A major Emmerdale character is to return to the show in special episodes shot in Ireland.

New scenes will see current inhabitants of the Dale stumble across an old yet familiar face when they take a trip to Belfast in March. The group will go away to the city for a few nights only to discover that they couldn't escape every aspect of the small English town after all. Emmerdale producers Laura Shaw and Kate Brooks discussed the upcoming storyline in a clip shared on the soap's Twitter page. They said that the episodes in Belfast are going to be particularly "special." https://twitter.com/emmerdale/status/1080795916154691584 "A group of our characters go to Belfast and there is going to be some fun and japes over there. What we can reveal is maybe they’re going to bump into somebody who was in our village quite a while ago who we’ve not seen for a while. "And maybe that person is going to be coming back to the village with them." Very interesting, indeed. Viewers wasted no time in speculating who the mystery character could be. Some suggested that it might be Mandy Dingle, as she is due to return to the programme soon, however it's expected that Mandy will be back a lot sooner than March. We guess we'll never know. Well, not until March, at least.