Coronation Street boss Iain MacLeod has confirmed that Chris Gascoyne will leave his role as Peter Barlow over the festive period.
Last month Peter ran over and killed serial killer Stephen Reid (Todd Boyce), and even though the police have decided not to pursue a case against him, he has started to become consumed by guilt over his actions.
Peter's demons - and a potential relapse of his alcoholism - will culminate at Christmas and he will leave Weatherfield after a Boxing Day episode that will be a two-hander between Peter and his wife Carla (Alison King).
"There's a few explosive, Peter Barlow-style outbursts that start to bring to Carla's attention the idea that he's really, really not okay," MacLeod told press, in quotes reported by the Radio Times. "And they find themselves at this enormous fork in the road where they love each other, but perhaps their happiness is no longer reliant on each other.
"Which is to say, maybe they start to wonder if they'd be happier somewhere or in some other situation, somewhere else, basically, and it all builds up to this really, I think, incredibly surprising Christmas Day episode, and then there's a huge two-hander between the two of them [on Boxing Day], more or less they're the only two cast in the episode."
He continued: "We often think of Peter and Carla as a kind of Burton and Taylor of the cobbles, and we wanted to have this kind of grand scale, highly emotional, very nuanced, very realistic ending - which is, I think, what the writers achieved.
"It's filming right now, and I cannot wait to see the result if it's even half as good as the script, and experience tells me it will be better than the script because, you know, the actors and the directors normally elevate the material.
"If it's even half as good as the script, it's going to be a really stunning Christmas episode for us, because they're brilliantly loved characters, brilliant actors, and it's the culmination of a kind of decade-long love story. So I think the viewers are going to really love it."
Peter's departure from Carla's life comes just as she gets a new family member in the form of a grown-up nephew she knew nothing about, "livewire chip-off-the-old block" Bobby (Jack Carroll).
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