This article explores, investigates, and details the developmental challenges and qualities of the independent doctoral researcher using evidence-based thematic analyses from studies conducted by Coffman, Putman, Adkisson, Kriner, & Monaghan (2016), Garcia & Yao (2019), and Inouye & McAlpine (2017). First, a thesis statement regarding the development of an independent doctoral identity is proposed as an argument in need of evidentiary textual defense. Then, five themes from each of the three above-listed studies are analyzed, summarized, adumbrated, and contextualized with citations. Next, two major themes are synthesized from the three articles’ fifteen total themes. Finally, the original thesis statement is recapitulated and defended as a synthetic distillation of the two major themes.