Russell T Davies started production of the Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Special and has made some surprise announcements over the last couple of days. First came the announcement of Sex Education's Ncuti Gatwa as the 14th Doctor, then came the announcement that David Tennant would be returning as the 10th Doctor alongside Catherine Tate's Donna Noble. To start off everyone's Monday, Davies announced Heartstopper's Yasmin Finney as the 14th Doctor's first companion named Rose.

At first, it seems odd that Davies would be reusing the name of the now iconic Doctor Who companion, Rose Tyler, played by Billie Piper between 2005 and 2008. Davies, however, also teases that there is an in-story explanation for this creative decision by stating, "Life on Doctor Who gets brighter and wilder, how can there be another Rose? You’ll find out in 2023." Of course, this has fans talking online about what this could mean, with half of fans speculating Finney's Rose could actually be the daughter of former companion Donna Noble and her husband Shaun Temple.

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Another likely possibility is that Finney may be portraying a newer incarnation of Rose Tyler from a parallel universe, which would easily coincide with Davies' more recent comments. It would also follow in the footsteps of Jodie Whittaker's era of Doctor Who in continuing to break new grounds on the types of stories that can be told. While Piper's Rose is easily the icon of one generation of Doctor Who fans, Finney's Rose could still be that for a new generation of fans in a very different way.

As the first trans actress of color to be taking on an iconic role alongside the first main Black Doctor, there are a lot of story possibilities the parallel universe theory easily opens up. The first is the opportunity to explore the character of Rose Tyler in a completely new way, beginning with the fact that parallel universes are now associated with her character. She was also the first companion of Davies' first era, who debuted in the Season 1 pilot episode "Rose." It would therefore make sense for Davies to homage that fact by having her appear in his first episode as returning showrunner.

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Another aspect of Rose's character that made her iconic was her romantic relationship with the 10th Doctor. While she had been traveling with him since his 9th incarnation, it wasn't until after he regenerated into his 10th incarnation that she started taking romantic interest in him. By the Season 2 finale, "Doomsday," she had admitted her feelings for him after getting stranded on a parallel Earth.

Following the abrupt termination of their relationship, Rose spent Season 4 working her way back to her native universe to reunite with the 10th Doctor. She accomplished her goal, but was eventually brought back to her new home on the parallel universe to look after the 10th Doctor's half-human meta-crisis clone. This is the version of the Doctor who ends up reciprocating Rose's feelings fully, and who in the Doctor Who comics ends up marrying and having a child with her.

After the Doctor regenerated, there had been hints he still harbored romantic feelings for Rose, most notably by the 11th and 13th incarnations. In the Season 6 episode "Let's Kill Hitler," while the 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) was dying inside the TARDIS after being poisoned by Melody Pond -- a past incarnation of River Song -- he asked the TARDIS to show him a hologram of someone he liked. The first image he was presented with was Rose Tyler, which produced feelings of guilt for him. He later went on to mention Rose again in "The Wedding of River Song," but avoided talking about her again from that point forward.

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The last time Rose got a mention was in the 2021 New Year's Special "Revolution of the Daleks," in which former companion Captain Jack Harkness told the 13th Doctor's companion, Yasmin "Yaz" Khan, about his history with the Doctor. During that conversation, Jack discretely mentioned Rose as the Doctor's friend who was partly responsible for his immortality. Jack more than likely avoided sharing the full nature of the Doctor's relationship with Rose to avoid hurting Yaz's feelings.

The 13th Doctor herself also avoided talking about Rose when she had the important conversation with Yaz about the possibility of a romantic relationship. While it wasn't obvious to Yaz the Doctor had alluded to her past romantic relationship with Rose when discussing the reasons a relationship wasn't possible, it was obvious to the audience who she was referring to when she said "sooner or later, it'll hurt."

With the 13th Doctor set to regenerate in the upcoming Centenary special, there's a very good chance Russell T Davies will revisit the Doctor's romance with Rose to give him proper closure on that past relationship. Whereas the last two times the Doctor parted ways with Rose left him feeling bitter and angry, encountering a new Rose from another universe may finally give him the opportunity to come to terms with his feelings in a way that allows him to truly move on.