloting the TARDIS back to UNIT, where Belinda and Poppy both come out of the zero room safe and sound.

The Doctor and Ruby are now at her home, alongside her mum and grandma, who take in the baby God of Wishes as a foster child, now that the human baby no longer has the power to grant wishes. Ruby then joins the Doctor and Belinda aboard the TARDIS, who have set up a cot for Poppy and begin making plans for how they’re going to travel the universe with Poppy. But then, all of a sudden, Poppy disappears, and the Doctor and Belinda no longer have any memory of her.

They return to UNIT just as the clock strikes midnight, meaning that May 24th has arrived and the world has not reset as it has been doing. After being offered a job by UNIT, as Kate loves to do, Anita heads back to the Time Hotel, saying goodbye by saying that “The Boss" says hello – a thread that was first set up by The Meep and Rogue. The Doctor decides to park that for a later date. Ruby’s wish about Conrad panned out well, for him at least – as he now appears to be a happy chef and no one remembers him from the old days.

Meanwhile, Ruby senses something is still wrong. She still remembers Poppy, even though no one else does. As everyone else writes her off, Ruby pleads with the Doctor to help. She reminds him of the time he saved her as a baby in “The Church on Ruby Road," urging him to do the same now. In fact, all of UNIT shares their love and adoration for the Doctor here as he realizes that Poppy might be real. Time has shifted by one degree and there’s no technology in the universe that can change that – but he can, as a Time Lord, by giving up this life.

On board the TARDIS, the Doctor makes his decision and is saddened that he might be losing his face. To help him through, a voice from the past appears after he sees his former incarnations appearing on the screen. In comes the Thirteenth Doctor (Jodie Whitaker) who is able to show up aboard the TARDIS with cause and effect getting a little out of order. As is tradition when multiple Doctors meet, 13 mentions that he has redecorated the TARDIS and that she doesn’t like it. The Doctor plans to inject his regeneration energy directly into the time vortex, giving his life to save Poppy.

The two Doctors have a humorous and wonderful heart to heart, with 15 even telling 13 he loves her – which surprises 13, and makes her think she should say that to her companion, Yaz. “All these faces and we never really change." The Doctor proceeds to take his regeneration energy and pump it into the time vortex, and the gamble works. Reality resets.

The Doctor wakes up in Belinda’s front yard, with regeneration energy beginning to swirl around his hand. But he puts it off, as he has to have a final farewell with Belinda. Poppy is there beside her, alive and well. Through some sort of timey wimey-ness, Belinda had always been trying to get home specifically to Poppy. We see moments of previous episodes of the season, re-contextualized with this revelation. Belinda reveals that, in this timeline, Poppy’s father is a man named Richie, which the Doctor accepts even though he loses out on having a daughter of his own. Belinda decides not to travel on with the Doctor anymore, choosing instead to live her life with Poppy. But she does say that perhaps when Poppy’s grown up, she can see the stars. While the Doctor says he’d like that, he says you wont see me like this – pointing to his face.

The TARDIS materializes in the depths of space, as music begins to swell. The Doctor says he doesn’t want to do this alone, opening up the doors to see the Joy star from “Joy to the World." Regeneration energy begins to swirl around his body, and he says “this has been an absolute joy" before the energy explodes around him. Energy radiates in all directions as the Doctor stands at the edge of the TARDIS, looking out into the vastness of space. The energy begins to dissipate, as the Doctor once again takes on a female form, but a very familiar one. That of the actress Billie Piper, who previously played companion Rose Tyler. There is a new Doctor, but probably not one you were expecting.

My mind is still swirling from the revelations of this episode. On the whole, I think the episode brought most of the dangling plot threads from the last two seasons to a pretty good conclusion. Although, there’s a lot of mysteries left to be revealed. I was disappointed that we didn’t get more from the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan, after she mysteriously appeared in the last couple of episodes. While rumors of Billie Piper’s casting as the Doctor had been swirling around the internet, it was mostly kept a surprise for this episode. I have thoughts which I think need a little more time to process, so check back in a few days as I share my thoughts – and trepidations – about the season finale of Doctor Who and the show’s future.