Emmerdale's Isabel Hodgins Takes Maternity Leave

Isabel Hodgins, who has portrayed Victoria Sugden on the ITV soap opera Emmerdale for nearly two decades, is temporarily stepping away from the role to focus on her first pregnancy. Her character's exit scenes aired on Thursday evening, marking the departure of one of the show's longest-serving figures from the fictional Yorkshire village.

Victoria Sugden, introduced as a baby in 1994 and played by Hodgins since 2006, leaves alongside her young son Harry after a storyline fraught with tragedy and moral dilemmas. The narrative, which began in a special crossover episode with Coronation Street, saw Victoria accidentally kill her half-brother John Sugden in self-defense during a confrontation. Unaware of the syringe's contents, she injected him after he attempted to harm her. With the help of her brother Robert Sugden and his partner Aaron Dingle, Victoria staged the scene to appear as a suicide, allowing authorities to rule John's death that way.

The cover-up unraveled when Joe Tate, who had recorded the incident, began blackmailing the family. He demanded they relinquish their share of Butler's Farm and coerced Robert into framing Moira Dingle, a maternal figure to Victoria, on...