Ruby could’ve been SO FUN. I love character’s whose importance comes not from themselves or their family but from the circumstances they find themselves in and the people they surround themselves with. Ruby being important and powerful because of the importance people put on her, because of how she met the doctor would’ve been interesting.
Making Ruby inherently entwined with Christmas because it’s the day she was born, because everyone says she is, making the music in her soul a famous Christmas song because everyone thinks that’s what it should be would’ve been interesting.
Ruby’s important coming from the doctor and her mom, and everyone else who has put that importance on her, would be interesting.
If they had worked that angle from the start. Don’t make her birth a mystery and if you do don’t hype it up so much, make her importance slowly gain traction throughout the story until she IS powerful and important, make something happen to make her so, make it happen because the doctor, this new face, so regretful of yaz not knowing anything about them(yes I found a way to work her into this) they infodump immediately, this new face that latches to the first person he sees, a blonde 19 year old, a 19 year old putting themselves in danger for others, vowing to change the past, to not hurt this one.
Make is happen because he begs the universe for the past to stop repeating and for once the universe allows it to. Let 15’s love and trauma influence how Ruby is perceived, let it influence the world around them to inflate her importance until it’s true. Let Ruby be in danger and for the doctor’s feelings, the regret and hurt and love and hope, influence the universe enough for Ruby to BECOME what everyone is saying she is.
Make the reveal at the half point of the season. Reveal ruby’s birth mom is not anyone special, reveal that she was just a normal woman(girl? How old was she?) at the half point. Have Ruby grapple with that, have her grapple with the fact that her mom was normal and she isn’t, for whatever reason, she is more. She has a Christmas song in her soul, she was clumsy and unlucky due to goblins, coincidences surround her (seriously they shoulda stuck with that, I know why they didn’t but it would’ve been more interesting), it snows whenever her birth is mentioned, she survives what shouldn’t be possible.
Make her have to confront that despite having nothing special, she IS, and have it get more and more distressing for her as it goes on, have her question if her birth mom is truly what she seems, have her question why she is held up with so much importance, why the song in her soul is so powerful.
And then in the finale, have suketk(??) threaten her, have 15 panic, have Ruby panic, have whoever else is there panic. Then show Ruby doing something a human shouldn’t be able to- make it snow without her birth mother mentioned, have Christmas music faintly playing.
“How could a song have so much power? And power like him. The oldest one.”
Make sutetk unable to touch her, make her immune to him somehow. Immune to the death god, immune to what he can do- not immune to dying, she’s not immortal, but HE can’t kill her.
Use all the stupid mystery mongering bullshit as a final act, of sorts. Her importance and power doesnt come from her birth family, or mother, or her upbringing, it comes from the doctor- comes from the importance he has put in her, comes from him begging the universe for something to be different.
Let her power and importance in the universe come from herself- she jumps on a floating ladder because goblins took the baby, she faces off with a music god because it’s the right thing to do, etc