Emmerdale’s Bear Wolf (Joshua Richards) is set to return in a ‘never been done before’ storyline later this year, co-star Lisa Riley has teased.
Bear left the village in July after his relationship with son Paddy Kirk (Dominic Brunt) broke down.
There is a big story ahead for Bear Wolf (Picture: ITV)
Paddy noticed some worrying changes of behaviour from Bear, which resulted in them clashing regularly. Paddy worried that this could be a sign of dementia in his dad, but when he tried to conduct a memory test, Bear lashed out violently.
Things came to a head after Paddy was bitten by Celia Daniels’ (Jaye Griffiths) dog, and Bear made some cruel comments to his son.
Following this, he left the village, claiming he was set to spend some time with an old wrestling friend in Ireland.
However, when his friend cancelled their plans, Bear decided to leave anyway, and when he made a brief appearance on screen a few weeks later, he appeared to have been living out of his car.
Now, Mandy Dingle actress Lisa Riley has confirmed that Bear will be back, and his storyline is a ‘TV drama first’.
Speaking to The Sun at the National Television Awards, she revealed that she knows where Bear has been, because she has ‘read the scripts that are coming up for Christmas’.
‘Where does that take us? Where’s my father-in-law? My father-in-law is somewhere. I’m not going to tell you where he is,’ she teased.
‘But I can promise you a lot of drama where he is. And it’s going to be a big storyline on the horizon. That’s like Laura [Shaw], our producer, that’s her baby.’
Lisa cryptically continued: ‘I can’t even give you any clue, because you won’t actually get it. I told my other half, Alan, he was like, that’s never been done. That’s never been done before. That’s the truth. It’s not been done in a drama.’
When the storyline was first teased, actor Joshua Richards revealed that he was looking forward to tackling ‘quite a major subject’.
‘I’m really looking forward to coming back. I do love to work. I’m not mad on inactivity for long periods of time, as any actor is if one could be there doing something and having the great fun of taking on a major storyline. It’s exciting,’ he enthused.
He went on to say: ‘I’ve done something on this subject which I’m not going to say, but I did a play about it with John Godber a few years ago and it was riveting – quite profound and upsetting and also full of alarming facts.’
In 2007, Joshua starred in John Godber and Jane Thornton’s play Sold, playing a journalist trying to help a woman sold to people traffickers. Could Emmerdale be set to tackle this hard-hitting topic?
Echoing Lisa’s sentiments about the upcoming ITV soap story, Joshua added: ‘I think it’s going to be an excellent storyline to take on because I haven’t seen anybody take it on before.’
Producer Laura Shaw also teased Bear’s big storyline earlier this year, promising that viewers would see a different side to Bear.
‘He’s going to go off screen for a little while and go missing, and when he comes back, what you’ll see is a very different Bear in a really different situation and we’re all going to be watching saying “what the hell has happened here?”‘
