Major Coronation Street character declared dead in early ITVX release – but a twist follows

The following article contains spoilers from an episode of Coronation Street that hasn’t aired on ITV yet, but can be viewed on ITVX.

There was some shocking news for Carla Connor (Alison King) at the start of Tuesday’s Coronation Street.

In the previous episode Carla had pushed her brother Rob Donovan (Marc Baylis) down some stairs after he took her hostage to try to escape from custody.

Both Carla and Rob were recovering from kidney transplant surgery after he agreed to donate one of his kidneys to save his sister’s life. But this was part of a plan that, with the help of prison officer Mandy (Rebecca Atkinson), would have seen Rob make a bid to escape from the hospital before he had to return to prison.

Lisa Swain (Vicky Myers) realised what Rob was up to, but she was desperate for Carla to receive the kidney and tried to bargain with Rob, saying if he went through with the transplant she would get his sentence overturned.

Realising that she was tricking him, Rob switched to plan B. Mandy, however, had begun to realise Rob’s true colours after Carla reminded her of Rob’s murderous past and the fact that he was in jail for the brutal murder of Tina McIntyre (Michelle Keegan).

Rob’s reaction to the discovery that Mandy was pregnant left the prison officer realising she’d made a huge mistake and she fled.

As Rob also tried to escape, Carla pushed him down the stairs.

Lisa – waking from the blow to the head she’d received from Rob – rushed to help Carla who was staring at Rob’s apparently lifeless body.

When she couldn’t find a pulse, Lisa grimly informed Carla that her brother was dead.

With Carla dangerously ill, the priority for Lisa was to get her to the hospital. So when Kit Green (Jacob Roberts) arrived and wanted to go and secure the scene of Rob’s death, Lisa insisted on him taking her and Carla to hospital instead.

And when other police officers got to the scene they found that Rob wasn’t quite as dead as Lisa had thought. In fact, he’d taken her car and was on the run.

Kit’s immediate thought was that Lisa had somehow colluded with Rob in his escape, and after Craig Tinker (Colson Smith) found the phone that contains the voice message of Lisa agreeing to help Rob overturn his sentence, Lisa could be in deep trouble.

When Carla heard that Rob wasn’t dead but was on the run, her first thought was that Lisa and her daughter Betsy Swain (Sydney Martin) might be in danger from a violent and angry Rob.