Coronation Street boss Iain MacLeod has revealed some massive spoilers for this autumn.
The executive producer has teased this month’s biggest storylines after the ITV soap moved up their big autumn to make way for Emmerdale’s 50th anniversary.
Speaking to Entertainment Daily! and other media, Iain teased what’s to come…
Stephen is ‘dark and dangerous’
It seems fans were right to be suspicious of Audrey’s son, Stephen!
Iain revealed: “I mean, desperate’s the word, and he will continue to get more and more desperate and more and more dark as the story unfolds.
“We definitely brought him back with a slightly different spin from the one we’ve seen before.
“The beauty of this character really is that he’s got this huge longevity in terms of his connection to the show and to a heritage family.
“But actually, he’s a bit of a blank canvas.
“If you dig back through his archive scenes, we don’t really know a lot about him. So we thought, well, actually, if we’re going to fill in those blanks and we’re going to learn more about him, shouldn’t we make him dark, dangerous, interesting, scheming?
“Mischievous is probably too light a term, but certainly machiavellian may be a stronger word.”
He added: “And our viewers are so canny as well, as soon as he arrived, everyone was like, ‘Ah, I’ve got him marked. He’s going to be a wrong’un.’
“And they’ll proved to be right in no small measure. I’m excited to see the audience reaction to the unfolding story when they realise that he’s every bit as desperate and dangerous as they predicted when he first returned.”
Audrey’s fate revealed
But will Stephen target his own mother in his desperate plans?
Asked if fans should worry for Audrey, Iain says: “Absolutely. Yes. I mean, I always worry about Audrey.
£I think any Coronation Street fan should and does worry about Audrey, especially because she’s quite fragile at the moment in terms of what we’ve seen on screen recently, she’s been through this depression story, she’s attempted to take her own life.
“And that makes her peculiarly vulnerable to Stephen because she’s clinging on to him as something positive, the light at the end of the tunnel for her emotionally.
“And he’s really not that, I think it’s fair to say. But Audrey, obviously will be a large part of the story.
“She won’t come to be in any physical jeopardy, I should say, but emotionally the stakes for her are incredibly high because she’s put all of her maternal eggs in Stephen’s basket.
“She and Gail have always had a very fraught relationship, very complicated relationship. And whereas Stephen, possibly by not having been around has been put on this pedestal.”
Spider to double-cross Toyah?
With Toyah facing murder charges for killing husband Imran Habeeb, she has reconnected with past love Spider.
But will that prove a mistake for her?
Iain says: “Well, obviously, the impending prospect of a life sentence for Toyah ramps up all of her emotions around what’s happened and specifically what she did to Imran and her guilt over all that.
“And she reaches this huge emotional crisis point where she’s got this burning desire to repent or just find some kind of catharsis.
“And she ends up unburdening herself entirely to Spider, talking in detail for the first time about what went on behind the wheel of that car. To what extent or not she feels culpable for what happened to Imran, how much of it was an accident and how much was it deliberate.
“And she unburdens herself to Spider and believes that that’s the best person she could tell, the person she can trust the most.
“And in fact, at that time he’s the worst conceivable option in terms of who she should be confessing to.
“So I can’t say a great deal more than that at this point, but yeah, the idea is that she’s head over heels in love with this guy again and has reconnected with him instantly on his return to the street and feels like he’s her one true friend in the world.
“She might not be wrong, but she’s certainly making a huge mistake in confiding all of this to him, for reasons that will become apparent.”
And Iain confirmed that Spider’s secret will be exposed and will be “surprising, shocking, interesting”.
Details of Kelly’s ‘high-stakes’ exit revealed
Meanwhile Coronation Street is saying goodbye to Kelly Neelan in an explosive storyline.
And the soap is sparing no expense using technology more usually found on the Marvel films.
Iain revealed: “The gist of the week is we all know, and it leaves me with a heavy heart to say it, but we all know Kelly’s leaving the show.
“So we thought, well actually, the fact that Millie is going and that therefore Kelly is going, allows us to go really big and do something incredibly high stakes to maybe have some characters step on all these landmines that we’ve buried for them over the years and have them all go off in one cataclysmic explosion.
“So we’ve really thrown everything at this week to try and bring out all the big secrets lies, reveals, and schemes.
“As I say, it’s literally got very high stakes jeopardy. It’s visually incredibly impressive.”
Dee Dee Bailey arrives
She has been mentioned countless times but never seen.
And now the long lost Bailey sibling will turn up on the cobbles to reunite with her family.
Iain teased: “I love this character. I loved her long before she physically existed just by the way she was described in the Bailey family.
Read more: Coronation Street who’s leaving in 2022?
“But essentially, you can expect a certain amount of chaos. She’s got an incredibly big heart. She’s incredibly competent at her job, but you’d never guess that to meet her.
“She works in law and she’s the sort of person that will issue a kind of point on point take down of a team of hotshot lawyers to defend her client, but will then turn to leave the courtroom and you’ll realise that she’s done the whole thing with her skirt tucked into her knickers.
“She’s just amped up chaos in every regard apart from she’s got this incredibly sharp mind. But she’s loads of fun.”
Want more spoilers from Coronation Street? Entertainment Daily has a dedicated Coronation Street spoilers section for you to get your fix before the latest episodes air.
Coronation Street usually airs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8pm on ITV.
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