EastEnders’ Executive Producer Ben Wadey has lifted the lid on an exciting autumn in Albert Square.
As the cold, dark nights draw in, us soap fans spend more time cosied up in front of the telly with the fire blaring.
Which means all the exciting storylines kick off in the lead up to Christmas!
It’s already been a thrilling week for viewers, who tuned in this week to see Zoe Slater (Michelle Ryan) return to Walford after two decades away.
Shortly after an awkward reunion with mum Kat Moon (Jessie Wallace), she was accidentally shot by either Jack Branning (Scott Maslen) or Ravi Gulati (Aaron Thiara).
Zoe’s life was left hanging in the balance, and as she faded in and out of consciousness, we were dealt a number of flashbacks to her past.
The first of these, in 2006, showed her in a traumatic labour, giving birth to twins. After claiming that her son was born with ‘bad blood’, she asked for him to be placed under adoption.
Rushing out of the hospital, Zoe didn’t learn the fate of her daughter, who appeared to not be breathing after being born.
The second glimpse took us back to earlier in the year, and her chance meeting with Max Branning (Jake Wood). During a brief relationship, he offered her financial support to pay off a private investigator to look for her son.
Things turned disastrous when she whacked the PI around the head with a lampshade, leaving him for dead.
But what lies ahead for Zoe and Max, and the other East End residents? Here, Ben and the cast tell us more…
A Branning-Slater bombshell is about to drop
Zoe’s secret relationship with Max is still under wraps – but it won’t be for long, Ben tells us.
‘When you’re lucky enough to come in and exec one of these shows, you have a list in your head of characters you want to bring back,’ he explained.
‘Zoe Slater and Max Branning were up there with who I wanted at the forefront of the show. There’s quite a lot of history between the Brannings and the Slaters.
‘We thought, “Let’s do it in the biggest possible way, with the biggest twist and reveal.” They know each other and have this relationship off-screen that nobody knew about.
‘You have the Brannings and the Slaters to discover that. What’s Stacey going to think? It’s just this bomb that we wanted to put at the forefront and let it blow.’
Vile Joel’s story ramps up
‘We’ll have seen a few stories really building recently,’ Ben explained.
‘We’ve got Joel’s story that will come to a head in the next couple of months.’
Over the last few months, viewers have seen the character, played by Max Murray, show more troubling patterns of behaviour towards women.
From trying to slap Avani Nandra-Hart (Aaliyah James) to sexually assaulting a tube passenger and leaking Stacey Slater’s (Lacey Turner) SecretCam content online, he really shows no signs of changing his appalling attitude.
…and it sounds like he’s going to get a whole lot worse.
The Brannings at the centre of the action
Ben has big plans for all of the Brannings, not just Max.
In coming months we can see the whole dynasty coming into play, shining a light on the next generation of the family.
‘The whole of the Brannings are such an iconic, legacy family, and I wanted to put them at the heart of the show and with some big stories,’ he said.
‘We have those legacy characters that can give us so much story and are brilliant in terms of what they can continue to give us.
‘But we also have the new generation coming through, not just Oscar and Lauren but Penny, Amy and Ricky.
‘There’s a new generation coming up who also have loads of stories.’
Wedding bells for Lauren and Peter
While Ben stayed quiet about this storyline, actress Jacqueline Jossa was quick to confirm that her character Lauren will walk down the aisle with Peter Beale (Thomas Law), despite his family’s best efforts to put a halt to their relationship.
‘You can expect wedding bells, but it’s a Walford wedding. Maybe don’t fork out for a hat,’ she joked.
Kat and Zoe’s relationship is tested
It became clear this week that Zoe still holds a lot of resentment towards her mother, despite finding out the truth about their relationship a whopping 24 years ago.
The two were shown to make up on-screen prior to her original exit in 2005, but clearly absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder.
Throughout their estrangement, Zoe has become more resentful of her upbringing, referring to herself as a ‘monster’ and wishing that Kat had aborted her pregnancy.
Ben added: ‘Zoe and Kat’s relationship is really complicated. 20 years for them to recover and try to get to know each other.
‘Kat has been expecting one thing when Zoe would come back, but to meet your adult daughter is more complicated than Kat thinks.
‘There’s a lot for them to get to understand about each other. Zoe’s got a lot of secrets that she’s going to bring into The Square with her.
‘The Slaters are in for a whole ride this autumn.’
Max meets his secret daughter
As viewers of the soap will recall, in 2021, Max decided it was time to leave Albert Square and join Lauren and grandson Louie in New Zealand.
His brief love affair with Linda Carter (Kellie Bright) was in tatters, and after landing himself in hot water, he had no future in the area.
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Little did he realise, she was pregnant with his daughter, and decided to keep her birth a closely guarded secret.
Now, pretty much everyone knows – bar him.
Jake Wood told us: ‘There’s so much [to unfold’, isn’t there? The Brannings interact with so many characters and pull so many others into their stories.
‘There are so many people on that Square with unfinished business.’
