9 Emmerdale Spoilers for Next Week – 20th to 24th January

Next week on Emmerdale, Anthony makes further enemies before he’s found dead, Joe and Dawn succumb to temptation, and Charity sees through Noah’s ruse.

1) Laurel attacks Anthony

Emmerdale kicks off another whodunnit next week, as Ruby’s (Beth Cordingly) dad Anthony (Nicholas Day) meets a grisly demise. But with no shortage of enemies gained in his final hours, who is responsible?

Ruby and Caleb (Will Ash) are still coming to terms with the shock revelation that daughter Steph (Georgia Jay) isn’t in fact Caleb’s daughter as previously thought, but the result of Anthony’s abuse of Ruby when she was a teen.

Ruby had been living with the possibility for all these years, but it was only confirmed when a secret DNA test that Ruby sent away for showed that Caleb couldn’t possibly have fathered Steph. Whilst Ruby had decided to destroy the results without reading them, Caleb found the envelope when searching for painkillers in her bag and opened it.

Caleb initially threw Ruby out on account of her apparent deception, but it was Chas (Lucy Pargeter) who eventually put all the pieces together and voiced her suspicions about Anthony to Caleb.

As the week came to a close, Caleb had supported Ruby as she admitted the Chas’s fears were true, and Caleb was later seen ominously taking delivery of a handgun…

“When he finds out the truth, Caleb absolutely wants to kill Anthony,” Will Ash tells us. “He just wants vengeance and is desperate to go after him. Initially Ruby tells him not to, then you find out Caleb is going to pursue him to get some kind of justice, as messed up as it is, for Ruby.”

Next week begins with a grim flash-forward, showing a bloodied tooth sitting on the floor of Caleb’s depot building…

Unaware of the horrifying secret the rest of the family are now dealing with, Steph is confused to come home and find Caleb and Ruby back together, having only just apparently split up.

Meanwhile, a hungover Anthony wakes up on Laurel’s (Charlotte Bellamy) sofa, having gone on a bender in The Woolpack the night before—after Ruby confronted him about his abuse and revealed to him that he had fathered his own granddaughter.

Anthony is already in Laurel’s good books, having helped her teenage son Arthur (Alfie Clarke) with some maths tutoring.

Now, with word getting around, Nicola (Nicola Wheeler) has also drafted in Anthony to tutor 15-year-old daughter Angelica (Rebecca Bakes).

Blissfully ignorant of Anthony’s past, Nicola is later happy to leave him alone with Angelica in the cottage as they begin their session and heads to the cafe.

But when Chas overhears that Anthony is back at the house with Angel, she warns Nicola that her daughter isn’t safe.

Nicola races back to the house, and once Angel is out of the way, orders Anthony to stay away after hearing that he is a danger to children.

Anthony panics as he maintains his innocence but Nicola isn’t taken in. As she reaches for her phone, Anthony’s anger takes over.

Things turn dangerously physical as Anthony grapples with Nicola, until Laurel suddenly walks in and whacks Anthony over the head with a nearby candlestick!

Anthony drops to the floor, out for the count, leaving Laurel and Nicola in a panic.

2) Cain hears some unsettling news

Meanwhile, another family member looks to learn the truth when Cain (Jeff Hordley) heads into the pub’s backroom and realises that Chas is feeling upset about something.

Cain immediately worries whether his secret liaison with Ruby has come to light, with Anthony’s knowledge of it being held over their heads, but is horrified when he gets Chas to open up on what is really troubling her…

3) Aaron recognises Ruby’s fear

Having survived his encounter with Laurel, for now at least, Anthony’s sporting a bloody head wound when he later has a further argument with Ruby outside the church. Aaron (Danny Miller) is nearby and witnesses Ruby’s reaction, one which he knows all too well from having been abused by his own father, Gordon.

“Aaron has always been wary of Anthony, whether that be an instinct from experience or whether that’s a case of – he’s a loud and out there character – something Aaron hasn’t always been a huge fan of regardless of who it is,” Danny explains.

“It’s only when he sees an altercation with Ruby down by the church, where Anthony is very hands on and aggressive with her, that his suspicions are confirmed and he starts about investigating if his gut feeling is right! Because he knows the difference of scared looks from his experience and that’s exactly what he sees in Ruby – is himself.”

“He is instantly aggressive and destined for revenge, for Ruby, of course, but he sees his chance to level with Gordon who took ‘the cowards way out’ as Aaron calls it – killing himself in prison,” Danny adds. “He sees an opportunity to hand over Gordon (in Anthony) to the police – who will then serve his sentence in prison and give Ruby the justice she a) deserves and b) never had the chance of having himself.”

4) Will Caleb enact his revenge?

Soon afterwards, Caleb pulls up and orders his father-in-law to get into his car…

“We’ve seen that Caleb’s in possession of a gun,” Will continues. “He takes Anthony to a barn wanting to confront him with what he’s done, he wants him to admit to what he’s done and face up to it. He wants him to admit that he is a monster.“

But is Caleb capable of murdering Anthony?

