EastEnders fans may be pleased to see a familiar face in Thursday's episode of the popular long-running soap as Rita Simons briefly returns as fan-favourite character Roxy Mitchell.
Roxy will appear as a figment of her daughter Amy's imagination, marking the characters first on-screen appearance since her death in January 2017.
Long-time viewers of the soap will recall the emotional episode in which Roxy, and her sister Ronnie, tragically drowned following Ronnie's wedding on New Year's Day.
The sisters met their watery end after a drunk Roxy decided to take a swim but soon found herself in trouble, and when her younger sister didn't surface, Ronnie jumped in in an attempt to save her, but was unable to after becoming weighed down by her wedding dress.
Discussing the character's tragic demise at the time, then-Executive Producer Sean O'Connor argued that the sisters ultimately had to die, following Rita and her on-screen sister Samantha Womack's decision to quit the soap.
He said: "[Ronnie and Roxy] were not the sort of characters that would leave in the back of a taxi. We wanted to give them an operatic ending."
And while some fans theorised that the sister's may have survived and decided to fake their deaths, the duo have yet to re-appear on screen, with most viewers accepting that they are long dead.
And although Roxy may be making a brief return, given that it's as a hallucination, it seems somewhat official that neither sister survived the tragic accident.
The Mitchell sisters arrived in Albert Square in 2007, and quickly joined the rest of the Mitchell clan in working at the Queen Vic, then owned by Mitchell family matriarch Peggy, who was portrayed by the late Barbare Windsor.
The pair were involved in a number of dramatic storylines, including affairs, baby swapping and drug use. Both women shared a child with Jack Branning, who Ronnie would later marry just hours before her death.
The news of Roxy's brief return comes after fans shared speculation that Roxy may be returning after Amy told her father that she deeply missed her mother and then told half-brother Ricky that she wished she was still alive.
One person wrote: "Roxy could return to #eastenders in some capacity soon *I don't know anything but it seems to be where the storyline is heading* It may just be a flashback though.."
Another added: "Even if they just come back in a dream, give us something."
A third chimed in: "I'll be honest I'm the biggest believer in Roxy coming back cause they've mentioned her more in the past 4/5 months than they have in her 6 years of not being alive."
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