Evil Emmerdale villains Celia and Ray’s worst acts – with ‘more to come’

Emmerdale has had its share of dark and sinister villains in its 53 year history. Characters with a seriously skewed moral compass’ that display extreme ruthlessness, cruelty and violence.

And still, even with such a long history of baddies, Celia Daniels (Jaye Griffiths) and her son/right hand man Ray Walters (Joe Absolom) are two of the most wicked characters to ever permeate the village with their hideousness.

You see, Celia and Ray aren’t just evil for the sake of it, they’re evil because it pays.

Celia is the mastermind behind an enormous crime ring, one that predates on and exploits the most vulnerable in society: children, adults with disabilities and trafficked humans and uses them as slaves, drug runners and sex workers.

Celia and Ray are neck deep in perhaps the darkest and most uncomfortable corners of the organised crime game and while the much maligned ‘soap gangster’ has long been rejected by soap fans, the duo have created fleshed-out, three dimensional organised criminals whose dark acts never feel cartoonish and low-stakes and have real consequences for the villagers we’ve grown to love.

Though we know we don’t have Celia forever, star Jaye has promised there’s plenty more to come before her evil alter-ego is delivered the comeuppance that the soap Gods demand, and as the tendrils of her dark operation continue to wrap around her victims, we thought we’d give a definitive timeline of the syndicate’s villainy.

Fans loved feisty Celia initially…

There was initially no reason to believe that Celia and Ray were linked. They arrived separately, with Celia appearing as a farmer who wanted to rent two of Moira Dingle’s (Natalie J Robb) fields.

Moira scoffed at her lowball offer, despite Celia’s very real reasoning that she needed the money. The two seemed to established a friendship regardless of the failed business proposition, though early hints as to Celia’s true nature were revealed in a clash with Paddy Kirk (Dominic Brunt).

‘Oh I’m loving Celia,’ one fan wrote on X/Twitter, while another added: ‘I like Celia it’s been a while since we’ve had a strong female villain, I look forward to seeing more of her.’

A third mused: ‘Welcome Celia looks like she’s going to be causing a bit of trouble as well as being feisty,’ a third said, adding: ‘I think she’s going to be a good character addition and I like her already’ while another shared: ‘After seeing Celia tonight, can already tell that Jaye Griffiths is going to be a great addition. can’t wait to see what’s coming up. have a feeling she is someone not to be messed with.’

Jaye Griffiths said: ‘Oh, the worst is yet to come, by far! This is only the beginning. Oh goodness me, yes, there is more to come,’ teasing the eventual reveal.

Although initially revealed to be in cahoots with Joe Tate (Ned Porteous) on a plot to take Moira’s farm for Kim, Celia soon switched her allegiance.

Admitting all to Moira, she proposed an alliance between the two to get revenge against the Tate dynasty and destroy them forever.

Moira’s appetite for revenge proved stronger than her anger over the betrayal, and she and Celia went into business together.

Ray grooms Dylan and April into selling drugs

Off-screen, Ray had set to work grooming Dylan, the boy April befriended while living on the streets. Finding him in a hostel, desperate and penniless, Ray acted as a father figure to Dylan while employing him to do criminal jobs, seducing him into the crime ring.

When Dylan returned to Emmerdale, Ray wasn’t far behind and immediately entangled him in another drug plot. When Ray discovered the burgeoning relationship between Dylan and April Windsor (Amelia Flanagan), though, he began to pay attention to her, clearly seeing her as a useful asset.

Ray’s appearance coincided with the disappearance of Bear Wolf (Joshua Richards), but more on that later…

On his initial plots, Joe said: ‘You don’t really see Ray being evil, you just see him kind of manipulate things so it’s a fine line between playing an evil kind of guy and playing someone pretending to be evil. You don’t want to be like a pantomime villain, like, winking at the camera.

‘But at the same time it’s got to be obvious what’s happening. I think that’s why those parts are always fun, because there’s a lot more you can do with it in terms of where you can push it, and where you can be genuinely feigning care for Dylan or April.’

Ray later fully ensnared April when she took on one of Dylan’s drug runs. During the drop, she was threatened by a knife-wielding stranger, who demanded she hand over the drugs. Terrified, she complied and upon returning to Ray, she sheepishly admitted what’d happened.

