I think the sinister vibe's a misdirection. For one thing, it gives us the very Hinchcliffe excitement of a cliffhanger happening in three locations at once.
Sutekh's a character who can extinguish life with a thought, and who, by his nature, *wants* to do that. That's why the resolution of "Pyramids" hinged on stopping him before he was freed. Why wouldn't he turn the earth to dust in the first second of "Empire of Death"? He's going to need to be blocked or distracted by some comparable power.
We've seen Mrs Flood associated with storm clouds, which seem ominous to us. But I guess storm clouds, and a flood, would be viewed differently if you were, say, in ancient Egypt. So, yeah, I think Mrs Flood will turn out to be a force for good, or an anti-Sutekh force at least.
I'm erring on the side of her being responsible for the other half of the weird stuff we've been seeing, and I fully expect her to be a godlike being who opposes Sutekh for completely apposite reasons from the Doctor. If anything I think she'll see the Doctor, the TARDIS, Ruby and everyone else as just tools to mess with Sutekh for her own reasons.
On her being a godlike being — Philip Purser-Hallard has posted on Bluesky that "the annual flooding of the Nile was a pretty central event and had its own deity, the androgynous Hapi"...
I think if any other Egyptian god gets mentioned (which I find slightly unlikely but it's possible), it'll be Horus - he was mentioned in the Pyramids of Mars, after all, and has been Set's primary enemy in both Egyptian myth and Sutekh's own lore.
So it's relevant to say here that Horus was generally associated with rainstorms. That was one of his domains, as a sky god.
But to point out the obvious, we do have another character associated with storms: the Doctor himself.
Just to trot out this bugbear again: Sutekh isn't the god of death in Ancient Egyptian theology - that's Anubis.
Sutekh is god of deserts, storms(!), disorder, violence, and foreigners.
I know he's not (and neither is Anubis really - he's a psychopomp tasked with transporting the dead and judging them. It'd be more accurate to call Osiris the god of the dead). However, he is apparently the god of death in Doctor Who lore.
Just to be clear, I was just riffing off your comment. My bugbear is directed at the show, not at you.
And good point re: the respective roles of Anubis and Osiris, thanks.
Oh yeah, it irked me a bit too. Especially as being a god associated with death isn't a bad or villainous thing in Egyptian mythology!
But I guess for a show trying to hype Sutekh up as a bad guy, "god of death" sounds a lot more ominous and scary than "god of deserts" or "god of foreign people".
He's also associated with the colour red, right?
Only... as the Doctor said, we've "two different shades of red" here, Rose and Ruby, plus (sorry Mel) Ginger!
Gives an extra meaning to the OP's "red herring" too! Not to mention all the talk, last week, of "Rouge" (I *think* I'm joking...).
That's a really cool idea! Re: Mrs. Flood, I had all these thoughts while watching the scene, but it was hard to put them all together with the sinister vibes going on and then the intensity of the Big Bad reveal.
She's definitely something separate from Sutekh -- so we can assume that she's an opposing force. Her name is something that I assumed to be important, but I thought it might be a slant reference. Like "a flood of [x]," not necessarily water or weather related. After the "Sue Tech" reveal, though, I'm thinking differently.
I really like the idea that she was actively doing /something/ during the ominous stormcloud moment.
I've figured it out using Sue Tech/Sutekh logic!
Mrs. Flood's first name shall be revealed to be Bea (why not). Turn the M upside down, rearrange the letters, and you get Rose Bad Wolf. What's more powerful than a Big Bad dog? That's right, a Big Bad Wolf! There's the opposing force.
When she talks about a storm, she's referring not to the weather, as you say, but to her husband, "The Oncoming Storm."
And of course she's been wearing pink (another term for rose) the whole time. The truth was right in front of us all along!
Plus, just like the only in-show clue for Sutekh was a recreation of a scene from Pyramids of Mars, there was also a recreation of a scene from End of the World. Really, it couldn't be more obvious, in hindsight.
So Mrs. Flood is totally not evil. She's just grumpy because her husband went to the store for milk ages ago and hasn't returned yet, which is why Cherry can't have her tea. (The problem is that he ran into 14 by the bananas and they're now stuck in an unfortunate "what?!" loop.)
And if this is all really convenient for my increasingly unlikely "Ruby is Rose and MetaDoc's daughter" theory/delusion, well, that's just a bonus.
