10 Doctor Who Mysteries That Will NEVER Be Answered
9. Was The Osgood That Died Human Or Zygon?
If you’re going to introduce a new villain, one way to quickly convince the audience of their evilness is to have them kill a much-loved character.
The trouble is, in the process, you lose a much-loved character.
That was the corner Steven Moffat wrote himself into when he had Missy kill Osgood in Death in Heaven. Or so it seemed. After all, following the events of The Day of the Doctor, there were two Osgoods knocking about: one human, one Zygon.
The suggestion that it was the Zygon Osgood rather than the human Osgood that had met her end first appeared in a 2014 issue of Doctor Who Magazine, but was immediately shot down by Moffat:
"Nah. If it had been a Zygon, she wouldn’t have been killed so easily.”
In reality, sequel story The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion was in active development by this point, with the mystery of which Osgood died forming a major plot thread. By the end, we were still none the wiser.
In retrospect, it’s quite right that we never learn the truth. After all, it’s what Osgood represents, rather than what she is, that’s important. As Osgood states in The Zygon Invasion, “I am the peace. I am human and Zygon."
Schrödinger’s cat? More like Schrödinger's Osgood.