Coronation Street executive producer Iain MacLeod has suggested that the soap's current love triangle is about to become a love square.
Engaged couple Daisy (Charlotte Jordan) and Daniel (Rob Mallard) are currently on rocky ground after Ryan (Ryan Prescott) admitted to being in love with Daisy.
Daniel is unaware that his fiancée's feelings are somewhat reciprocated towards Ryan - or that they recently slept together.
This Christmas marks the return of Daniel's former love interest Bethany Platt (Lucy Fallon) to Weatherfield, only serving to complicate romantic matters even further.
"Into the middle of this really very volatile cocktail arrives Bethany, who's obviously got lots of history with Daniel, and that very much sharpens Daisy's focus in terms of how she feels about Daniel," MacLeod explained to The Sun.
"Suddenly this guy that she may have been starting to move away from, possibly by force of will - suddenly there's a romantic threat on the cards and that recalibrates how she feels about the whole enterprise.
"It's a really brilliant, classic soap story I think. We were, without duplicating anything, attempting to go for something that had the same level of emotional heft as some of the classic affairs of yore - the Deirdre and Mike stuff, something that's a love triangle for the ages I suppose.
"It's going to run deep into next year as all these unresolved feelings are buried, but like all good buried feelings, they all come back to the surface with a bang or two across the following twelve months."
Discussing Bethany's comeback after almost four years away, he continued: "She's a slightly different proposition now from when we last saw her - there's been a number of years that have elapsed, she's grown up quite a lot, she's had the beginnings of a successful journalism career in London and she turns back up and is instantly a foe for Daisy.
"They're very evenly matched now - Bethany might once have seemed like a younger woman or a girl; she's very much more a woman now, more on Daisy's level, so it's a really heavyweight tussle between these two women, which I'm really looking forward to seeing more of.
"So she's coming back with this clear romantic purpose in the Daniel story but then will fairly quickly find herself in the midst of this massive story that's going to span most of next year. It's really exciting stuff and the performances in this character group are just off the chart."
Coronation Street continues Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8pm on ITV1 and ITVX.
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