EastEnders has aired a shocking kiss for Stacey Slater and Jack Branning.
The romantic clinch could have huge implications since Stacey and Jack have more than a decade of history, on top of their current entanglements as grandparents to Ricky and Lily’s daughter Charli.
EastEnders cast member Scott Maslen has confirmed that the shocking kiss won’t simply be a one-off for Jack and Stacey.
“There’s genuinely got to be some feelings there because you don’t do things like that without their being feelings,” he said. “All roads point towards this as well, so there’s been a lot of tension, a lot of stress, a lot of contributing factors that have led to this point and miscommunications.
“Reading between the lines and thinking something is something when it isn’t, and it gets to the point where the you-know-what hits the fan. [Laughs] Is it expected? Is it something that was going to happen in Jack’s eyes? Definitely not, but that’s EastEnders.”
The actor denied the kiss was “retaliation” for Jack’s wife Denise nearly cheating on him with Ravi earlier this year.
“There’s no retaliation with Jack,” he said. “I think for him it’s about wounding. Denise didn’t sleep with him, but Jack’s the sort of person where a kiss is just as bad, maybe worse.
“So, I think he has had that in his mind constantly, and he hasn’t dealt with the Ravi thing properly yet, and that’s just one of the elements that goes towards why he sleeps with Stacey. It is a big one, but as people will find out, it gets complicated and muddied. I don’t think he’s forgiven Denise.”
Addressing the state of Jack’s marriage, Scott said: “I think he’s in a desperate place. I don’t think you’re thinking about saving a marriage when it’s falling apart. You realise it’s falling apart so you’re more focused on that, and it seems to be the dominant factor.
“If Denise was showing signs that she wanted it to work, then maybe he’d see those signs and he’d react accordingly but he’s seeing it constantly deteriorate, so there’s only so much he can do. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink so I think he thinks that’s what is happening in his relationship, and it’s literally at its end.
“But he is holding on, because he does love the family, he loves the kids, and it’s a structure which is safe, and he is all about that because his life has been thrown all over the place before. He’s in a very unstable place right now,” he added.
Viewers already know that Stacey is one of six women who’ll find a corpse in the Vic on Christmas Day — and Jack is one of the confirmed male candidates who could end up dead.
“All the journeys of everyone involved in this story go all different ways,” Scott teased. “That’s what’s exciting. What you expect characters to be, they break their character traits. There’s things going on where you go, ‘Hang on a minute what’s going on here?’ and ‘Why are they behaving like that?’ You’re going to see a lot of characters that you think you know and recognise, do things that you don’t.
“The complexities of the storyline brings out traits in the characters that aren’t common to the audience. They’re going to see people going to new places.”
The actor added: “It’s been epic. I’ve been here 16 years, and I don’t remember being as busy, as in it’s a really busy story. Christmas is the perfect time to do big, sensational stories and this is definitely that. It goes everywhere and people aren’t going to be able to work it out. Most of the actors can’t work it out. It’s very exciting times.”
Jack and Stacey have recently grown close as Jack faced a strain in his marriage with Denise Fox, leading to Stacey asking for the Walford PD detective’s help with finding her missing friend Eve Unwin.
In Thursday’s (December 14) episode, Stacey was worried that her stalker Theo may have had something to do with Eve’s disappearance after he sent her a Christmas card.
Stacey tried to speak with police about her fears, though she later relayed to Suki Kaur Panesar that the Walford PD said there was nothing they could do to help.
A furious Stacey left Theo a threatening voicemail message, warning she wouldn’t hesitate to strike back if he’d been the one behind Eve’s disappearance.
In reality, Theo actually has nothing to do with Eve’s sudden departure — she was forced to go on the run by Ravi Gulati to avoid his father Nish Panesar’s order for her to be killed.
Stacey turned to Jack for help once again when she discovered her door was unlatched, though the copper insisted that Theo was actually in Scotland at the time.
After a row over her threatening voicemail, Stacey stormed off to the Vic for a drink with Kat. While she tried to take her mind off her troubles, Stacey ultimately ducked out early to go apologise to Jack.
Jack invited Stacey in and soon they were commiserating over their long history of romantic troubles with other partners.
“Neither of us can hold down a relationship. That’s why we’re here drinking cheap wine and eating pizza while our kids are out having a life,” she wistfully admitted.
While Denise was having a drink alone at the Vic, Stacey and Jack were getting intimately close to one another — and as Stacey went to leave, the two shared a passionate kiss.
This kiss could have massive consequences for the pair because of Stacey’s past love affairs with Jack’s nephew Bradley Branning and his brother Max Branning.
Jack’s niece Lauren Branning is also headed back to Albert Square in the near future, alongside the copper’s long-lost daughter Penny.
