The Rhona-Mary-Celia storyline is what’s making viewers angry but still compelled to watch.

Mary is a sentimental person who believes in kindness, so when she’s drawn into Celia’s game, it’s not just pain from being deceived, but pain from misjudging people and self-reproach.

Celia isn’t the type of character who destroys with fists, but by turning good people into bad ones.

And the biggest victim of that tactic is Rhona.

The drama here is Rhona’s extremely appalling act of “throwing” Mary out of her life. From an outsider’s perspective, it’s unbelievably cruel: Rhona chooses a path where Mary is cast aside as if she were the troublemaker, when clearly Mary is the one who’s been hurt. But Emmerdale’s unique approach is that they don’t portray Rhona as completely evil. They often corner Rhona: fear of being implicated, fear of losing something important, fear of a greater consequence, and in a moment of panic, Rhona does something terrible that she rationalizes as “obligatory.”

And that’s when Celia wins. When Rhona betrays Mary, Celia doesn’t need to intervene anymore, because Rhona does it herself. Mary is hurt in a very mature way: no screaming, no tantrums, but the empty gaze and silence are what kill. Mary will feel discarded, erased, treated as a nuisance. Worse, Mary will wonder: am I not worthy of anyone’s protection?

This piece is well-written as a “psychological warfare” piece: it begins with Mary trusting someone, the middle part is Celia sowing poison, and it concludes with Rhona pushing Mary out the door. At the end, you leave a negative vibe: Rhona may think she’s done, but the truth is she’s just created a crack that won’t be easily mended, and Celia will exploit that crack to drag everyone down with her.