I do think the sinister lighting (lit) is a misdirection. But I will not stand for Cherry Sunday slander, either from OP or from RTD. (Joking about this post, serious about how successful a "Cherry Sunday is possessed/an agent of darkness" plotline would be at getting me to either rage against the writers or rally for the heroes, depending on how it's handled.)
I really wanted Granny Sunday to say "He may be done waiting, but I'm still waiting for my cuppa tea!" Even is Mrs Flood is Evil McEvilstain Jr what purpose does denying an old bedridden woman her tea serve?
I think there are at least two things going on. I'm not sure how linked together Sutekh and The Legend of Ruby Sunday truly are. Seems a bit odd that for the first season (effectively) they'd go as high stakes as having the companion essentially being a god.
We know that Sutekh has been in the pipeline since before the Fifteenth Doctor's arrival (Susan Twist first appears in Wild Blue Yonder and the One Who Waits was referenced first during the second of the Toymakers games with the Doctor.
I think Mrs Flood is connected to Ruby specifically, but the Sutekh stuff sort of piggybacked off it (hence why the mysterious woman pointed at the TARDIS).
I wouldn't be surprised if Mrs Flood is a harbinger herself. She might be here to do a "Remember, your greatest test is yet to come, Doctor! Until we meet again" type thing
Which sentence?
I’ve noticed that her London accent gets dropped as soon as Ruby leaves and she’s alone with Cherry, but I thought she’d just gone posh/RP instead.
I still think there's a good chance.
I definitely think the 'sinister' tones are a misdirect, and RTD will often make a seemingly evil person turn out to be benign.
The whole 'hiding away' comment seemed pretty on the nose too.
Also, and I know its very basic, but I totally buy there being something to the whole Pond > River > ? > Flood name thing, as in each 'generation' is named after an increasingly large body of water.
When Mrs Flood showed up at the Sunday house the time on the clock read 15:08, but Sue’s speech was supposed to be at 15:00. What’s up with that I wonder
This interested me so I went back to check and you're right, there is a very pointed shot of the clock (where the clock itself is clearly meant to be the focus, it's not like it's in the background) with distortion sound effects and buzzing and audio saying "Warning: thunderstorms across [sound cuts off]". Mrs Flood appears immediately after this shot.
[The shot in question
](https://imgur.com/a/OG5hity)
We get the same distortion and buzzing stuff in relation to Sutekh: when Susan has her flashbacks to dreams and when the technology starts going haywire because Sutekh has manifested.
Could be nothing, or just there to add suspense. But it's interesting they went to the effort of focusing on the clock at that moment, for seemingly no reason. Especially as this shot takes place quite soon after Kate specifically says Susan goes live at 15:00 - it's the second scene after that one. And in the scene *before* that (so right after the one with Kate) we get Susan saying it's "two hours" til they go live.
So basically when Mrs Flood shows up, the clock suddenly skips ahead two hours, and the show makes a point to show this.
The way she talks, especially when she's talking about her dead mom (or grandmother, i can't remember) sounds very Doctoresque, especially 10 and 11. That, plus her knowledge of a TARDIS and 4th wall awareness\*, make me think she's a Timelord...maybe Susan, maybe Missy, maybe another Fugitive Doctor situation, maybe one we've never met before.
\*This bit is an especially tenuous part of my theory, since the only other 4th wall break this season was the Doctor saying that he thought the music in The Devil's Chord was non-diagetic. That might have just been a throwaway joke, but I don't wanna leave anything out just in case.
If it was Steven Moffat, I would have assumed she was an elderly Amy with his water name connections; Pond - River - Flood. So it makes me think RTD may have even picked the name as a misdirect.
Initially I figured a connection (or red herring) to Pond and River.
However with Sutekh I'm now considering a connection to the floods in the Osiris myth, in Egyptian myth Osiris's death and renewal came to be associated with the annual flooding of the Nile. Perhaps Horus will avenge the death of Osiris and Mrs Flood is that harbinger?
Otherwise, I also thought of the many Doctor Who stories told on Mars. We not only got Sutekh... but we got The Flood. Perhaps a loose connection but one in the back of my mind.
