Hollyoaks has marked its 30th anniversary with a crossover with Brookside, which included a blink-and-you-miss-it clue that reversed the cancelled soap’s big finale. Channel 4 aired a special episode last night, finally revealing that Donny Clarke had been Mick Johnson all along, with Louis Emerick reprising his Brookside role.
In scenes aired during anniversary week, the detective returned to Brookside Close where a less-than-impressed Sheila Grant revealed a jaw-dropping fake death twist.
As Hollyoaks followed some of Brookside’s most beloved characters, it was also revealed what really happened to the Close after the show ended.
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When the series was cancelled and aired its final episode in 2003, characters moved out of their houses on the Close as they were set to be demolished.
More than two decades later, the Hollyoaks special episode revealed that the Close is still alive and kicking as Donny/Mick returned to his old turf.
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In the crossover scenes, it’s Brookside veteran Sinbad who drove Donny back in his cab. As the car pulled over in the Close, Sinbad explained the area hadn’t been demolished after all.
“It would have been raised to the ground if the developers had got their way,” the cab driver said in a brief moment. No more details about why development plans fell through were revealed, as Hollyoaks focused on Donny/Mick’s reunion with his daughter Gemma.
Shocked to see her dad, whom she thought had died in a fire twenty years prior, Gemma gave Mick a shock of her own when she introduced her boyfriend, none other than Hollyoaks’ Warren Fox.
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Elsewhere, things got really dark for the anniversary as a big stunt storyline saw Chester mourning a few characters, with more lives hanging in the balance.
Following Jez Blake and Clare Devlin’s plane crash and impact on the Love Boat, Peri Lomax died crushed by debris after saving Tom Cunningham.
Serial killer Jez also suffered a terrible fate when he slipped into the pond and was sliced up by the plane’s propeller, while Grace Black died of her gunshot injuries.
Hollyoaks airs on Mondays-Wednesdays with its Channel 4 streaming premiere at 7am, then an E4 broadcast the same night at 7pm. Full episodes are also released on YouTube a week after their Channel 4 release.
Selected omnibus episodes are available via Prime Video.
Read more Hollyoaks spoilers on our dedicated homepage
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