EastEnders return for Ben Mitchell ‘confirmed’ and star reveals one big change to him

EastEnders’ Ben Mitchell is currently in the clink, and has been for a while at this point.

In fairness, he got away with a lot before he was finally felled by a dodgy credit card scam when he headed Stateside, desperately searching for alternative treatment for Lola Pearce (Danielle Harold), who’d recently been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour.

Upon arrest, he was extradited back to America to face trial and ultimately ended up being slapped with a six year sentence.

It was all a bit-ham fisted, to be completely honest, but with Ben having been axed and with no way a legacy character was going to be bumped off, nor willingly leave his daughter, Lexi (Isabella Brown), to depart in a black cab, a prison sentence probably made the most sense.

Max Bowden, the latest in a long line of Ben Mitchells, was welcoming of the dismissal: ‘The important thing was my time was ready. I was very tired and, like I said, I wasn’t me, I wasn’t’, he said when asked about the axing.

‘The Max sat in front of you today was kind of a ghost, and they recognised that – I recognised that.

‘I did nearly six hundred episodes in five years, which is a hell of a lot, and it was time for a rest. The character was tired, I was tired, they [the producers] were probably tired of me being tired.

‘From an honest perspective, I think yeah, a lot of it was that I needed to go for a bit. I needed to go work on me, get myself back to a place of really good mental health, focus on healing and also be a dad.’

Speaking recently to Inside Soap, Max mused on what his alter-ego would be like now.

‘I have a feeling that Ben is more disciplined,’ he offered. ‘I think it’ll have led him to go the right way as opposed to the wrong way and, hopefully, there’s some redemption in Ben’s heart when he finally does get released’.

It makes sense, his last appearance showed a new attitude for Ben, but will we get to witness said redemption first hand, on-screen?

That remains to be seen.

In his last stint, Ben had formed Ballum, a powerhouse partnership with Callum Highway (Tony Clay), with bad boy Ben and the bashful bobby Callum becoming a fan favourite couple, leaving a legion of broken hearts when they were cruelly torn apart.

As Ben served his time, Callum moved on with Johnny Carter (Charlie Suff). When Callum’s awful dad, Jonno Highway (Richard Graham) died in his son’s arms, Ben, who’d moved to a prison in the UK, attended the funeral, before learning of his husband’s burgeoning new relationship.

Retreating back to prison, a truly broken Ben was visited by his parents, Kathy Beale (Gillian Taylforth) and Phil Mitchell (Steve McFadden), when all of the Mitchell ‘hardman’ rubbish was dropped, and father and son shared an emotional talk.

Phil took the lead, decided to be truthful about his long and arduous battle with his mental health and attempt to take his own life.

Ben saw the courage in his dad’s openness and followed suit, talking about the deep, gnawing pain of losing the love of his life and his feeling of hopelessness.

Kathy stepped in to remind Ben that love would come again, and he has a daughter he needs to carry on for.

A fruitful visit all around, Ben displayed an emotional maturity over the collapse of his marriage, and set about finishing his sentence with a renewed sense of hope for the future.