Ray told April that this had created a debt, one that she and Dylan could work off by taking further drug dealing jobs. This all proved to be another machination, however, when it was revealed that Ray had organised the mugging to trap the teens further.

With no apparent way out, April became a full time dealer, and despite Dylan’s pleas to Ray to release her from the operation, his care for his ‘saviour’ won out when Ray told him that he’d be killed by the ‘big bosses’ if he set her free.

When a rush to complete a drug run led to April dropping some ecstasy tablets that her younger brother Leo Goskirk (Harvey Rogerson) ate, April could take no more and determined to tell the police everything.

Celia is unmasked as crime operation’s ringleader and gets violent

With Ray in a panic, he called his boss, who managed to intercept April. Celia feigned kindness at first before her sheer fury exploded and she smacked April across the face.

Seething, Celia chastised April, before making it incredibly clear that one word to the police would result in her painful death. Upon the reveal, Jaye said: ‘It’s her domain. She has overseers who do the actual work and she just runs everything. Everyone assumes it’s Ray. Good-looking white bloke, everyone assumes he’s the boss, but actually he is a child compared to Celia.’

Thinking of crossing Celia? Think again!

‘Write a will! She does not like or accept failure,’ Jaye explained. ‘Mistakes are something she has very little patience or tolerance for.’

We also discovered that Celia is, in fact, Ray’s adoptive mother, adding a further twisted dynamic to the crime syndicate.

Prostitution and human trafficking

As April fell deeper into their dark web, Celia decided there was further use for her than as a simple drug mule. When Ray sent her on a drug drop, it became clear to April that the client was expecting more than his package of cocaine and as his behaviour became more intimidating, she bolted. Horrified and hopeless, Dylan and April plotted an escape, though Ray soon halted their plans with a chilling threat against Leo.

Meanwhile, and again, seemingly in an unrelated twist, Caleb (William Ash) and Ruby Miligan (Beth Cordingly) discovered Anya (Alia Al-Shabibi) in the back of a depot truck and took her in, with absolutely no idea how she’d found herself there. Though they tried to take care of her, she disappeared days later.

With Celia’s warnings of what would happen if she ‘disappoints’ another client ringing in her ears, April was sent on another prostitution job. The punter, though initially presenting as calm, soon became violent, and as he forced himself on April, she struck him with a vodka bottle, seemingly killing him.

With nowhere else to turn, she called her bosses, who immediately undertook a clean up operation, with Ray ordered to remove the ‘corpse’, while Celia made it clear that her help came at a price, and when April again threatened to go to the police, Celia threatened everybody she loves with a painful death before explaining that she now owned April.

Though April longed to tell her dad, Marlon Dingle (Mark Charnock) about the abuse she’d been enduring, the thought of Ray shooting her beloved dad dead forced her to remain silent.

In a further twist, it was later revealed that the man April hit wasn’t dead at all, and Ray had promised him that things would be sorted and April wouldn’t cause any more trouble.

Elsewhere, Anya reappeared in Ray’s car boot as he transported her back to Celia’s farm. She’d hidden in Caleb’s depot after being trafficked into England by them and as they returned her to where they’d previously imprisoned her as a slave, a further reveal came when she was jostled into a room with Bear.

See, Ray’s emergence and Bear’s vanishing happening at the same time was not a coincidence, as Ray had inducted a vulnerable Bear into Celia’s slavery ring, keeping him at the barn.

On the twist, Joshua Richards explained how his alter-ego came to be entwined in the hideous exploit, and how Ray manipulated him: ‘It’s pointing out sometimes that your previous life was absolutely dreadful and aren’t things better now because you can trust me and I’ll look after you. It’s like giving a dog treats.

‘It’s very clever manipulation and very insidious, that you can bit by bit instil in somebody that you’re needed by them for their very existence. Ray is very successful at doing that because he has a natural charm and he has an ability to get under people’s skin.’

With Anya wounded and rapidly becoming more unwell, a fire was lit inside Bear to protect her, and he begged Ray to take her to the hospital.

Ray declined, but promised to provide some antibiotics, though this all fell to the wayside when Kim announced an inspection of the fields the barn is located on, forcing the slaves to be hidden.

