With one villager set to take brutal action against Emmerdale villain Joe Tate, fans think they already know the culprit(Image: ITV)

Emmerdale fans are in for a treat as Thursday night’s episode promises even more drama in the Dales than usual. A huge Joe Tate whodunnit will have viewers gripped as a birthday party for Lydia Dingle has explosive consequences.

Joe has been making waves in the village since his arrival last year, and not in a good way, and it’s reported that he will finally meet his fate this week. Some of his most questionable antics of late have included drugging his half brother Noah, leading to a deadly limo crash, arranging an attack on his uncle Caleb Milligan in a ruthless bid to steal his kidney, having an affair with Dawn Fletcher and even stopping to blackmailing her daughter, Clemmie.

Those who are considered enemies of Joe will be seen at the party, but, as reports Leicester Live, it’s been teased already that someone is out for major revenge in the ITV soap – so the question is, who could it be from the long list of possible suspects?

Emmerdale boss Laura Shaw has been opening up about what fans can expect from the upcoming episodes: “Charismatic bad boy, Joe Tate, as soon as he arrived in the show he’d already got quite a few enemies straight away but what we’ll see in the kind of run up is that he manages to recruit quite a few more enemies as well.

Emmerdale’s Joe Tate will face death it seems in a shocking whodunnit(Image: ITV)

“And by the time we get to this episode, that list has grown and grown and grown. What you kind of see is we’ve got this lavish birthday party that’s been arranged for Lydia.”

She added: “We’ve got lots of people up here and there are a lot of daggers drawn and a lot of people looking at Joe Tate and want him dead”.

She went on: “I can tell you that one person definitely will be getting their revenge on Joe Tate. Will they succeed in their murderous act? We’ll have to wait and see!”

Laura teased of the hour-long episode: “I’ve been here long enough that I actually script edited it, that’s how long I’ve been here, which was the ‘who killed Tom King’ storyline in 2006.

“There’s a little bit of a homage to the who killed Tom King storyline in there for die hard fans, a couple of little Easter eggs in there.”

Emmerdale diehards will remember Tom King, the multi-millionaire who first appeared on the show back in 2004, along with sons Jimmy, who still lives in the village, Matthew, Carl and Max.

The businessman was killed at his wedding on Christmas Day 2006, when he was murdered in another ITV whodunnit. It was later revealed to fans that he’d been pushed from his bedroom window after being hit over the head with an ornament by son Carl.