Oh, sweet Lord. Steven Moffat seems bent on freaking the fandom out, and, as for me: it’s working.

Speculation, quotes, and insanity after the jump.

River is kissing the Doctor. Ooh, the internet is going to EXPLODE…

This is the Doctor’s darkest hour. He’ll rise higher than ever before and then fall so much further. This is the day he finds out who I am.

What in Dickens is she on about?

Whatever That Thing That’s Talking Is: “Fear me. I’ve killed hundreds of Time Lords.”

The Doctor: “Fear me. I’ve killed all of them.”

Yes, I’m seeing it now. When River says that this is the highest the Doctor will ever rise, and then plunge into oblivion—this is different from when Nine taunted the Dalek about the end of the Time War (Dalek), this is different from when Ten went completely barmy and shrieked that the laws of time must obey him because he killed anyone who could have prevented it (The Waters of Mars). The jauntiness in his voice and the tiny shrug he gives make it, for a moment, impossible to say whether this is a mask he’s wearing to intimidate his opponent or whether he really wasn’t just as psychotic as the Master, instead of being haunted and hurt by it forever. Anyway, to toy with the fact that he had to end the war this way like this suggests that, whatever he’s going up against here, is something so daunting and dangerous that the Doctor loses that last bit of mercy.

Other than that: lots of creepy creatures that I’m just going to enjoy when they’re there. There are weird Smiler-like turning-heads thingies again! And a figure that looks suspiciously like Liz Ten…

But: who is Amy going to shoot?

• I don’t think it’s Rory—Amy’s wearing the shirt she’s got on in the trailers for the America episodes, and those are the first of the series, and Rory’s in snippets for later ones, so it can’t be that. … Right?
• It can’t be River—she’s already dead, so to speak.

That out of the way, I’m still freaking out about it.

What freaks me out even more is this:

Why would he do that? WHY? BBC, what are you going to do to him? All the poor children who are afraid of clowns are going to learn a painful lesson—the Doctor, as kind as he may be, is someone who could be just as easily a nightmare as a dream, with even more darkness than what has been hinted at in Amy’s Choice.