Though Ray eventually brought Anya the drugs she needed, he was met with a grave Bear, who told him that it was all too late. In a truly horrifying twist, Anya had succumb to her infection and died.

Bear managed to convince Ray and Celia to give Anya a proper send-off, but they cruelly forced him to dig her grave himself, though Celia ensured that Anya was buried on Moira’s land, alongside an item of her clothing.

With April suffocating under the weight of ‘killing’ Callum, Dylan put a report in to the police about the drugs being shifted through the haulage company, forcing Celia to temporarily halt the supply and giving them both a break. April, however, took the opportunity to head to Callum’s and post a Christmas card stuffed with cash to his supposed ‘widow’ and child.

When Callum told Ray what’d happened, he of course informed Celia, with the two deciding to send April away for good.

Meanwhile, Celia questioned Dylan about the police presence at the depot. Seemingly convinced of his innocence, she later summoned him to her farm on his 18th birthday, presenting him with not one, but two gifts. A bound and gagged Robbie (William Bours), who she’d decided was the real mole, and a baseball bat to pulverise him with.

Dylan was incapable of harming Robbie, leading Celia to gift the task to Mick (Leon Harropp). Pleased by the turn of events, Celia revealed that it’d confirmed something she’d long suspected: Dylan is capable of replacing Ray as a higher-up in her organisation, not merely brutish muscle.

‘Celia wants Dylan to be her new Ray.’ Jaye said. ‘She wants Dylan to prove he’s loyal by being in charge of the consequences, and the consequences for this lad Robbie, are with a baseball bat.

‘She wants Dylan to administer the consequences, but he won’t, and Celia is secretly thrilled, it means he’s not the muscle, that’s not him. He’s meant to be a manager.

‘Celia has a fondness for Dylan because he reminds her of Ray. There is something so still about Fred, the way he plays him, that is always very attractive. Celia has a soft spot for him and she’s prepared to overlook her gut instinct that says he’s not all as he seems.’

Dylan is reticent to take the ‘promotion’, though Celia is quick to remind him that, realistically, he hasn’t much choice in the matter.

Dylan later headed to the ‘living quarters’ to check on Robbie and discovered Bear, who, despite Dylan’s pleas, refused to listen to a word he said, his loyalty now firmly with Ray and his supply of pain killers, which he’s seemingly become hooked on.

Although Dylan attempted to get home and alert Paddy, suspicious Celia cut him off and, upon discovering a picture of Bear in Paddy’s house, became utterly enraged.

Summoning Ray to the farm, she verbally tore him apart, reducing him to a quivering wreck, worlds away from the vicious and sinister villain we’ve all grown to know and despise and demanded that Ray kill both Bear and Dylan.

‘They never take locals, because of this scenario’, star Jaye explained. ‘Locals have families, locals are known, they’re missed, we don’t touch them. What has Ray done? The level of irritation that Celia has with Ray is sometimes beyond measure.’

April exposes the truth

With Dylan warning Marlon that April was in grave danger and imploring him to call the police, Marlon’s world utterly imploded when April finally revealed the full scope of what hell her life had become.

Though Marlon and Rhona Goskirk (Zoe Henry) determined to tell the police, April’s admission that she was a murdered stopped them in their tracks.

While Marlon and Rhona reeled, Dylan attempted to rally Ray onto his side, as his burgeoning romance with Laurel Thomas (Charlotte Bellamy) continues to put him back in touch with the humanity he’s tried so hard to kill. Ray seemed genuinely affected at Dylan’s suggestion that Ray, like all of Celia’s other victims, had been exploited by his mum.

Back in the village, Celia barged her way into April’s home, determined to maintain control, answering a video call from Ray.

Propping her phone up, April, Rhona and Marlon watched on in horror as Ray proved his loyalty to his mum, running Dylan over at full speed, injecting him with a drug and leaving his lifeless body in the middle of the road.

As Rhona and Marlon attempted to stand tall, Celia proved that she outmatched them, grabbing Rhona by the face so hard that her cheeks began to bleed beneath the pressure of Celia’s fingernails. She proceeded to tell them that when people cross her, bad things happen. Houses get burned down, car crashes happen and, most chillingly, throats get slit.

While Dylan lay critically injured in hospital, Rhona and Marlon had to face the cold, hard truth. There’s no way out.

This article was first published on November 21, 2025.

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