EastEnders viewers point out hilarious location error with ‘dramatic’ character exit

Emotional scenes from latest episode of BBC soap were met with confusion

EastEnders viewers were left scratching their heads because of a “blunder” involving two characters and their plans to leave Albert Square.

In Tuesday night’s episode of the BBC soap (2 June), characters including Billy Mitchell (Perry Fenwick) and Tiffany Butcher (Maisie Smith) were shown to be extremely distraught after Karen (Lorraine Stanely) and Keegan Baker (Zack Morris) decided to say goodbye to Walford.

However, the pair were only moving to Croydon.

Despite being a fictional borough, Walford’s nearest station – Walford East – is “located” in the position occupied by Bromley-by-Bow on a real tube map.

This means that they will merely be 45 minutes away, as shown on Google Maps below.

This is roughly how long it would take to get from Walford to Croydon (Google Maps)

While it’s understandable that Tiffany would be sad at Keegan’s departure from the square – they are married, after all – viewers were left confused as to why it was being treated like the pair were moving to the other side of the world, with Billy acting like he would never see his love interest, Karen, ever again.

“Where the f*** is Karen going? Abroad?” one person wrote, with another adding: ”Why they acting like Croydon is the other side of the world? Not every couple live on the same street.”

Somebody else chimed in with: ”Why we acting like Croydon is far away, yes it’s not down the road, but my gosh so dramatic,” while another wrote: “Karen’s making it seem like Croydon is a million miles away!”

It was revealed at the end of the episode that Sharon (Letitia Dean) had convinced them to stay.

BBC will be updating EastEnders fans on the status of the show next week after production was halted due to the coronavirus pandemic.