Slaters face shock return storyline in EastEnders

If you're an EastEnders fan and like to avoid the upcoming storylines, look away now.

Kat is back. The Albert Square favourite is making a surprise return as her family plans for her funeral.

Jean and Mo Slater - played by Gillian Wright and Laila Morse - have already returned to the soap, with Mo claiming Kat is dead.

Actress Lacey Turner, who plays Kat's cousin Stacey Slater, said the shake-up "sort of ruins Stacey's life".

The resurgence of the Slaters is down to show boss John Yorke wanting to push the strong and feisty women that EastEnders - and the soap genre as a whole - is synonymous with. With such rich histories and layered personalities, there is a lot to be explored with these characters and having them all back together again is sure to create some big drama and hilarious dialogue.

Strong female roles are relatable - we all know a real life matriarch who we can compare to someone in a soap. They are the glue that hold a soap family together and they are often characters that represent strength and fierce family loyalty and protection as well as exhibiting flaws which are familiar in the character below them. I don't think a soap family is complete without a good matriarch - and they always seem to get the sharpest and wittiest lines, too.

Matriarchs are certainly heightened in the world of soap - with lines that some of us would never say and the fact that most soap families go through more heartache and tragedy in a year than many real families do in a lifetime. But at the heart of it all, they are still the centre of a family, someone to look up to and someone who will fight for anyone in the clan and that's something we can all recognise in fiction and in real life. While the drama may be upped a notch, what matriarchs represent feels very real.

Kat's arrival shocks the community in general after they had rallied round by holding a fundraiser for her funeral.

Turner said: "The Slaters coming back just sort of ruins Stacey's life.

"They just come back and cause a lot of trouble and expect Stacey to put it all back together."

She added that it was a challenge working with the returning cast members.

"We're quite useless working together because all we do is laugh. We spend most of our time laughing and trying to get some work done."

Of course, it's not the first time EastEnders has welcomed back a fan favourite.

One of the best-known was Dirty Den who got shot in 1989, fell into the canal and that was the end of him. Except it wasn't.

He survived the shooting and emigrated to Spain before making his comeback in 2003.

However, he was finally killed (we think) two years later.

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