BBC EastEnders: All the clues you missed that Linda Carter was the Christmas killer – shock twist and trailer clue

EastEnders aired a shocking death this evening as Lind Carter was confirmed as the Christmas killer.

The BBC soap aired a shocking flashforward scene back in February, which saw the Six women standing around a mystery dead body. The Six – Denise (Diane Parish), Kathy (Gillian Taylforth), Linda (Kellie Bright), Sharon (Letitia Dean), Stacey (Lacey Turner) and Suki ( Balvinder Sopal ) – were left reeling by the surprise death on Sharon’s wedding day.

Several men found themselves in the firing line including Jack Branning, Nish Panesar, Dean Wicks, Phil Mitchell, Keanu Taylor, Ravi Gulati and Rocky Cotton but tonight, after 10 months of waiting, all was revealed about the Christmas murder.

Here’s all the clues you missed in the last 10 months that Linda was the killer all along.

No motive

It’s always the case that the most unlikely becomes the most likely – especially in soapland. And that certainly was the case tonight, when Linda struck the fatal blow and murdered Keanu, leaving fans and the rest of The Six horrified.

It seemed so unlikely to be Linda, given that she only had motive to murder one person – Dean Wicks. Viewers saw a scene of her being tormented by her rapist, but he managed to escape the Vic without an injury on him.

“Well there’s the obvious one – Dean. She’s had a little run in, in the past with Nish when she was going to sell the pub to him and then she pulled out at the last minute so he did the pub over, but that was quite a while ago. I don’t think she’s got any other major crosses to bare at this point,” she said recently about the big scenes and if Linda could turn to murder.

When Dean seemingly snuck out of the pub, no one would ever think Linda would be the one to kill.

Trailer clue

In the trailer, it seemed as though Linda had walked in on the murder having happened, rather than been there for the actual event. We saw the women standing round the body before Linda rushed in with a split lip.

We now know that that’s because the real murder took place elsewhere, rather than in the main part of the pub as we had been led to believe all those months ago. In a way, this should have made us realise that Linda was the most likely given that she appeared to be ‘arriving’ at the scene rather than being fully involved in it.

Christmas twist

It’s very unlikely that a character plays a key part in two Christmases in a row on a BBC soap, and so by default, Linda wasn’t suspected to play a big part in the Christmas death. In fact, because she didn’t have her ‘victim’ arrive until October, when Dean Wicks appeared back in the Square on Halloween. However, Linda playing a massive part in the story was teased by Chris Clenshaw some months ago.

Following Danny Dyer’s big exit – and Mick Carter’s shock ‘death’ – Chris revealed what was coming for Linda. “Linda’s still very much at the heart of Albert Square and it’s so great to have Kellie. She’s not going to get over Mick very quickly. She was just reunited with him then he was snatched away from her so it won’t be all smiles straight away,” he said.

“There are big plans for Linda. She’s going to start shooting something in January that goes out in February and it’s something that we as a show haven’t done before. Linda’s at the centre of that. There is a question mark over the future of The Vic at the moment. Kellie knows what’s happening and we know what’s happening with the Vic. It’s very exciting.”

Could this have been the biggest hint that Linda was set to turn into a killer?