Emmerdale has a unique form of emotional torture: they give you a glimmer of hope, then immediately extinguish it, leaving you with the feeling of “thinking you were about to escape, but it turns out you weren’t.”

This week’s news about Ray falls into that category.

The police delivered information that made everyone think: finally, Ray is about to be caught, about to be exposed, about to pay the price.

But then everything took a turn that shattered Marlon completely.

Why? Because in Celia and Ray’s world, there’s no such thing as waiting to be caught. Celia is the type of person who, upon hearing bad news, immediately plans a counterattack. She doesn’t react emotionally. She reacts strategically. And the easiest strategy is to make others lose their composure. To make the victim make mistakes. To drag those who were trying to help down with their own actions.

Marlon is on the brink of a psychological collapse. He’d endured too much, held on for too long. Just one more event and his “framework of endurance” would crack.

And the news about Ray, which should have been his breath-resting moment, became his even more terrifying, because it meant: Celia and Ray would go berserk to silence everyone. When the villain is cornered, they become ten times more dangerous.

Celia didn’t need to attack directly to bring Marlon down. She could isolate him. When the villagers started to fear getting involved, they would avoid him. When they avoided him, Marlon would feel “alone.” And then, a reckless decision would be made. Emmerdale is very good at trapping characters in this psychological way: you think you’re choosing a way to survive, but in reality, you’re walking right into the villain’s trap.