EastEnders' Ben Mitchell tipped for sad exit storyline

EastEnders spoilers potentially follow.

EastEnders favourite Ben Mitchell has been tipped for quite a sad exit storyline.

Actor Max Bowden has been confirmed to be leaving the BBC One soap, and now The Sun claim that Phil Mitchell's troublesome son will have his final scenes air around Easter.

Apparently, those scenes will see the police turn up and take Ben away in handcuffs, with the reasoning being that something he did during his jaunt in America last year has come back to bite him.

Related: EastEnders' Kara Tointon to star in The Teacher season 2 with Corrie and Hollyoaks stars

Ben won't be expecting the authorities, and therefore won't be able to escape being shipped off to America.

The character has been played by six actors over the years, starting in 1996. Bowden took over the role in 2019, and his storylines have seen him begin a relationship with Callum Highway, struggle with Lola Pearce-Brown's cancer diagnosis, deal with the trauma of being assaulted by Lewis Butler and getting shot by Hunter Owner, to name just a few.

When his exit was confirmed, we at Digital Spy wrote that it might be a good thing, due to his characterisation throughout these storylines.

"The problem is this complex pathos has never been truly explored by the writers. We never discuss how the trauma Ben endured affected him," we said.

Related: Soap Movers: Who's leaving, returning and joining in EastEnders, Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Hollyoaks?

"Viewers were never treated to a storyline focusing on Ben becoming a paragon of toxic masculinity to compensate for the homophobia he faced at home and on the streets. Instead, Ben simply doubled down on being a baddie and fans were meant to accept it because he is Phil Mitchell's son."

EastEnders airs on Mondays - Thursdays at 7.30pm on BBC One. The show also streams on BBC iPlayer, where most episodes drop early at 6am ahead of their TV broadcast.

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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer and resident Welsh person at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. 

In his time he's covered a host of live events, interviewed celebrities big and small and crowbarred a countless amount of great/awful (delete as appropriate) puns into articles. 

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