Two couples look set to get engaged in EastEnders, and one half of both is hiding an enormous secret.
Max Branning (Jake Wood) is keeping shtum on the lie he told about the contents of Mick Carter’s (Danny Dyer) coffin, after learning that Janine Butcher (Charlie Brooks) had fabricated his second ‘death’ to keep hold of his life insurance money.
After hearing of Mick’s demise, Linda and Max found Janine alongside a coffin supposedly containing him, and after Linda asked Max to check the body was definitely Mick’s when she was unable, Janine made the grim confession.
Though Max initially wanted to tell Linda, his jealousy over her ever-present attachment to Mick and Janine’s manipulation – that his confirmation of Mick’s death would allow Linda to move on, specifically with him – caused him to tell her that Mick really was in the box.
Penny Branning (Kitty Castledine) is also keeping a huge secret of her own – the fact that her partner, Vinny Panesar (Shiv Jalota), isn’t the dad of ‘their’ baby, Ethan, instead, Harry Mitchell (Elijah Holloway) is.
Still, everybody loves a wedding, right?
Next week sees Max contemplate proposing to Linda, but his guilt continues to eat him up, knowing what a monstrous lie he’s told, and soon, he and Linda get wrapped up in more Carter kid drama, with Nancy (Maddy Hill) and the baby’s homecoming and Jess’ (Emma Lau) reappearance.
With Jess offering Nancy a fresh start with her and the baby and also giving Lee (Danny Hatchard) a final ultimatum, the emotion of the day sees Max get down on one knee and pop the question to Linda, who happily says yes.
Across the Square, Penny and best friend Gina Knight (Francesca Henry) grow suspicious of Vinny and what he’s up to, tracking him to Knight Fusion where he’s having a meeting with an investor.
When the investor wrongly presumes that Penny and Vinny are engaged to be married, they’re forced to go along with the charade, but news quickly spreads to their loved ones and they’re forced tell everybody that it was all for show.
Vinny quite enjoyed the charade, though, and decides he’d actually quite like to be married to Penny and, as confirmed in the trailer, also decides to pop the question.
While we don’t know how Penny responds, Linda is all to happy to say yes, setting the stage for her discovery over Max’s evil lie, and her eventual exit.
