Doctor Who: Joy to the World is now available to stream on Disney+. Let’s break down the end of the Christmas Day 2024 Doctor Who special.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for Doctor Who: Joy to the World.
The Christmas episode starred Nicola Coughlan as Joy, a woman who decides to stay in a hotel on Christmas Eve. She has a heartbreaking backstory, eventually sharing with The Doctor how her mom died of COVID on Christmas Day years earlier, and she hadn’t been able to get to her mom to see her due to all the rules at the time. There was a lot of pain and anger within her, and that was something The Doctor was able to use to help save the world.
You see, Joy ended up holding onto the briefcase that would lock itself onto people through the Time Hotel. The aim was to get to a specific point in time. We learned inside was a star, and that star needed to explode, which would take millennia. Of course, when stars explode they take in everything and it would destroy the whole planet.
The Doctor needed to find a way to tackle the problem. He needed to get the exploding star out to space.
Joy sacrifices herself to save Earth in Doctor Who: Joy to the World
In Christmas specials, we know that the companions aren’t going to necessarily stick around. We’ve also seen some of them sacrifice themselves. As much as we would love to see Coughlan as part of the Doctor Who universe in the future, that’s not going to happen. She is one of those Christmas Day companions who sacrificed herself for the rest of humankind.
She still had a connection to the star after being possessed by the company ensuring it could explode. Others The Doctor had met with the briefcase were also still connected to the mainframe, which meant they could work together to help The Doctor and Joy get the star into space. Joy ended up absorbing the star and went into space.
With the benefit of the Time Hotel, it meant that she could appear across different time periods. One of those was the Christmas Day Joy’s mom died, allowing mother and daughter to reunite in the afterlife. We cut to Ruby Sunday, who looked up at the star with fondness knowing that The Doctor had something to do with that.
The ending will certainly put a smile on a lot of people’s faces when it comes to the meaning of Christmas. Joy becomes the Star of Bethlehem, leading everyone to Baby Jesus—there was even a mention of room at the inn earlier in the episode almost foreshadowing that this would happen.
What happened to Anita in the Christmas Day 2024 Doctor Who special?
The Doctor had to spend a year on Earth without the TARDIS to be able to get back to the Time Hotel and allow the loop that had been created happen. This meant he had time to get to know Anita, who ran the hotel Joy (and then The Doctor) stayed at.
At the end of the episode, a person walks through “That Door” and offers Anita a job at the Time Hotel. She has come highly recommended by someone important, and we know The Doctor has made sure she gets some sort of Christmas wish.
Anita accepts, and I hope that we return to the Time Hotel at some point in Doctor Who to see Anita and The Doctor reunite.
Doctor Who: Joy to the World is now available to stream on Disney+.
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