WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the season premiere of Doctor Who: Flux, "Chapter One: The Halloween Apocalypse," which aired Sunday on BBC.
Doctor Who: Flux opens with a bang by continuing the Timeless Child storyline first explored in Season 12. Since finding out she's had a whole other life prior to the one she knows, the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) is now on a journey to piece together the missing details of her past. This includes her past involvement with the mysterious secret organization known only as The Division. The Doctor, however, is not the only entity looking to reclaim her past.
In the first episode of Doctor Who: Flux, a new villain named Swarm (Sam Spruell) is introduced as the Doctor's archenemy. At first, Swarm appears to be a future incarnation of the Master since he has quite a lot in common with him. First, there's the fact he has a very similar appearance to the Master as he looked in the classic Doctor Who serial "The Deadly Assassin." Like the Master, he's also obsessed with the Doctor, he's intelligent and highly strategic, capable of breaking himself out of prison. However, there's just one detail that throws this possibility out of the window: Swarm appears to be a different race of alien, complete with a sister.
While Swarm being a different race of alien may rule out the likelihood of him being another incarnation of the Master, it's also not entirely out of the realm of possibility. After all, the Master is known to save his consciousness in other lifeforms and devices as a way of cheating death, and he's known to invade the bodies of humans and other humanoid aliens. This was how he cheated death the first time he ran out of regenerations during the Tom Baker era and became the version of the Master as portrayed by Anthony Ainley. He would also use this tactic again in the 1996 Doctor Who TC film where he invades the body of a paramedic played by Eric Roberts following his execution on Skaro.
Within the context of Doctor Who: Flux, it's very possible that Swarm may be an earlier incarnation of the Master who knew the Doctor prior to her first incarnation played by William Hartnell. This would at least explain why he suddenly has a sister despite the Master never seemingly acknowledging the existence of one in his later incarnations. If he encountered the Doctor when she was still working for The Division in her Ruth Clayton incarnation (Jo Martin), then his intense animosity towards the Doctor may somehow be linked to the fate of his sister.
Related to that point, another possibility is that the Master -- like the Doctor -- may not be Gallifreyan in origin but may have invaded the body of a Time Lord at some point. This would at least explain why the Master has been able to invade other bodies in later incarnations -- an ability not seemingly shared by other Time Lords. If Swarm did in fact take over the body of a Time Lord, it would have most likely been someone close to the Doctor as a way of making his revenge against her personal. This approach would also avoid retconning the Doctor's past friendship with the Master before the latter goes rogue.
If the Time Lord whose body Swarm invaded also worked for The Division, then it's equally possible he too had his memories erased. This would explain why the Master doesn't remember any of his past. Considering how angry he got when he realized he wasn't who he thought he was upon unearthing the records of Gallifrey's hidden history in the Matrix, it's highly unlikely he'll respond better to finding out he was a member of a different alien race entirely.
To see if this theory comes to fruition, new episodes of Doctor Who: Flux air Sundays on BBC.
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