Who is he talking to?

Hollyoaks spoilers follow for the latest episode on both streaming and E4.

Hollyoaks’ Charlie Dean made a brief return to the Channel 4 soap last night (November 20), and while he isn’t hanging around, he left viewers pondering over a new mystery before he left.

In the latest instalment, Charlie turned up in the village, much to the joy of Frankie Osbourne. But her happiness was short-lived when he mentioned that Darren was missing — something Nancy had kept from the kids.

Back home, Frankie told Nancy to stop lying, even if it was well-intentioned, and the family pooled together to see if they could work out where Darren was. They looked on the laptop and found an exchange of messages with Frankie’s mum Suzanne’s ex Paul, who is living in Spain.

As Nancy agreed with Frankie that she should go to Spain and look for him, the camera cut to Charlie, who was looking shifty.

Later on, Charlie was seen speaking to a mysterious person on the phone. “No, I’m not alright,” he said.

“It’s worse here than I thought. Everything’s falling to bits, Nancy’s on about flying to Spain! It’s bad, really bad. And we need to do something about it now.”

Just who is Charlie talking to? We won’t find out from him directly as he’s heading back to college, but with all the recent discoveries about Darren’s disappearance — like the blood found in the stolen car he got from Rex — it surely won’t be long until we find out somehow.

Elsewhere in the episode, the identity of the mysterious ‘J’ who had been writing notes to Rex was revealed, setting up a whole new storyline in the process.

Hollyoaks airs on Mondays-Wednesdays with its Channel 4 streaming premiere at 7am, then an E4 broadcast the same night at 7pm. Full episodes are also released on YouTube a week after their Channel 4 release.