“Initially he isn’t, but when he’s confronted with Anthony and the way he doesn’t accept responsibility for what he’s done—he’s so casual about it and almost blames Ruby for the abuse—I think that makes Caleb so angry. I don’t think he is capable initially but when he’s confronted with Anthony’s indifference to what he’s done it sends Caleb into a tailspin and a rage.”

Although our lips are sealed are what happens next, a gunshot does ring out…

5) Anthony is found dead

Steph is confused about her grandfather’s absence when they had planned to meet, and later in the week both Nicola and Laurel continue to be concerned that they haven’t seen Anthony since he was hit over the head.

Whilst Laurel is a nervous wreck, Nicola visits Hotten General, where she awkwardly asks a nurse in A&E if Anthony has been admitted.

But little do they realise that, elsewhere, Anthony has been found dead…

By the end of the week, Laurel has resorted to seeking some guidance at the church, whilst Caleb and Ruby are unable to help Steph as she continually wonders about Anthony’s whereabouts.

At the depot, Anthony’s tooth continues to lay undiscovered…

6) Dawn considers a new position underneath Joe

Elsewhere in the village, the renewed relationship between Kim (Claire King) and step-grandson Joe (Ned Porteous) appears to be going from strength to strength.

It hasn’t even been a month since Joe waltzed back into Home Farm on Christmas Day, having been rather understandably estranged from Kim since she tried to have him taken out in 2018.

Joe swore he had turned over a new leaf, and claimed he had returned to warn Kim after learning of her husband Will’s (Dean Andrews) plans to ruin her. Will had already had a change of heart, so to speak, at this point and pulled out of his scheme, but it did little to save him when the ensuing argument with Kim brought on a fatal coronary.

Next week, Joe finds Kim in the graveyard. As the two sit together, it’s a comfort for Joe to see that whilst Kim is grieving for Will, she genuinely misses her other late husband Graham (Andrew Scarborough) who had been a father figure to Joe.

Back at the house, Kim’s stepdaughter Dawn (Olivia Bromley) is hiding a guilty little secret after she shared a kiss with Joe. Dawn has vowed it will never happen again, given that she’s happily married to Billy (Jay Kontzle), but it appears that Joe would take any opportunity to try and tempt her.

Currently juggling her job at the vets with responsibilities at home, Dawn is surprised when Kim gives her an interesting proposition. Despite Dawn having put her in hospital two weeks ago—after drugging her to try and get the truth about Will’s death—Kim offers Dawn a full time job on the estate, meaning she can be at home more with the kids.

The offer would surely be tempting, particularly since baby son Evan is still undergoing leukaemia treatment, but Dawn is suspicious when she realises that Joe would be her boss, wondering whether he’s orchestrated the whole thing to get close to her.

When Dawn later confronts Joe about the position, one thing inevitably leads to another and the two end up in bed together…

7) Will Dawn confess?

Later, Dawn is overwhelmed with guilt as Billy returns from the hospital with baby Evan, who has just undergone his first chemotherapy appointment as an outpatient.

Dawn eventually decides to the honest with her husband and prepares to confess about sleeping with Joe, but will she be able to go through with it?

8) Charity sees through Noah’s ruse

Joe’s presence in the village is also continuing to rile up former stepmum Charity (Emma Atkins), who has no intentions of forgiving him for his past misdeeds.

As Joe made efforts to reconnect with half-brother Noah (Jack Downham) this week, Charity persuaded Ross (Michael Parr) to warn him off.

Noah was disappointed when Joe subsequently pulled out of taking him to a Leeds match, but Joe soon found another way to get close to Noah when he called in his electrician services for a power cut at Home Farm.

Joe told Noah what Charity and Ross had done, and the brothers agreed to keep seeing each other on the down low, later orchestrating an argument in front of Charity to put her off the scent.

Next week, Joe decides to reel Noah in further by gifting him a watch, something of a family heirloom. But when Charity later sees the watch, she knows exactly where it’s come from, and it’s obvious that she’s been lied to.

Charity storms up to Home Farm and returns the watch to Joe, reiterating that he is not to have any contact with her son.

9) Has Joe’s secret been rumbled?

Whilst Joe’s motives for returning are still under question from viewers, we already know for certain Joe has been hiding one secret since his return, with us seeing him struggling with a considerable amount of pain and downing pills in his room.

Joe has kept his cool around everyone thus far, but his undercover plight look set to be discovered next week, as we see him parked up in the middle of nowhere struggling to stay conscious.

Naturally, it’s Dawn who eventually comes across Joe slumped at the wheel of his car, and she’s concerned to find an unlabelled bottle of pills on the floor.

As a former addict, how will Dawn react to the questionable scene before her?