EastEnders airs major Penny Branning and Priya Nandra-Hart twist in early BBC iPlayer release

Penny Branning's (Kitty Castledine) pregnancy secret has fallen into the wrong hands in EastEnders.

Earlier this year, Penny realised that the father of her then unborn baby was likely not to be boyfriend Vinny Panesar (Shiv Jalota). A scan had revealed that the baby had been conceived earlier than she first thought.

She confided in cousins Lauren Beale (Jacqueline Jossa) and Oscar Branning (Pierre Counihan-Moullier) about a brief fling with Harry Mitchell (Elijah Holloway), and they urged her to come clean.

Over the following months, Penny found it difficult to accept Vinny's overbearing behaviour. She knew that it came from a place of love and care, though her guilt was rapidly intensifying.

Despite that, she allowed him to put a deposit down on Turpin Road Plaza unit, which she subsequently converted into a shop for her clothing business.

In today's episode, Penny seemed worried and her low mood was instantly picked up on by Lauren. She said that once her baby shower was out of the way, she'd find opportunity to come clean to Vinny.

A run-in with his fearsome mother Suki Panesar-Unwin (Balvinder Sopal) left her wondering whether she was making the right decision, and she was already anticipating the backlash that would follow.

At Knight Fusion, Ryder Hawkins (Felix Uff) was roped into working the event, and when cousin Harry thrusted an apron towards him, a packet of weed gummies fell on the floor.

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The Panesar-Unwins' foster daughter Ria Virdi (Aaria Sharma) picked it up, but Vinny whipped the sweets off her before she could consume them. He didn't realise what they contained, and quickly popped a few in his mouth.

Outside, Penny was having another conversation with Lauren about her predicament. She mentioned feeling strange, and then her waters broke. The baby was on the way!

As she was whisked off to hospital, the other attendees realised that Vinny was under the influence of drugs. While Harry tore strips off Ryder for his reckless behaviour, their friends desperately tried to sober him up and get him to the hospital before the baby was born.

He arrived just in time to hold his baby boy, blissfully unaware that the child probably wasn't his. When he left the room to find Suki, Penny told Lauren that she had no intentions of telling the truth.

Little did they realise, Priya Nandra-Hart (Sophie Khan Levy) was listening in from the corridor.

What will she do with this information?

Read more:

• EastEnders favourite Balvinder Sopal teases Ash return is "grenade" to the Panesar family unit this autumn
• EastEnders announces hard-hitting Amy Mitchell storyline as BBC soap works with charities

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Authors

Michael Adams is the Soaps Editor at Radio Times, covering all of the hot gossip and spoilers from Weatherfield to Walford, Emmerdale to Hollyoaks and everywhere in-between. He joined the team from Metro, where he spent two years as a Soaps Reporter and previously worked on the sets of both Coronation Street and Emmerdale.