EastEnders shocked viewers last night when Max Branning betrayed his daughter Lauren by playing along with Steven Beale’s brain tumour lie.
Just what is Max playing at?!
Last week Steven lied to Lauren he had a brain tumour after finding out she was planning to leave him and flee to New Zealand.
Read more: EastEnders Lauren’s worst nightmare becomes a reality
Max hadn’t exactly been supportive of her idea to leave, but we could be forgiven for thinking it was because he didn’t want to lose his daughter and grandson.
However, now it looks like it was because he needs her around to carry out his revenge plot.
As Steven continued to lie to Lauren, claiming he’d been for a second opinion at a private health clinic, she cracked and relayed the news of Steven’s ‘condition’ to her dad.
Admitting she’s standing by him because of it, Max was a bit shocked, and disbelieving as he felt it was all too convenient.
He went straight round to see Steven, despite Lauren asking him to keep quiet.
Max pushed Steven for information on the tumour, and a very prepared Steven reeled off the clinic he’d visited and sounded very convincing about it too.
But Max wasn’t fooled and immediately phoned the place pretending to be paying Steven’s bill. When he discovered, of course, that Steven wasn’t a patient there, Max headed round to the Beales’ and it looked like he was going to do the right thing and tell Lauren everything.
But once he got there, he instead told Lauren that he could see how genuinely sick Steven was (well, we suppose that’s not a lie – he’s just not sick in the way Lauren thinks!).
Read more: EastEnders viewers sickened at Steven’s shocking lie
He then proceeded to offer his daughter support and encouragement that she was doing entirely the right thing by standing by him.
What is he playing at? How could he betray his daughter like that?
Is this all part of his big revenge plan? Is he now targeting Lauren after she let the Beales send him to prison for killing Lucy knowing full well he was innocent?
We had been suspicious he wanted to let Lozza off scot-free, but this, this is pretty harsh.
Knowing that when Lauren was supporting Tanya through cancer she turned to the bottle, is Max trying to send his daughter back on the booze?