EastEnders confirms iconic celebrity cameo – but Mo may ruin it
Pride season is well and truly underway, and it’s about to cause a battle between EastEnders’ premier watering holes: the Vic and the Albert.
The BBC soap last celebrated pride back in 2019. The episode was deeply praised for its celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, showing the joyful and celebratory side of the event, with Bernie Taylor (Clair Norris) finally embracing her sexuality and marching in the parade.
It also garnered applause for showing the other side of being queer in Britain today, which can include verbal abuse and violence, displayed when Ben Mitchell (Max Bowden) was violently attacked by Jonno Highway (Richard Graham), the homophobic dad of his latest squeeze, Callum Highway (Tony Clay).
With the Albert being a gay bar, it seems like the natural location for the square’s pride celebrations, but Zoe Slater (Michelle Ryan) has other ideas.
She should be overjoyed.
After – what felt like – forever searching for her long lost children, they’re both currently living in Walford. Sure, Jasmine Fisher (Indeyarna Donaldson-Holness) tried to make her life a living hell, then let her spend months behind bars for a murder that she committed, but we’re looking forward, not back.
Josh Goodwin (Joshua Vaughan), meanwhile, was much less dramatic upon his arrival. Until he started an affair with Jasmine’s boyfriend, Oscar Branning (Pierre Counihan-Moullier), that is.
Separated for the best part of their lives, Josh and Jasmine struggled to bond initially, especially due to the fact that Josh had tracked her down off the back of the news story detailing the murder of their dad, Anthony Trueman (Nicholas Bailey).
In a classic case of soap-ery, while Jasmine was on remand, Josh and Oscar slept together, neither knowing that they had a pre-existing link. When Jasmine was released, Oscar tried to break things off, but the connection between him and Josh was far too strong and, well, the ‘breaking off’ didn’t really stick.
When Zoe threw a birthday party for the twins, everything came to a head. Despite Kat Moon (Jessie Wallace) having discovered the fling, she endeavoured to remain quite, but Josh made no such promise and revealed all at the bash.
With the twins now torn apart, Zoe longs for them to reunite, with each other and her as a proper family, and she’s not above telling a few porkies to make it happen, when she suggests to Josh that the Vic will be holding a pride event, secretly hoping that, if she can pull it off, it’ll bring her kids back together.
The problem is, she hasn’t sorted anything out, and when she does start to put a celebration together, she winds up clashing with Cindy Beale (Michelle Collins) over stealing customers.
Cindy, along with Elaine Peacock (Harriet Thorpe), plans to turn the tide back in their favour by booking a headlining performer, leading Zoe to worry that her own event will flop and fail to impress Josh and Jasmine.
In true Slater fashion, she and Mo decide to hijack Cindy’s superstar booking and, upon discovering that the performer is La Voix, attempt to trick her into performing at the Vic instead.
Will Zoe manage to unite her warring kids? Or will the pride event go down in a plume of rainbow coloured flames?
