shock

After Jack Branning (Scott Maslen) and Ravi Gulati (Aaron Thiara) fought over a gun and it accidentally fired, Zoe realised she had been shot, and her panicked mum Kat Moon (Jessie Wallace) brought her to Walford East and called an ambulance.

As Zoe continue to exhibit troubling behaviour, Kat begged Zoe to tell her what she was struggling with, and Zoe mentioned she had an enemy out there who is still alive.

Alfie (Shane Richie) found them and the trio ended up back at The Queen Vic, where Jack was playing the dutiful police detective and covering his own tracks.

Anthony Trueman (Nicholas Bailey) stepped up to administer first aid, and the former flames had a brief catch up, with Zoe glad to hear that Anthony now had children.

As Zoe writhed in pain, a flashback took us back to 2006, where Zoe was screaming through labour pains as she gave birth to twins.

One of the babies tragically didn’t survive, and having only given her first name to medics, Zoe fled the hospital and left her child behind.

In the present, Kat spotted a tattoo of Zoe’s, sporting baby feet with an angel halo, and she was heartbroken for her daughter.

In the ambulance, Zoe showed warmer feelings towards Kat, and said of herself that she “couldn’t even do giving birth right”.

Meanwhile, Jack ordered a guilty Ravi to change his clothes and shower to get rid of the gun residue, as it became ever clearer that Jack was going rogue.

At the hospital, Zoe needed emergency surgery to stop the bleeding, and as Kat waited for news, she answered a call on Zoe’s damaged phone.

Assuming it was the enemy that was after Zoe and that he had shot her, Kat threatened the caller that she would make him pay, but the man stayed silent.

As the call ended, the character Kat had just been threatening was unveiled to viewers as none other than Max Branning (Jake Wood)!

Like us, we’re sure you have a lot of questions, so join RadioTimes.com as we delve into the biggest ones below.

How are Zoe and Max connected?

With Zoe having left Walford in 2005 and Max not arriving until 2006, we’re most curious as to how the pair know each other.

Max has always been a serial womaniser, so it’s of course possible that he and Zoe crossed paths either before he was first on-screen, or in the intervening years while both characters were away.

Still, we also have to entertain the idea that their relationship is not romantic at all!

Was Max calling Zoe as a friend or foe?

With Zoe in fear of an “enemy”, that brings us onto our next big question…

Has Max returned as a villain?

Max is no stranger to a villain era, having sought revenge over his wrongful conviction for the murder of Lucy Beale (Hetti Bywater) by trying to take over the Square and trying to kill Ian (Adam Woodyatt).

So might his return see him playing the bad guy in vulnerable Zoe’s story?

While we’ve yet to learn all the details, this would pit Max against Kat and the Moon/Slater clan, and we can’t see his daughter Lauren (Jacqueline Jossa) and estranged teenage son Oscar (Pierre Moullier) wanting anything to do with him.

So, is Max up to no good again, or is there another twist in this tale?

Who fathered Zoe’s children?

A quick working out of the dates confirmed that whoever Zoe’s baby daddy is, it can’t be the late Dirty Den Watts (Leslie Grantham).

Now that we’ve established who isn’t the father, we need to know who is, and whether it’s a character we know.

There’s no resemblance to Max, but how about Anthony? Was there more to Zoe’s comment that she was pleased he had kids of his own?

Zoe’s ill-fated romance with Den’s son Dennis Rickman (Nigel Harman) ended long before her exit, but Dennis remained alive until the very end of 2005, and we don’t know how far into 2006 Zoe gave birth.

Imagine widow Sharon’s (Letitia Dean) shock if she found out that Dennis had a fling with Zoe that led to an unknown pregnancy.

Then there’s the old character group Zoe hung around with decades ago – like Ronny Ferreira (Ray Panthaki) or Tariq Larousi (Nabil Elouahabi).

Whoever this mystery man is, we can’t shake the feeling that it’s a familiar face.

During the flashback, a nurse and doctor were concerned by Zoe’s “bad blood” remark about her baby, but was she referring to her own dark conception story, or that of her child?

Have we already met Zoe’s son?

What if Zoe’s child, who would now be 19 years old, is a character we already know about?

While there were no on-screen births for male EastEnders characters in 2006, that doesn’t necessarily rule this theory out.

Many characters have passed through Albert Square over the years, and there must be a reason the soap has focused first on Zoe’s secret son.

One thing we can rule out is the possibility of Zoe being Joel Marshall’s (Max Murray) mother, as Joel is (as far as we know) considerably younger than her child.

What else is Zoe hiding after troubling dialogue?

Was it a clue when Zoe made a point of saying that the man after her is “still alive”?

There’s also Zoe’s continued insistence that she’s done something so awful, that she believes even Kat would wash her hands of her.

This is something we’ve been pondering over since the summer, and with the promise of more secrets to be spilled on Thursday (4th September 2025), it looks like we’ll be in the know very soon.

Anyone affected by Zoe’s story can find support via Sands.

EastEnders continues on Thursday from 6am on BBC iPlayer and at 7.30pm on BBC One.

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