Every Susan Foreman appearance in Doctor Who so far and what her 2025 return could mean

Doctor Who's new phase was sold as a whole new era, yet it came with tons of echoes and mentions and characters from the past. And the past won't be stuck where it belongs, not in a TV show that thrives on how space and time collide.

There was a time when the Doctor had a granddaughter. Not a mystery to solve or a paradox to chase, just Susan. Brilliant, alien, impossibly young. She was the Doctor's very first companion, the first face to look at the universe beside him. And then she was gone. Left behind in a world of rubble and hope, while the Doctor turned away. For sixty years, she remained a wound the show rarely touched.

Until now.

In The Interstellar Song Contest, Doctor Who does the unthinkable, it brings Susan back. Not with fanfare or exposition, but as a flicker. Older now, watching the Doctor with eyes full of something unsaid. It does not confirm her fate or even her presence, it just opens a door. A suggestion that she is still out there, watching. That the Doctor has not forgotten. That maybe, just maybe, the story they started is not finished after all.

The Doctor has mentioned her before. Not often and never for long, but enough to let us know she still lives in the quiet corners of his memory. In The Devil’s Chord, he takes Ruby to a rooftop in 1960s London and points toward Shoreditch, anchoring her in a time that shaped him. And then, almost casually, he says:

“In the past, right now, I live in a place called Totter’s Lane. 1963, I parked the TARDIS in a junkyard and I lived there with my granddaughter Susan.”

There is no explanation, just a name dropped like a stone into still water, carrying with it memory, ache, and maybe guilt.

Before we ask where she might be now or what her return could mean, it is worth remembering who she was. Let us go back to the very beginning and retrace every time Susan Foreman appeared in Doctor Who, from her first step into the TARDIS to her unexpected glimpses in 2025.

An Unearthly Child (1963)

Susan’s debut in Doctor Who is not just a historical detail, it is the moment the show finds its heart. Through her, the Doctor is not just a traveler but a grandfather, someone with responsibility, grief, and hidden history. She is not just a companion; she is family, and her very presence makes the Doctor more human.

Even from the start, Susan carries contradictions. She is young and ancient, brilliant and naïve, curious and isolated. Her oddness, her bursts of alien knowledge, her loneliness amongst humans all hint at a past we never fully see.

Susan is the Doctor’s emotional anchor, the piece of Gallifrey he cannot leave behind, and through her, the show sets up its greatest theme: that behind every adventure is a story of loss.

The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964)

This is the first major heartbreak for Susan in Doctor Who. She meets David Campbell, a human resistance fighter, and for the very first time, she imagines a life apart from the TARDIS.

However, Susan cannot choose. What happens then? The Doctor makes the choice or her. He locks her out, delivering a farewell speech that has echoed across decades, leaving her behind for a life she deserves but never claimed for herself.

The pain of that goodbye lingers not just in the Doctor but in the show’s silence so far. Afterward, Susan becomes a ghost in the narrative of Doctor Who, her name rarely spoken, her story left hanging.

Fans have felt this absence for years, asking why the Doctor never visits, why Susan never calls. Her departure sharpens the loneliness of the Doctor’s travels, making every later goodbye a shadow of that first, deepest wound.

The Five Doctors (1983)

Susan returns for Doctor Who's twentieth anniversary, pulled into a chaotic adventure with past Doctors and companions. For a moment, she stands beside her grandfather again, but they share no meaningful dialogue, no reckoning over decades apart. It's a nostalgic nod, but emotionally, it leaves her as unfinished as ever.

What needs to be pointed out, though, is her symbolic weight in the very fabric of the universes in Doctor Who. Among all the companions, Susan is the only one with blood ties. Even without explicit conversation, her mere presence reminds us of everything left unsaid, everything unresolved.

Susan Foreman is the emotional ghost standing in the middle of the celebration, pointing silently at the Doctor’s most personal, unfinished story.

