The name of the next Doctor Who companion has been announced.

Varada Sethu will be playing Belinda Chandra.

She’ll be travelling in the TARDIS alongside the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), and later joined by Millie Gibson’s character, Ruby Sunday, who temporarily left the Type 40 TT ship in Empire of Death, the Series 14 finale.

Showrunner, Russell T Davies, says:

“I first worked with Varada on a BBC production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and it’s a joy to welcome her on board the TARDIS. Right now in the studio, shooting for 2025, we’ve got Ncuti, Millie, and Varada fighting side by side – we need all three, because the stakes are higher than ever!”

Sethu had been seen on location filming with Gatwa, leading many to speculate that Gibson had been dropped from the show; fortunately, those rumours were wrong so in Series 15, the Fifteenth Doctor will have two companions, likely from the third or fourth episode of the run.

Varada was last seen as a different character in Boom, but Belinda is apparently unrelated to Mundy Flynn. Davies clearly likes the surname Chandra, however, as that was also the last name of Rani in The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Doctor Who Series 15 is now in post-production, and is due to air in 2025. But before that, we have Joy to the World, the Christmas special written by former showrunner, Steven Moffat.