Bradley Riches has joined the Emmerdale cast as Lewis Barton, the secret son of Emma.

Emma Barton caused huge trouble in the village up until her death in 2017. The villainous character was responsible for many crimes including shooting her son Finn, smothering her other son Ross (Michael Parr) back when he was a baby, holding her husband hostage, and causing the Hotten Bypass crash.

In 2017, Emma was pushed from a viaduct by Moira Barton (Natalie J Robb), but her son Adam (Adam Thomas) took the blame. Ever since then, Moira has worked hard to move past the ordeal, but it’s dredged up in the show soon, as Lewis arrives with a lot of questions.

Because Lewis has grown up away from his extended family, he wants to know an awful lot about them and his mum. Unfortunately, Lewis doesn’t consider the Bartons are hiding these dark secrets, but why would he?

As a result of someone poking their nose into the family’s past, it will leave Moira fearing the truth about Emma will be exposed.

Star Bradley Riches revealed more: ‘Oh, I think she’s going to be nervous! We know she’s the one who killed Emma, but Adam Barton – who’s Lewis’ cousin – took the blame for it because the police wouldn’t believe it was Moira, basically. She’s nervous about this coming back to light.

‘It’s something she’s had to live with and think about and for a new person to come in and bring all that past trauma back up is going to be nerve-wracking. Is she going to get away with what she thought she got away with eight years ago?’.

After Lewis sends his letter to Moira, Ross eventually decides to meet him. Seeing your brother for the first time ever would normally leave someone very nervous, but Bradley has confirmed Lewis isn’t really fussed about connecting with Ross at the start.

‘I think at first Lewis is kind of using Ross, in a way. He doesn’t really care because he’s got his own friends and he doesn’t care if he has this brotherly relationship. All he wants is to know the answers, really. I think once he meets him he gets quite interested by Ross, because Lewis has never met someone like him – and vice versa.

‘Ross has a kind of “go away” vibe and that intrigues Lewis because he’s never been around people like that. Essentially he doesn’t want this relationship, he just wants to know what his mum was like.’

‘He finds out nothing in that first meeting’, he added.

‘Ross is very like, “You don’t want to know. She was a horrible woman,” and that’s the end of the conversation. There are so many things that have gone down, part of him is grateful for knowing the truth but he’s processing what happened with his mum.

‘There’s a lot of feelings involved and he’s processing all of that. He’s so caught up in him wanting to know his mum, and that’s been taken away from him. His main feeling is probably anger, because he thinks, “I don’t know my mum because of you guys, and I want to know her”.’