A new Sugden recently arrived in Emmerdale when Victoria (Isabel Hodgins) unexpectedly met her half-brother John Sugden (Oliver Farnworth) at the funeral of his mother.
By the time Victoria returned to the village from the funeral, she was surprised and delighted to find that John was already there. His van – which also doubled as him home – had broken down and Mackenzie (Lawrence Robb) had brought it to Cain (Jeff Hordley)’s garage for repairs.
With the repairs set to take some time to complete because they had to send off for parts, John was forced to stay in Emmerdale for a while. This pleased Victoria a lot, because she wanted to get to know her brother. But not everyone is so happy to have John in the village.
Oliver Farnworth told us that his ‘lone wolf’ character very quickly manages to ruffle feathers.
‘He just is disassociated completely, so he won’t think twice about telling someone what he thinks,’ he shared. ‘He’s not trying to make friends. He’s not out to win people over. So yeah, even in the early episodes, there’s a few occasions where he’s very direct with people that might not like that, but he doesn’t really care, because he just sees this as a stopgap, and then he’s on to the next thing.’
One of those he manages to antagonise is Mackenzie, and when John’s van is stolen from the garage John is fairly sure that Mackenzie is to blame.
His guess is soon proved to be correct as it’s not long before he spots his van, semi-submerged in a lake. Furious, he menacingly vows revenge against whoever did it.
Mackenzie is left feeling guilty when Victoria points out that the van was John’s home as well as his means of transport. He tries to get John to leave the village by throwing a punch at him, but former military man John is too quick for him.
With tensions already high between John and Mackenzie, soon he’s also made an enemy out of Mack’s accomplice Aaron (Danny Miller) after leading him on to think he’s interested in him. Aaron goes in for a kiss and John leaves him humiliated when he rejects him.
It’s a messy situation and it’s set to continue as Cain offers John a job working on the farm – so it looks like he’ll be sticking around for some time to come.
