Emmerdale is set to air one of its biggest storylines in recent years, which show director Vicky Thomas has promised will show "characters in ways that they have never seen before". The Valentine's Day episode, on Friday 14 February, will see 16 of Emmerdale's biggest characters embroiled in terrifying limousine crash scenes.
One of cars crashes into the woods, but the second will plunge into a frozen lake - and not everyone will make it out alive. Vicky Thomas, who has directed various episodes of the ITV over the last decade, said the scenes will be full of "very high emotions" and also teased that the repercussions of the crash will be felt in the village for a long time to come.
"I think the audience will see the characters in ways that they have never seen before," she said. "And the repercussions of what happens over this night will go on for a very long time. And I think some things will even change forever from them. As there are some who do not make it because of what happens to them."
The soap's writers and execs have been tight-lipped about who will be involved in the harrowing scenes, but we do know that there will be a limo full of boys and another full of girls - and some of them will end up in the icy water.
On the logistics of shooting such incredible drama, Vicky revealed they'd used three limousines for the scenes, including a spare one that was specially adapted and put on the lake.
"So that is the one that remains there throughout - we never drove that one anywhere because to make it all work, we had to take the engine out," she said. "And we had drilled holes in the bottom of the vehicle so that the water would fill it quickly to go down. For the first week on the ice we filmed with it in a kind of nose down position and then the second week it got attached to an enormous, and I mean enormous, huge, tall crane.
"The limo dangled from it like a puppet, floating just above the ice, and then bit by bit it would eventually drop into this enormous pit that had been dug below."
There have been a number of explosive storylines in Emmerdale over the years, which have signalled the exit of some of the soap's best-loved characters. Possibly the most famous of these, the Emmerdale plane crash, aired in 1993 and saw a Canada-bound plane tumble out of the sky and land in the village.
Four regular characters were killed off - Elizabeth Pollard, Archie Brooke, Mark Hughes and Leonard Kempinski - and the total death toll including the plane passengers was 147.
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