Emmerdale viewers think that Graham Foster and Joe Tate might have quite an intense reunion upon Graham’s return to the Dales.

As the worlds of Coronation Street and Emmerdale collided for one night only earlier this month, viewers of the Yorkshire-based soap were in for a surprise as Graham Foster returned from the dead.

Watching over Joe Tate after he became involved in the crash, Joe was sure he had seen Graham but had no evidence to prove his theory. In recent episodes, Joe took his investigation one step further as he hired a private investigator to look into Graham’s “death”.

While meeting with the PI, Joe was intrigued to see a familiar face at their meeting – DI Dent. She was one of the officers who investigated Graham’s murder back in 2020, and she told Joe that she saw his corpse in the morgue and that he is very much dead.

As Joe accepted what she told him, DI Dent made a very cryptic phone call, telling the anonymous person on the other end of the phone that Joe had been told what he needed to hear.

In upcoming episodes, Rhona’s stopped dead in her tracks to find a smiling Graham waiting for her in the surgery. Rhona’s miffed that Graham ignored her repeated attempts to contact him. When their conversation is disturbed, Graham hides in the next room while Rhona’s left feeling worrisome when Joe enters she’s left looking like a deer in the headlights when Joe mentions that he thought he saw Graham in the village.

After Joe leaves, Graham is clearly rattled to hear of his new-found closeness with Kim. Later on, Kim turns down Joe’s offer to replace Ice with a horse from the same gene pool, reasoning that you can’t bring the dead back to life; Graham steps from the shadows to prove her wrong.

In the immediate aftermath of his reappearance at Home Farm it’s difficult to know who finds it harder to accept Graham’s return from the dead; Joe or Kim.

Now though, some viewers are expecting some fiery scenes to air between Joe and Graham after the latter faked his death for six years, leaving both Kim and Joe to pick up the pieces.

On a Reddit thread, u/soapfan121 wrote: “I just can’t imagine Joe being fine with Graham faking his death and Graham being fine with every Joe is doing to Moira. I just can’t help feeling it’s all going to be messy. I think Graham will realise what Joe has been doing and work against him to save Moira (especially if he still loves Rhona)… Thoughts?”

u/heragoals replied: “I do think there’s going to be a lot of fire but I do hope maybe after (give Emmerdale some time) that Graham and Joe do just, have that bond again, even if it isn’t the same, just something that’ll help them both.”

During his time in the Dales, Graham arrived in Emmerdale back in 2017 as Joe’s right-hand man when he was under the alias of Tom Waterhouse. Graham was helping Joe take out revenge on those he felt had wrong him after the death of his father Chris Tate.

He became somewhat of a father figure to Joe, and was also the ex-husband of Cheryl Foster and Kim Tate, as well as the boyfriend of Rhona Goskirk. Viewers watched a “whodunnit” week after his exit, where his “killer” was shown to be Rhona’s ex, Pierce Harris.

Emmerdale airs on weeknights at 8pm on ITV1 and is available to stream on ITVX.