If we had to pick the moment that shocked Emmerdale fans the most during this period, Dylan Penders would definitely be at the top.

He was just a lost child, with a dirty past, struggling with addiction and foolish decisions.

However, it was that imperfection that helped Dylan and April Windsor find common ground, and gradually pulled them into a cute couple in the style of “two children trying to hold on to each other in the dark world”.

That is why when Dylan became the target of Celia’s punishment, the audience felt like they were being slapped.

The blow to Dylan was scripted so meticulously that it was creepy. Celia gave the order, Ray Walters – the son who was too used to blindly following – was responsible for handling it. Dylan was given a seemingly harmless task: to open the gate for Ray’s car to drive in. Little did he know that the moment he stepped out was the moment his life was thrown into the book of death. Ray drove up, Dylan stood right in front of him, and instead of braking, Ray stepped on the gas. The moment he was thrown off, his body hitting the ground, was the moment when both the viewers and the characters in the show suffocated.

But Emmerdale didn’t stop there. To turn it into a mental torture scene, the scriptwriter forced the whole family to witness. Celia arranged for Marlon, Rhona and April to watch everything via video call, as if watching a live stream of the crime. They screamed, begging Ray to stop, but on the other side of the screen, Ray was still bent over next to Dylan, pulling out a syringe.