Emmerdale viewers ‘devastated’ as Victoria Sugden makes major move 20 years after joining soap

Actress Isabel Hodgins’s exit for maternity leave comes after John Sugden’s reign of terror was put to a stop for good

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Isabel Hodgins will be leaving Emmerdale as she welcomes her first child(Image: ITV)

Emmerdale viewers were left feeling emotional as Victoria Sugden confirmed her exit plan with Robert Sugden in her penultimate episode.

In 2006, actress Isabel Hodgins made her debut on Emmerdale as Victoria Sugden, replacing former actress Hannah Midgley. As one of the major families on the ITV soap, Victoria has had her fair share of big storylines over the last 20 years.

However, fans of Emmerdale are having to bid farewell to Victoria for the time being as Isabel is set to go on maternity leave ready to welcome her first child with husband Adam.

It’s thought that Isabel filmed her last scenes back in December, and on Thursday (February 12), the actress will be departing for some time before we see her again.

Touching on her exit recently, Isabel shared: “I thought I would be really emotional when I filmed my final scenes. Emmerdale is all I have ever known. But pregnancy does funny things to you and the truth is I felt ready not to have to film on Emmerdale!”

Ahead of her exit, Victoria was revealed as the one who killed John Sugden after the villain returned for Aaron Dingle before the Corriedale drama kicked off.

After being injected by murderous John, Victoria managed to wake up and rushed to the scene of the epic crash in search for her brother. Once face to face with John again, he begged her to come with him and start a new life elsewhere with her son Harry.

However, things became physical and Victoria ended up injected John who died in the same way his victim Nate Robinson did. Since then, Victoria has been consumed with guilt and after Joe Tate revealed he had video footage of the scene, she was ready to hand herself into the police.

In order to protect his sister, Robert Sugden struck up a deal with Joe where he agreed to plant evidence in Moira Dingle’s house which led to her being framed for the deaths of Celia Daniels and Anya.

Now, Joe has demanded that they sell their portion of the farm and give part-ownership to the Tates. After Graham Foster persuaded a tearful Victoria that perhaps moving away from the village would be a good idea, she finally put her plan in action on Wednesday’s (February 11) installment.

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Victoria told Moira that she wanted to sell her share of the land to the Tate family(Image: ITV)

Victoria paid Moira a visit in prison and told her that she was selling the land to Joe. While heartbroken, Moira understood it was for the best and agreed to do so. Victoria then told Robert that she had booked flights for herself and Harry to go to Portugal and stay with Diane Sugden.

Although Robert tried his best to change her mind, Victoria was adamant that it was time for her to go and confirmed that she’d be leaving the village tomorrow.

On X (formerly known as Twitter), @ryansoapking25 wrote: “Just watched tonight’s #Emmerdale! Devastating scenes between Victoria and Moira in prison and I loved all the Tate scenes as well.”

@kjlherbalife added: “Look we all know that Victoria can be a pain and always thinks the worst of Robert but I just wish this once #emmerdale could have written a nice ending for them. I’m sure they’ll hug it out tomorrow but there’s still an underlying resentment there which is sad”. Another viewer @claudiaboleyn penned: “I lose Victoria Anne Sugden tomorrow”.