Did Ronnie and Roxy deserve better for their EastEnders exit?

The New Year’s Day EastEnders brought us the exit of iconic Mitchell sisters Ronnie and Roxy after several years on the show. But, whilst this wasn’t a particular surprise given the very public announcements of both Samantha Womack’s and Rita Simmons’ departures from the soaps, how they would be leaving was still very much a secret, Would they all be leaving for Ongar, or would they be killed off?

Well, we’ll get to that in a minute, so if you don’t want to know how the Mitchell sisters leave the soap, or anything else about Ronnie and Jack’s wedding this is officially your spoiler warning. Leave now or forever hold your peace. (Get it? It’s a wedding pun)

So, the episode kicks off with the typical wedding day preparation that you’d expect. You know, the bride trying to convince her sister not to run off with her mother and brother, that kind of ordinary stuff. Naturally Ronnie convinces Roxy to stay and everything is great.

We then see several tell-tale signs and iconic Ronnie and Roxie moments being easter-egged signposting that these characters are on their way out, Ronnie throws away Archie Mitchell’s ring, Cher’s ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ plays when Roxy is getting Ronnie ready, the local landlord Mick provided a red Routemaster Bus for the wedding, just like the last Ronnie wedding, their wedding entrance was a mirror of their first appearance in the Square. Heck, even the wedding dance celebration was a call back to the advert initially advertising the arrival of the Mitchell sisters.

Then there were the very literal ‘goodbye’ moments that help to resolve a character’s story. Roxy and Ronnie took a picture with Phil, who was still in hospital, because he couldn’t make the wedding. Ronnie and Jack visited their baby’s gravestone. Ronnie reconciled with her mother and brother at the wedding, with Glenda telling Ronnie that she loved her. Ronnie also got to see the kid’s for one last time.

So it’s clear that Eastenders pulled out all of the stops to pay tribute to the Mitchell sisters as much as possible. But how do they go? I was confident it was going to be something to do with the massive lake at the wedding venue, but only because the camera kept lingering on it for far too long. I was sure they’d drive the car into the lake either by accident, through Roxy’s drug-use or by sabotage, perhaps by a secretly vengeful Max Branning. However this was not the case.

Instead the drunken sisters stumble into the hotel pool and Roxie decides to jump in whilst Ronnie struggles with her wedding dress. Ronnie eventually notices that Roxy isn’t moving and jumps in to help her, only to get caught in her dress and weighed down eventually dying as well. Now don’t get me wrong, the sequence of scenes with Jack reading about Cinderella, the repeated shots of the clock at midnight interspersed with Ronnie’s struggle in the pool was chilling, as was the composition of that final lingering shot showing the two sisters together in death as they were in life. On paper it’s the perfect send-off but I still couldn’t help feeling a little underwhelmed.

For starters Roxy’s death is off-screen and totally unexplained, shown only through Ronnie’s facial expressions as we see her initial bemusement as she thinks Roxy is playing slowly start to turn to horror as she realises her sister might be dead. Only then do we see Roxy’s lifeless body. Considering the last time we saw her before this she was jumping into a pool it just didn’t seem right.

We then see Ronnie, who has survived all manner of things previously slowly drown as she attempts to save her sister, presumably weighed down by her heavy wedding dress that she couldn’t get off, although that too is unclear. It wasn’t dramatic, it wasn’t explosive and it didn’t seem like something befitting of the Mitchell sisters. I get what they were going for, focussing on the relationship between the two and that ultimately being their downfall, what with Ronnie always rushing to Roxy’s aid and ending with the pair entwined in death, with Ronnie’s veil (which she surely could have taken off?) wrapped around Roxy. But I don’t know, it just didn’t feel big enough.

That being said, the entire episode was the perfect conclusion to the two sister’s story and I’m really not sure if I can think of a better way for them to bow out of the soap. The pair of them will surely be missed!