"It shakes so much up": One key thing will give Return to Paradise a "fresh slate" in season 3

Return to Paradise's third season kicks off in less than a week and a half, and if you thought that Mackenzie Clarke's romance troubles are over now the love triangle with Glenn and Daisy has come to an end, you'd be wrong.

New pathologist Leo Drake is rocking up in Dolphin Cove, and he looks like he's going to be rocking Mack's world too.

"It shakes so much up and so quickly," Mack's actor Anna Samson said.

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"Jacob [Collins-Levy, who plays Leo] and I charted an entire journey with Mack and Leo across a short span of episodes. She dislikes him at first because he represents the fact that Glenn isn't there.

"He works in an incredibly different way to Mack. He's the pathologist, but with a laid-back quality that she certainly does not have. She butts heads with him, even though he may not be buying into the conflict at all."

"Then, things begin to change," she continued. "We start to see an ease to Mack, and we get to see her laugh in ways we've never seen before. Unlike Glenn, there isn't a history of pain and hurt and longing.

"For a show that’s anchored in history – it's RETURN to Paradise, after all - to have someone completely new creates a fresh slate, and that in turn brings out a new side of her that we haven’t seen to date in the show."

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It's not the only thing that Mack will have to deal with this season (well, apart from all the murders of course), as Mack's mother Jillian — described in the synopsis as a "force of nature" — turns up in town.

One person who definitely won't feature in season 3 is Daisy, as the BBC confirmed to Digital Spy that actor Andrea Demetriades has left the show.

"Obviously at the end of season two we lose a player, so to speak," Colin actor Lloyd Griffith exclusively told us, "but then in season three, there are more chess pieces and actually more is uncovered."

Return to Paradise season 3 airs Friday 6 November on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

Death in Paradise and Beyond Paradise air on BBC One and stream on BBC iPlayer.

Read more Beyond Paradise news on our dedicated homepage.

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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.