On Friday, the Mirror reported that Jenna Coleman will be staying on in Doctor Who as Clara Oswald after all.The production team has been expectedly circumspect about Coleman’s future on the show, refusing to comment on what they call ‘speculation’. But her coyness in every interview she has given this year, coupled with the fact that the Christmas special is called Last Christmas, has given fans good reason to believe that the festive episode will be her swansong. Now, apparently not.

If she is staying on, then I’m thrilled. Just about the only consensus on this year’s divisive series was how well Clara has been written and played. While Peter Capaldi’s status as Peter Capaldi gets him a free pass, his more difficult Doctor is yet to fully bed in. But Coleman has flown. I got a bit of stick on this year’s blogs for using a throwaway line about playing the reality of running away to fight monsters with a time-travelling space-detective. It was a gag, but as it transpired, I was somewhere approaching the money.

Rose Tyler got the romantic storyline; Amy Pond got the fairytale. But here was something of the bleak brutality of what it would probably be like. For Clara, series eight/34 was one long exit storyline. And yet she didn’t leave. She compromised her career and ruined her relationship due to her addiction to the adrenaline her adventures brought her. In the end, she had to as good as murder her Cybernised boyfriend so that he could save the world. As Coleman herself commented recently, you can’t really go back to a normal life after that.

The wide assumption had been that Christmas would serve as a romantic balancing-out of her lot in life, what with Steven Moffat’s penchant for a happy ending. One commonly held theory is that the existence of future-Orson Pink, from Listen, means Clara is currently pregnant with Danny’s baby.

Timeline-wise, Coleman has had a healthy stint on a show that depends on constant renewal. But it feels as if her work here is not yet done, as Moffat has already concurred. Here he is in Doctor Who magazine, ahead of this year’s series launch:

It’s that indefinable thing of chemistry. Peter and Jenna absolutely belong together in Doctor Who. To be absolutely honest … with the best will in the world, you look at Matt Smith in a bow-tie and you’re looking for Karen Gillan. You just are. They belong together. So it was tough for Jenna … I think it’s just getting your Doctor. Clara has her own Doctor now, and she becomes the main character – which of course the companion always should be.”

In the same interview, Moffat as good as admits that the “Impossible Girl” arc of her debut year served her poorly. Faced with a storyline that insisted she could have no part in it until the very end, Clara was only able to live up to the “manic pixie dream girl” archetype and it suited nobody. But the actor first truly shone in the 50th, more than holding her own opposite the Smith/Tennant/Hurt Doctor triumvirate.

This year, given centre stage and a life and a story of her own, the writing and performance have been masterful and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. Here was a woman who was actively recruited by Missy (do we call her the Master now? The Mistress doesn’t quite sit right) to hook up with the Doctor on the assumption that they would ruin each other’s lives. But the good in both of them won out, in the way that good always must in Doctor Who.

It is brutal, but after a bereavement, life must go on. Clara’s intended story might be over, but something else has to happen afterwards. Rose was taken to watch Elvis. Clara is the sort of girl you can imagine sitting in her bedroom listening to Belle and Sebastian B-sides. Having spent a lot of time among Belle and Sebastian fans, I know this is something that it is possible to get over and live a normal, healthy life.

So, just how might Clara move on from everything that has happened to her? How is the Doctor going to best utilise this complex, damaged woman in his continuing quest to save the innocent from monsters? Could she turn out to be the Rani after all? From where I’m sitting, these all sound like stories waiting to be told. I hope she sticks around so we can find out.

