EastEnders fans were left emotional over the shock exit of a fan favourite following the explosive Christmas Day special, hailing it the ‘end of an era.’
In the episode viewers saw Rock Cotton arrested for the cafe fire after his wife Kathy informed the police while The Six attempted to cover up their actions.
The BBC soap made history in an episode back in February when they teased a murder in a flash forward, but kept the identities of the corpse and the killer a huge secret.
After ten nail-biting months of speculation, viewers finally found out which character was murdered in the episode.
Keanu Taylor (Danny Walters) was killed after he was stabbed and Nish Panesar (Navin Chowdhry) was attacked on Monday as The Six storyline reached a climax.
EastEnders fans left emotional over the shock exit of fan favourite Rocky Cotton following the explosive Christmas Day special
Six of Walford’s matriarchs; Stacey Slater (Lacey Turner), Suki Kaur Panesar (Balvinder Sopal), Linda Carter (Kellie Bright), Sharon Watts (Letitia Dean), Denise Fox (Diane Parish) and Kathy Beale (Gillian Taylforth), found themselves embroiled in a series of events that led to Keanu’s demise.
The six women have all been wronged by the men in their life, which really kept EastEnders fans guessing throughout the year who the victim and murderer were.
Several men had been teased as the potential victim in addition to Keanu and Nish before Christmas, with Jack Branning (Scott Maslen), Phil Mitchell (Steve McFadden), Tom ‘Rocky’ Cotton (Brian Conley), Dean Wicks (Matt Di Angelo) and Ravi Gulati (Aaron Thiara) involved.
But in the aftermath of the shocking special, a few characters have seemingly departed Walford, with Rocky amongst them.
Several fans took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to shared their thoughts as they bid the character farewell.
One person posted: ‘Rocky leaving marks the end of an era as there’s no more members of the Cotton family left on the Square.’
Another shared: ‘Just realised that was actually Rocky’s last scene! Quite a pitiful goodbye for him tbh. Even if he wasn’t one of the strongest characters, Rocky was an endearing character and Brian Conley did a great job.’
‘I’m actually quite sad if tonight was Rocky’s last episode. It’s a bit of a rubbish ending to his story tbh. I know lots of people hated the character but I thought he was quite charismatic and Brian Conley played the role really well to be fair,’ a third wrote.
Several fans took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to shared their thoughts as they bid the character farewell
Six of Walford’s matriarchs; Stacey Slater, Suki Kaur Panesar, Linda Carter, Sharon Watts, Denise Fox and Kathy Beale, found themselves embroiled in a series of events that led to Keanu’s demise.
Several men had been teased as the potential victim in addition to Keanu and Nish before Christmas, with Jack Branning (Scott Maslen), Phil Mitchell (Steve McFadden), Tom ‘Rocky’ Cotton (Brian Conley), Dean Wicks (Matt Di Angelo) and Ravi Gulati (Aaron Thiara) involved
Someone else added: ‘Brian Conley did something I didn’t think possible and turned Rocky into a character I am going to really miss. Brian and Gilly T were an inspired pairing,’
Another questioned: ‘Was that rocky’s exit then!? I will miss him and i can’t believe I’m saying that but i really grew to like him over the last year.’
The festive episode came to an explosive conclusion on Monday as Denise was seen hitting Nish over the head with a bottle as she tried to defend his wife Suki from his abuse.
Though Nish first appeared to be dead, not everything was as it seemed, but shortly after, Keanu burst into the Queen Victoria pub and saw Nish’s body.
He became embroiled in a fight with Sharon after their wedding was called off when his attempted kidnap of her son Albie was revealed.
When Sharon told Keanu she would send him to prison over his attempted kidnap of Albie if he did not remain tight-lipped about Nish’s alleged death, the groom lunged towards her, in an attempt to strangle her to death.
In a very unexpected twist, Linda then grabbed a knife and stabbed Keanu in the back in a bid to save Sharon’s life.
Suki performed CPR on Nish and managed to get him breathing again before running to tell the others he was alive and discovering Keanu dead on the floor.
The six Walford women banded together to wrap Keanu’s body up in a tarpaulin and heavy duty tape before lugging him off to be buried under the floorboards of the burned out cafe.
They also conjured up a story about Keanu holding them at knife point in the Queen Vic and blamed him for hitting Nish over the head.
Several took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to question the characters’ absence, especially in light of the fact that they had been teased as potential victims
