EASTENDERS fans have slammed Ben Mitchell’s exit as actor Max Bowden made his final appearance in the soap tonight.
The mechanic is being extradited to America on charges of credit card fraud and faces six years in a US prison.
Tonight he had a goodbye with his husband Callum.
Callum told him that if he loved him and his daughter Lexi that Ben needed to plead guilty to get a shorter sentence.
“Just for once, do the right thing,” Callum told Ben who screamed in frustration.
Ben decided to push Callum away even after he used his police job to get into the court cells and speak to his husband.
Self-pitying Ben told Callum he was the best thing that ever happened to him but that he had to set him free.
He told him to live his life and move on leaving Callum devastated.
But within minutes he was back with his own demands.
“I don’t want a life without you,” Callum told Ben.
“You just want a free pass so you can go on and get it on with some American inmate. Well that’s not happening.
“You’re my husband. See that ring on your finger, well they took it off you, I don’t care, it still means something to me. When we got married you said ‘I see you’ and I see you now. This is what you do.
“You take all the good things and you push them away and wait to see if they come back but I’m not letting you do that.
“I made a promise to always be us so all them other blokes in London they’ll have to go sing. And when you come home, I am going to be there waiting. Ben Mitchell, I love you.”
“Callum Highway-Mitchell, I love you too,” said Ben before the pair shared a brief hand kiss and Callum left him alone in the cell.
But Ben’s exit has left some fans furious.
One wrote: “There was no sense of finality to that exit. Ben didn’t get proper goodbye scenes with Jay, Kathy or Phil and they left Ballum on a hopeful note.
“Tony Clay isn’t going anywhere and I think Ben will get a 2 year sentence, and get out in one for good behaviour, and they can call that character development.”
A second said: “It was all going so well up until that final scene
“What a s***** non-conclusion for this relationship that, for the most part, been extremely toxic for the last 5 years. Callum accepting that he needed to let Ben go would have been the natural ending.”