Dimensions in Time (1993)

This odd charity crossover with EastEnders is often dismissed when talking about Doctor Who, but Susan’s appearance here matters because it proves the show cannot fully let her go. Even in a campy, non-canonical event, she reappears, not forgotten, not erased.

Her role is minimal, but it highlights the pattern. Susan is always near the edges, always just out of focus. She lingers as a quiet admission that the Doctor’s first companion, his family, has never been properly closed off, that her chapter has been waiting for decades to be reopened.

The Interstellar Song Contest (2025)

When Susan reappears in the 15th Season of Doctor Who as an older woman watching the Doctor, it lands like a quiet explosion. She's not explained or introduced; she simply is. And that is what makes it powerful. For a character so long ignored, her sudden return is a signal. It seems Doctor who is ready to confront the past.

However, it also raises immediate questions. Why now? Has Susan been waiting, watching, living a life unseen? Has she been looking for the Doctor, or has the Doctor’s buried past pulled her back into view? Her reappearance in Doctor Who now shifts the emotional stakes of the season, promising that the oldest, most fragile threads are being pulled into the present.

Wish World (2025)

Doctor Who brought her back. Two times in a row.

Susan’s brief flicker on a screen while the Doctor is trapped in a synthetic reality adds another chilling layer. Even though he does not notice, we do, and that is what matters. She is not just a visual callback; she is a thread waiting to be pulled.

Her presence in a world designed by the Rani and Conrad Clark suggests bigger stakes. Is she part of the trap, or is her memory too powerful to be kept out? Either way, the message is clear. Susan is circling the Doctor’s story again, and this time, she might not fade back into the background.

With the final episode of the 15th Season of Doctor Who coming soon, will we get any type of closure? Only time will tell.

Could Susan solve the mystery of the Timeless Child?

Doctor Who's The Timeless Child arc revealed that the Doctor’s origins stretch beyond the Time Lords, that their memories were stolen, that their past is a manufactured hole. But if the Doctor does not remember, maybe Susan does.

Theories from fans of Doctor Who now swirl around whether Susan holds pieces of the truth, whether she herself was part of the experiments, or whether her very existence is the clue the Doctor never saw.

Could she be tied to the Division, to the lost incarnations, to the erased history? Or is she the missing emotional link, the one person who can ground this massive cosmic mystery in something human, something heartbreakingly personal?

Doctor Who has played with memories and their role and stories and The Fugitive Doctor in Story & the Engine, right? Was that a tell about Susan too?

Final thoughts on the matter of Susan Foreman and her impact on Doctor Who

Susan Foreman is not just a footnote in the Doctor’s life; she is the first ghost, the first scar, the first name the Doctor left behind. Every step he has taken since, every companion he has welcomed and every one he has lost, carries the echo of that original goodbye.

Susan was the face in the doorway when he chose to run, the voice on the other side of the TARDIS door when he decided the universe was more important than holding on. And now, after decades, her shadow is stretching back into his story.

Imagine the weight of that return. The Doctor, who has reinvented himself across centuries and faces, suddenly standing before the one person who remembers him as he was at the very beginning.

Not the hero, not the savior, not the legend, just a grandfather, tired and sharp-edged and afraid. Susan’s reappearance is not just fanservice; it is a mirror the Doctor cannot turn away from.

Susan is the past the Doctor cannot rewrite, the consequence he cannot outlive, the proof that no matter how far he runs, there are people whose lives he reshaped forever.

If Susan carries the keys to the Timeless Child, if she holds fragments of the truths the Doctor has been denied, then her role is not just to unlock history, it is to unlock the Doctor himself. To force him to stand still, to stop running, to face the person he once was and the person he might yet become.

With her, the series is poised to deliver something it has never fully dared: a reckoning between the Doctor’s myth and the Doctor’s humanity. And when that moment comes, it will not just change the Doctor’s future. It will reshape our understanding of who he has been all along.