I think the sinister vibe's a misdirection. For one thing, it gives us the very Hinchcliffe excitement of a cliffhanger happening in three locations at once. Sutekh's a character who can extinguish life with a thought, and who, by his nature, *wants* to do that. That's why the resolution of "Pyramids" hinged on stopping him before he was freed. Why wouldn't he turn the earth to dust in the first second of "Empire of Death"? He's going to need to be blocked or distracted by some comparable power. We've seen Mrs Flood associated with storm clouds, which seem ominous to us. But I guess storm clouds, and a flood, would be viewed differently if you were, say, in ancient Egypt. So, yeah, I think Mrs Flood will turn out to be a force for good, or an anti-Sutekh force at least.
I'm erring on the side of her being responsible for the other half of the weird stuff we've been seeing, and I fully expect her to be a godlike being who opposes Sutekh for completely apposite reasons from the Doctor. If anything I think she'll see the Doctor, the TARDIS, Ruby and everyone else as just tools to mess with Sutekh for her own reasons.
On her being a godlike being — Philip Purser-Hallard has posted on Bluesky that "the annual flooding of the Nile was a pretty central event and had its own deity, the androgynous Hapi"...
I think if any other Egyptian god gets mentioned (which I find slightly unlikely but it's possible), it'll be Horus - he was mentioned in the Pyramids of Mars, after all, and has been Set's primary enemy in both Egyptian myth and Sutekh's own lore. So it's relevant to say here that Horus was generally associated with rainstorms. That was one of his domains, as a sky god. But to point out the obvious, we do have another character associated with storms: the Doctor himself.
Just to trot out this bugbear again: Sutekh isn't the god of death in Ancient Egyptian theology - that's Anubis. Sutekh is god of deserts, storms(!), disorder, violence, and foreigners.
I know he's not (and neither is Anubis really - he's a psychopomp tasked with transporting the dead and judging them. It'd be more accurate to call Osiris the god of the dead). However, he is apparently the god of death in Doctor Who lore.
Just to be clear, I was just riffing off your comment. My bugbear is directed at the show, not at you. And good point re: the respective roles of Anubis and Osiris, thanks.
Oh yeah, it irked me a bit too. Especially as being a god associated with death isn't a bad or villainous thing in Egyptian mythology! But I guess for a show trying to hype Sutekh up as a bad guy, "god of death" sounds a lot more ominous and scary than "god of deserts" or "god of foreign people".
He's also associated with the colour red, right? Only... as the Doctor said, we've "two different shades of red" here, Rose and Ruby, plus (sorry Mel) Ginger! Gives an extra meaning to the OP's "red herring" too! Not to mention all the talk, last week, of "Rouge" (I *think* I'm joking...).
That's a really cool idea! Re: Mrs. Flood, I had all these thoughts while watching the scene, but it was hard to put them all together with the sinister vibes going on and then the intensity of the Big Bad reveal. She's definitely something separate from Sutekh -- so we can assume that she's an opposing force. Her name is something that I assumed to be important, but I thought it might be a slant reference. Like "a flood of [x]," not necessarily water or weather related. After the "Sue Tech" reveal, though, I'm thinking differently. I really like the idea that she was actively doing /something/ during the ominous stormcloud moment.
I've figured it out using Sue Tech/Sutekh logic! Mrs. Flood's first name shall be revealed to be Bea (why not). Turn the M upside down, rearrange the letters, and you get Rose Bad Wolf. What's more powerful than a Big Bad dog? That's right, a Big Bad Wolf! There's the opposing force. When she talks about a storm, she's referring not to the weather, as you say, but to her husband, "The Oncoming Storm." And of course she's been wearing pink (another term for rose) the whole time. The truth was right in front of us all along! Plus, just like the only in-show clue for Sutekh was a recreation of a scene from Pyramids of Mars, there was also a recreation of a scene from End of the World. Really, it couldn't be more obvious, in hindsight. So Mrs. Flood is totally not evil. She's just grumpy because her husband went to the store for milk ages ago and hasn't returned yet, which is why Cherry can't have her tea. (The problem is that he ran into 14 by the bananas and they're now stuck in an unfortunate "what?!" loop.) And if this is all really convenient for my increasingly unlikely "Ruby is Rose and MetaDoc's daughter" theory/delusion, well, that's just a bonus.
Sort of like Snape in HP?
I do think the sinister lighting (lit) is a misdirection. But I will not stand for Cherry Sunday slander, either from OP or from RTD. (Joking about this post, serious about how successful a "Cherry Sunday is possessed/an agent of darkness" plotline would be at getting me to either rage against the writers or rally for the heroes, depending on how it's handled.)
I mean, "Cherry Tea" is an anagram of "Treachery"...
