Emmerdale confirms Celia’s horrific final scenes and there’s a huge twist

This article contains major spoilers for tonight’s Emmerdale, which has not yet aired on TV but is available to watch now on ITVX.

Since the monstrous Celia Daniels (Jaye Griffiths) first arrived in Emmerdale, fans have been dying for someone to take her down.

And after Jaye Griffiths confirmed the characters’ exit earlier this year, there’s been no shortage of contenders. Operating a modern slavery business on your farm and running a drug trafficking operation makes you a lot of enemies.

The main suspects have been April Windsor (Amelia Flanagan) and her boyfriend Dylan Penders (Fred Kettle). Not only did Celia force April to sleep with men for money, but when April attacked an angry client in self-defence, the devilish Ms Daniels made her think that she’d killed the man, just to tighten her control over the troubled teen.

Obviously, Marlon Dingle (Mark Charnock) and Rhona Goskirk (Zoe Henry) were on the list. When April finally confessed everything, they were horrified at the hell Celia had put their little girl through and desperate to save her. But Celia threatened to drag April back into her murky world of drugs and crime unless Marlon and Rhona paid her two thousand pounds a week – which they readily paid to protect their daughter.

Then there’s Bear Wolf (Joshua Richards). After the formidable former wrestler was estranged from his son Paddy Kirk (Dominic Brunt) groomed and coerced into backbreaking forced labour on Celia’s farm, fans were screaming at the TV for him to snap and turn against his captors.

Let’s not forget Moira Dingle (Natalie J Robb), the only other farmer in Yorkshire who can be almost as scary as Celia. After discovering that her seemingly above-board business partner was forging her signature on dodgy turkey invoices, Moira got the red mist when Celia suggested her brain tumour was affecting her judgment and responded in true Moira style… with a good old fashioned soap slap to the face.

Despite having a laundry list of enemies longer than the Dingle family tree, it seems Celia’s undoing is a bit closer to home. In shocking final scenes, Emmerdale have revealed that one of their most evil villains in years has been brought down by none other than her own adoptive son, Ray Walters (Joe Absolom).

With an oedipal complex on steroids, Ray is well and truly under his mother’s thrall. Because she ‘saved him’ from a broken home by taking him in as a child, Celia conditioned her son into believing he owed her a lifetime debt.

Raised without an ounce of love or warmth, Ray was inducted into a world of crime and drugs, profiting off the misery of others. He was the charming face of a shadowy underworld, luring in victims like April and Bear by pretending to be their friend.

While Celia is completely without conscience or remorse, Ray has a heart in there somewhere… and it was stolen by the sweetest girl in the village. To fans’ horror, the unscrupulous people trafficker fell for Laurel Thomas (Charlotte Bellamy), and worse still, she reciprocated his feelings. But the unlikely romance was a master-stroke of storytelling, as it provided Ray with a taste of a life he’d never imagined; normality.

However, Celia noticed how Laurel brought out the best in him… and mummy didn’t approve.

This story reached a shocking climax over the festive season as Celia planned to flee the village with Ray before giving her son one last loose end to tie up – killing April.

But in the New Year’s Eve episode, Ray had a cowering April at his mercy and as she begged for her life, he couldn’t go through with it. In a slight nod to Snow White and the Huntsman, he spared her, forked over a wad of cash and told her to disappear.

Spoiler alert – that does not go down well.

Furious, Celia’s confrontation ends badly when years of abuse and trauma come flooding to the surface… and Ray plunges a knife into his adoptive mother. The worst villain the Dales has seen for years dies in her son’s arms.

Finally, Ray is free of Celia. But what on earth is he going to do now?

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