Mack escapes evil John’s clutches in early Emmerdale ITVX release – but a tragic twist follows

Mackenzie Boyd’s hope was taken away from him in seconds (Picture: ITV)

The following article contains spoilers from an episode of Emmerdale that hasn’t aired on ITV1 yet, but can be viewed on ITVX.

Mackenzie Boyd (Lawrence Robb) successfully managed to escape the underground bunker in the latest episode of Emmerdale, in an instalment that has left us all on the edge of our seats.

The beloved character has been in John Sugden’s (Oliver Farnworth) dark and dingy lair for two weeks now. Prior to the kidnapping, Mack had discovered the truth about John, including that he killed Nate Robinson. The two endured a showdown in the woods, which featured John shooting Mack with a bow and arrow.

John then broke Mack’s ankle with a rock, drugged him, and placed him in the bunker. Earlier in the week, he tried to get inside John’s head by agreeing with the points that he’s a good man who likes helping people.

Mackenzie was hoping to use this tactic and hopefully get John to agree to a plan that would see him leave. For a while, it was working, but Mack got ahead of himself and tried to take physical action far too soon.

John has been keeping Mack hostage in a bunker (Picture: ITV)

He attempted to attack John with a plank of wood, but due to Mack being chained up and also incredibly fragile, it didn’t work. Mack’s word was the only thing keeping him alive, and this twist proved to John that he couldn’t be trusted.

In the days that followed, a desperate Mack tried to wind John up by telling him about Aaron Dingle (Danny Miller) sleeping with Robert Sugden (Ryan Hawley).

John didn’t believe Mack, but got confirmation from the horse’s mouth when he discovered a voice note on Mack’s phone from Aaron, detailing the betrayal and the doubts he was feeling about his new husband.

Today’s episode allowed us to see John in a completely different light. He wasn’t in control of Aaron’s wavering thoughts, and that panicked him; he needed to take action.

In the bunker, John prepared a bottle of spiked whisky in front of Mack. Because of how fast his mind was working, John failed to realise he had dropped a pocket screwdriver as he left.

John didn’t spot it – but Mackenzie did.

A panicked John failed to spot he had dropped an important item (Picture: ITV)

The item being a distance away from him wasn’t going to stop Mack. He battled through excruciating pain, knowing this screwdriver was the first sign in ages that he could actually escape.

Mackenzie managed to grab it and eventually removed the brick from the wall that was restricting him.

He was still chained up, but he could move about in the bunker freely. With time, Mack staggered to the steps and was able to force the door open.

While this was going on, John was checking on Aaron, who was in an awful state after drinking that drugged alcohol.

John glanced at his phone, which was playing a live video from the trap camera he had hidden by the door.

Mack scratched away at the cement around the brick, ultimately allowing him to escape (Picture: ITV) While this was happening, Aaron was dealing with being spiked (Picture: ITV)

To his horror, he saw Mack escaping.

John ran from the cottage to find Mack, not even giving Aaron a second thought. This was a bad move from him, as Aaron had also managed to escape his own hostage situation. He was still drugged, but pushed through the confusion and managed to leave the cottage.

Mack was spotted by John. He could hear Aaron calling out for John and shouted his best friend’s name. Mack worked out that Aaron was in some sort of danger though, and told John to leave him and save someone else instead.

John grabbed the brick hooked onto the chain and hit Mack with it. He then rushed to Aaron, who had collapsed onto the woodland floor.

It was at this point that Mackenzie had managed to crawl through the woods without John knowing. He found a road and suddenly, things felt hopeful.

Mack was still in a bad way which meant he could barely hold himself up. He ended up on the floor as a van approached but this didn’t matter too much, as someone had arrived to save him, right?

Wrong.

You’ll have to tune into the episode to find out exactly what happened before the credits rolled, but let’s just say, this nightmare with John Sugden at the centre of it hasn’t ended yet.

Comments