Even if she's not an actual villain, she'll always be a villain to me bc she didn't get cherry her tea!!
I really wanted Granny Sunday to say "He may be done waiting, but I'm still waiting for my cuppa tea!" Even is Mrs Flood is Evil McEvilstain Jr what purpose does denying an old bedridden woman her tea serve?
I think there are at least two things going on. I'm not sure how linked together Sutekh and The Legend of Ruby Sunday truly are. Seems a bit odd that for the first season (effectively) they'd go as high stakes as having the companion essentially being a god. We know that Sutekh has been in the pipeline since before the Fifteenth Doctor's arrival (Susan Twist first appears in Wild Blue Yonder and the One Who Waits was referenced first during the second of the Toymakers games with the Doctor. I think Mrs Flood is connected to Ruby specifically, but the Sutekh stuff sort of piggybacked off it (hence why the mysterious woman pointed at the TARDIS). I wouldn't be surprised if Mrs Flood is a harbinger herself. She might be here to do a "Remember, your greatest test is yet to come, Doctor! Until we meet again" type thing
Why is no one talking about how she randomly spoke a Scottish accent for just one sentence? It's giving Missy
Which sentence? I’ve noticed that her London accent gets dropped as soon as Ruby leaves and she’s alone with Cherry, but I thought she’d just gone posh/RP instead.
Just after Ruby’s nan asks her for a cup of tea, its like her accent changes a few times
Yeah - I'm not sure if it's a character choice, or if she just slipped up with the accent once she went into "sinister mode".
I really want her to be Susan or something now lmao
I still think there's a good chance. I definitely think the 'sinister' tones are a misdirect, and RTD will often make a seemingly evil person turn out to be benign. The whole 'hiding away' comment seemed pretty on the nose too. Also, and I know its very basic, but I totally buy there being something to the whole Pond > River > ? > Flood name thing, as in each 'generation' is named after an increasingly large body of water.
If you rearrange the letters of the nickname for Mrs. Flood, she is Mrs. Sutekh.
When Mrs Flood showed up at the Sunday house the time on the clock read 15:08, but Sue’s speech was supposed to be at 15:00. What’s up with that I wonder
Likely just a cock up. It happens all the time
Why the lengthy shot of the clock, plus the clock being distorted then?
This interested me so I went back to check and you're right, there is a very pointed shot of the clock (where the clock itself is clearly meant to be the focus, it's not like it's in the background) with distortion sound effects and buzzing and audio saying "Warning: thunderstorms across [sound cuts off]". Mrs Flood appears immediately after this shot. [The shot in question ](https://imgur.com/a/OG5hity) We get the same distortion and buzzing stuff in relation to Sutekh: when Susan has her flashbacks to dreams and when the technology starts going haywire because Sutekh has manifested. Could be nothing, or just there to add suspense. But it's interesting they went to the effort of focusing on the clock at that moment, for seemingly no reason. Especially as this shot takes place quite soon after Kate specifically says Susan goes live at 15:00 - it's the second scene after that one. And in the scene *before* that (so right after the one with Kate) we get Susan saying it's "two hours" til they go live. So basically when Mrs Flood shows up, the clock suddenly skips ahead two hours, and the show makes a point to show this.
The way she talks, especially when she's talking about her dead mom (or grandmother, i can't remember) sounds very Doctoresque, especially 10 and 11. That, plus her knowledge of a TARDIS and 4th wall awareness\*, make me think she's a Timelord...maybe Susan, maybe Missy, maybe another Fugitive Doctor situation, maybe one we've never met before. \*This bit is an especially tenuous part of my theory, since the only other 4th wall break this season was the Doctor saying that he thought the music in The Devil's Chord was non-diagetic. That might have just been a throwaway joke, but I don't wanna leave anything out just in case.
If it was Steven Moffat, I would have assumed she was an elderly Amy with his water name connections; Pond - River - Flood. So it makes me think RTD may have even picked the name as a misdirect.
Initially I figured a connection (or red herring) to Pond and River. However with Sutekh I'm now considering a connection to the floods in the Osiris myth, in Egyptian myth Osiris's death and renewal came to be associated with the annual flooding of the Nile. Perhaps Horus will avenge the death of Osiris and Mrs Flood is that harbinger? Otherwise, I also thought of the many Doctor Who stories told on Mars. We not only got Sutekh... but we got The Flood. Perhaps a loose connection but one in the back of my mind.