EastEnders: Carl White killed by Ronnie Mitchell in New Year's Day episode

The showdown came after Ronnie’s plans to run Carl out of town backfired in the most dramatic way possible. After whacking him with a champagne bottle and holding him hostage in the pit at the Arches, Ronnie teamed up with Phil (Steve McFadden) to make sure that Carl skipped town and stayed out of Roxy’s (Rita Simons) life.

But despite witnessing Carl climb the steps of Walford East Tube station, Ronnie was soon to discover that she hadn’t seen the last of the menacing bad boy. Later in the episode, it transpired that Carl had doubled back in a bid to take a bag full of cash and intimidate Ronnie (now without the support of Phil) in the process.

“You don’t decide anything – when are you going to get that through your head?” Carl seethed as he grabbed Ronnie’s face and forced himself upon her for a kiss. But before he could take matters further, Ronnie wreaked revenge by killing Carl and getting the car she stashed him in crushed – even going to the trouble of removing some jump leads beforehand!

Now, having fled the country for a holiday in Ibiza with Roxy, the only evidence of Ronnie’s crime remains Carl’s blood-stained mobile phone discovered in the closing seconds of the hour-long instalment by Phil. What conclusions he’s reached about his cousin’s actions remain to be seen.

Dominic Treadwell-Collins, the BBC1 soap’s executive producer, has already revealed that the character of Ronnie is to feature prominently during 2014: “The big question with Ronnie is: ‘is she her father’s daughter?’,” he said last month. “And what we’re going to see is how someone becomes a villain. Not a soap bitch, but a villain. I keep talking about Darth Vader.”