Hollyoaks airs chilling cliffhanger with new clue about Ste Hay's fate
Hollyoaks spoilers follow for the latest episode to air on E4 and stream on the Channel 4 service.
Hollyoaks has aired another dark cliffhanger in the Ste Hay disappearance storyline, as more information about new character Zack — one of the people Ste interacted with on the last day he was seen — comes to light.
The latest episode began with Leela Lomax waking up in the morning to see the front door was unlocked and slightly open, while Leah Barnes suspected that someone was in her room last night.
Related: Best streaming services UK 2026 – including Disney+, Netflix, iPlayer and Apple TV
Leah looked through her stuff and discovered one of her tops was missing. She assumed they had been broken into, but Leela insisted she must have just forgotten to lock up after the bins out, although she hoped it was Ste coming home.
The scene then cut to Zack getting into a van, propping a photo of Leah and Ste up on his windowsill, and unfolding her top.
In Casa, Zack approached Leah and made some cryptic suggestions about doing anything to get information on her dad. She begged him to tell her what he knew, before noticing her top.
Jenson Cole saw the situation and chased Zack out into the village. But when he pinned Zack up against the wall and saw what was on the screen of his phone, he let him go.
Jenson summoned Gemma Johnson to The Loft and showed her Zack's phone plus the pictures of Ste in the shopping centre that were on it, and demanded answers.
"If you didn't give the hit for Ste to be taken, who did?" Jenson asked, but Gemma said she didn't know, explaining that the criminal gang had stopped taking her orders.
"After Billy, Paul, the crypto wallets, Warren's right. Now that my assets are gone, I no longer have control."
Jenson worked out that Gemma had put the hit out on Mercedes, but someone else had decided they wanted Ste instead, and overruled her. He called up the police to try and be put back on the undercover investigation. When that went nowhere, he asked Imran Maalik to do some digging.
Meanwhile, Zack was arrested in the village and taken in for questioning. While he admitted her loved her and was presented with CCTV photos of him standing near Ste, he said he was "not the monster you're looking for". As Donny Clark investigated Zack's van, he found nothing.
The episode's final scene cut to another of Gemma's former criminal associates, Brick, keeping Ste quiet in the back of another van. He told an older woman who was keeping watch that he had made his money and wanted out, vaguely stating that "they can clean up their own mess" before walking off.
Who is he talking about? And will anyone find Ste in the back of the van before it's too late?
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.
Selected omnibus episodes are available via Prime Video.
Read more Hollyoaks spoilers on our dedicated homepage
Visit our Streaming Guide now to see at a glance where you can view ALL your favourite shows and movies.
The new edition of Legends, a 100-page celebration of Dolly Parton's life, is here. Buy Dolly in newsagents or online.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.