The Square is on edge — and it’s all thanks to a gun that has just set off a chain reaction nobody saw coming. Denise is upstairs, oblivious to the panic below. Downstairs, the pressure is mounting: police are combing every corner of Walford and right in the middle of it all is Jack, sweating under the weight of a smoking weapon that can be traced back to some very dangerous people. He’s desperate. He’s frantic. And every move he makes risks blowing up everything he’s tried to hold together.

Jack is told to keep his head down — to play it safe while someone who claims to know how to handle this mess works behind the scenes to make the weapon vanish. There’s a promise: lie low, let the heat die down, and they’ll sort it. But in EastEnders fashion, nothing is that simple. Tension simmers between loyalty and self-preservation as Jack navigates who to trust.

Detective Inspector Spencer steps in with the kind of professional curiosity that doesn’t let things slide. He’s been poking around, and he’s got questions about flats, tenants and people who come up on police radar — including a man called Ravi Galati. The detective’s interrogation is subtle but relentless: bullets from last night tie back to a gun linked to a string of drug-related crimes, and a few witness statements place Ravi leaving the Queen Vic an hour before the shooting. Ravi protests, defensively claiming he’s always on the periphery — the sort of name that crops up in investigations but never seems to lead anywhere concrete. He says if the cops had proof, he’d already be in cuffs.

The net tightens further when it emerges that three separate shootings have a connection — and suspicion is beginning to circle. Jack, trying to play both sides — cop and confidant to the community — tells a careful story: he knows Ravi, rents him a flat, his kids go to the same school. The idea is to bring Ravi in as an informant, to use that trust to pull at the threads of the network that’s terrorising the borough. It’s a long game Jack thinks he can play. But other players don’t like long games. They want immediate solutions. They want the gun gone now.

Accusations fly. The pressure cracks relationships. Jack’s balancing act looks shaky: he insists he was helping, that his aim was to protect the Square and to use Ravi to bring down the dealers. Others see deceit. Someone suggests Jack is trying to drop Ravi in it; Jack responds that he’s been in worse spots and talks his way out of tight situations more than once. But talk won’t dissolve the facts — and the gun still exists.

A plan is hatched — guarded, jittery, and dangerously dependent on trust. Jack is told to do exactly as instructed: draw surveillance away, meet at the canal, and dispose of the weapon. The man giving orders claims to know the cameras, to know how to avoid tails. Jack hesitates — every extra second the weapon remains in play increases the risk — but ultimately he agrees to wait a couple of hours. It’s already too late: someone else has been asking questions at Jack’s place late at night, which makes the whole idea of a discreet operation laughably fragile.

Meanwhile tensions in domestic life begin to fracture under the strain. At home, Jack tries to maintain normality. He claims the earlier trip was about a boiler, but his partner isn’t convinced. The suspicion is corrosive: was he meeting Ravi because he’s involved? Is he hiding police business from his colleagues? The partner’s jealousy and worry about being kept in the dark reflects the wider theme — secrecy begets danger.

Jack does the dirty work. He arranges for the weapon to be melted down by contacts he owes favours to. He watches it happen, keenly aware that if anyone ever found out where the pieces had gone, they could tie him to a litany of crimes. And yet, even that act of destruction becomes a twist: someone — predictably — plays their own game and uses Jack’s actions against him. The gun’s disappearance doesn’t bring peace; it only lights the fuse on a vendetta.

The drama hits home in a brutal domestic scene where accusations explode into a full-on showdown. A confession — shocking and fatal to relationships — is forced out in a torrent of recrimination: Jack admits it was his gun; he admits he was there. But he also slips the most damning twist: it was Jack who pulled the trigger. The fallout is immediate. Someone looks at Jack, betrayed and horrified; another pleads for explanations as the town reels. Trust fractures irrevocably.

Jack’s justification — that he tried to use the weapon to frame Ravi, to take the dangerous man off the streets — is damning. He reveals he’d found the gun with a kid named Oscar, who showed him the weapon thinking he was doing the right thing by getting it out of circulation. Jack, in the heat of panic and the poor clarity that comes from fear, says he intended to use the gun to bring Ravi down. When Oscar intervened and a scuffle erupted, the gun discharged. An accidental shot, a crossfire, a near-tragedy: Zoe is hit. The consequences ripple across Walford.

Love and betrayal mix in a toxic cocktail. Denise — entangled in her own storm — feels utterly duped. She had believed Jack, trusted him, and now the foundations of their relationship shake. She, like everyone else, is left asking what type of man would have lied, swore on a new relationship, and broken that trust so spectacularly. Anger, grief, and a sense of personal betrayal surface swiftly. Denise’s fury is both visceral and public: she confronts Jack, calls him names, and contemplates how deeply she was fooled. The eruption between the two is messy and irretrievable in places.

Other corners of the Square aren’t immune. Old grudges, familial tensions, and whispers about hidden pasts bubble to the surface. A subplot of family strife unfolds: arguments about sons, expectations, sexuality, and legacy thread their way through the episode, offering quieter but poignantly human counterpoints to the gun saga. A man collapses from a cardiac event, sparking frantic life-or-death urgency and exposing deeper regrets and admissions — words of love and longing that hang heavy in the sterile air of a hospital room. The emotional range in one episode is dizzying: from gun crime to family confessions to the tender cruelty of a loved one dying with things unsaid.

By the end of the week the Square feels altered. Relationships are shredded. Alliances shifted. Jack finds himself cornered by a town that questions whether he’s cop, criminal, or both. Ravi — initially a suspect and then a pawn in Jack’s gambit — now glares with a vow: if he’s dragged down, he’ll pull others with him. Threats are made in cash terms and in personal ruin. Whoever thought making a gun disappear would be the solution now realizes they’ve accidentally lit the match on something far bigger: a full-blown war that’s only just beginning.

Practicalities matter too. People who’ve spent the week walking on eggshells must now answer obvious questions: where is the evidence? Who benefits from the frame? Will the police believe Jack’s narrative? And perhaps the most urgent: who will be held accountable for Zoe’s injury? For those who thought they could control the story by hiding, manipulating or bargaining — EastEnders offers a clear lesson: secrets have a way of coming out, often at the most painful time.

This week’s episodes don’t give us neat endings. Instead they leave us with a cliff-edge: and that is the strength of the drama. Jack’s choices have placed him at the centre of an impossible pyramind of loyalties — to his job, his neighbourhood and his partner. Ravi’s survival instincts have hardened into threats that suggest this is not the last we’ve seen of payback. Denise reels from the betrayal, her moral compass spinning as she tries to reconcile what she thought she knew about Jack with the man who admitted to pulling a trigger. And the community of Walford, already weathered and weary, now waits with bated breath for the next blow.

So who will win in this cop versus criminal nightmare? The answer isn’t tidy. EastEnders continues to remind us that in this town, victory is rarely total — it’s messy, moral, and often pyrrhic. This week, the gun has gone, but the conflict it created is alive and escalating. Allies become enemies, lovers are forced to pick sides, and the price of survival keeps getting higher. Keep your eyes on the Square: this feud will not be resolved quietly, and everyone — from the detective inspectors to the families down the street — will be paying the price.