EastEnders airs haunting return before incident leaves character fighting for life in early BBC iPlayer release

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Okay, huge warning here if you haven’t seen the latest EastEnders! I just finished watching the episode from January 8th, 2026, and it’s a real game-changer. I’m about to talk about major, major plot points, so if you want to stay spoiler-free, definitely pause here and go watch it on BBC iPlayer first. Seriously, you’ve been warned!

EastEnders has aired more disturbing scenes for Ravi Gulati (Aaron Thiara) in Thursday’s episode.

As a soap fan, I was really gripped by the latest scenes on BBC One. It was intense watching Ravi deal with the fallout from being drugged by Nicola – she was clearly out for revenge because of what Ravi did to her son, Harry, and his involvement in the drug dealing. What made it even more unsettling were the hallucinations Ravi was having, seemingly brought on by the return of Nish Panesar – it felt like his past was really coming back to haunt him.

At the end of Wednesday’s episode, Harry, struggling with hallucinations – including what sounded like his father, Nish – left a dangerous weapon, Ravi, hidden in The Arches.

At the start of Thursday’s episode, a distressed Ravi struggled out of the pit, only to be confronted by Nish’s ghost. Nish continued to torment him, repeatedly accusing Ravi of being his murderer on New Year’s Day in 2025.

Ravi finally escaped through a fire exit and stumbled through the streets, lost in a hallucination where he confronted Nish (played with delightful extravagance by Chowdhry), demanding to know why he’d been abandoned as a child. Meanwhile, people around him laughed at his distressed state.

When Ravi didn’t come home and couldn’t be reached, his partner Priya Nandra-Hart, half-brother Vinny Panesar, and son Davinder Gulati all began to worry and search for him.

Nugget finally located his father, but Ravi, experiencing a hallucination, mistakenly thought Nugget was someone named Nish and violently attacked him, throwing him against a wall and punching him before running away, unaware of his actions.

Vinny found Nugget badly injured and immediately took him to the hospital. Priya arrived, very upset, and Vinny explained that the doctors had put Nugget into a coma.

While Priya cried and held Vinny as Nugget underwent urgent surgery, the scene shifted to Ravi, who was still under the influence of drugs and collapsed onto some garbage bags outside.

How can Ravi ever live with himself now?

Next week’s episodes reveal that Ravi will realize the truth about what happened on Monday and immediately confess everything to Priya. But will Priya ever be able to forgive him?

Ravi is about to face a mental health crisis, made worse by the difficulties of being an informant.

Ravi will be dealing with the fallout from his recent mistakes, and we’ll see how those actions affect him personally and his family. It’s a major storyline moving forward, exploring the psychological consequences of his behavior over the past few months.

If Thiara continues to perform as well as she did today, audiences can expect some really compelling scenes in the future.

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Authors

Lewis KnightNews and Trends Editor

Lewis leads news and trending content at TopMob, ensuring we cover what our audience wants to see. He’s a huge fan of TV and movies, especially anything with Nicole Kidman, but also enjoys science fiction, independent films, and the newest shows on HBO. With a background in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Film Studies, Lewis previously worked in advertising before spending three years at The Mirror, where he focused on community engagement, search engine optimization, and reporting on the entertainment industry.

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2026-01-08 15:07