The Ice Queen Cometh. Again.

News Item of the week has been the revelation that Samantha Womack - the Ice Queen, she of the botoxed brow, Ronnie Mitchell - is returning to the fold that is EastEnders.

Actually, when word filtered out that a big announcement was forthcoming in the middle of the week, I must admit, I thought it would be confirmation that either Barbara Windsor or Michael French were returning, especially since it's been well-known that TPTB have been talking to both. The fact that various former cast members had been approached by Lorraine Newman is supremely ironic, considering that she adamantly declared in two interviews, categorically, that there would be no returning characters.

But, admit it or not, the show is bleeding viewers, and it's accurate to say it's now barely holding its own against Emmerdale.

Womack's return was actually a genuine surprise, considering the actress left barely two years ago, emotionally drained and spent as a character.

As a tragedy queen, Ronnie Mitchell took this epithet to the level of art. It wasn't enough that her controlling father had deprived her of her baby (born when Ronnie was only fourteen) and lied to her for tweny-one years that the child had died, it wasn't enough that her mother had abandoned  her, she went on to lose another child, in a miscarriage caused by her pantomime father, developed a romantic obsession with the local plank, Jack Branning, was reunited with her undead child (the wet and whiney, nasally Brummie Danielle) only to watch her stand stock still in front of a car driven by Evil Janine and be mown down ... nope ... Ronnie went on to have Jack's baby only to have the child die within 24 hours. Ronnie then took the corpse, put it in the cot of Kat Moon's child and simply took her baby. And kept him for four months.

Did I mention after her father was killed, it was revealed that he'd been sexually abusing her as a child and that her mother knew about it and was jealous? That too.

Ronnie was a tragic heroine to die for, but I was never a shipper. She didn't inspire any sort of sympathy in me, simply because she was too cold, too brittle. On the one side, yes, Ronnie's life was filled with tragedy; but on the other side, she was as much a cold, calculating, controlling and manipulative psychopath as her daddy dearest, Archie.

Always remember that psychopathy can be inherited, and always remember that the only man on the programme with whom Ronnie showed any soupcon of sexual chemistry was Michael Moon, psychopath. The two recognised a similarity in one another. Moon wanted to pursue it and quirkily endeavoured to do so, but Ronnie's obsession with Jack was so great, coupled with the fact that she was harbouring Moon's natural son under the guise of her dead one, that she repelled any of his advances.

Don't believe Ronnie is a psychopath? Read on.

• Ronnie had no friends. Yes, she and Roxy were successors to the Slaters, who began the  sibling-as-friend genre (followed by Libby and Chelsea Fox, who continued it); the Mitchell sisters took this sibling friendship to another level. Well, at least Ronnie did. Roxy mixed well with people outside the family fold, forming a close friendship with the only gay in the village, Christian Clarke. Ronnie kept Roxy on a tight leash. She tolerated her sister having one-night-stands, but any hope of a relationship was strictly out of bounds. Even when Roxy got pregnant (by Jack, Ronnie's obsession, and when they were no longer a couple), even when she slept with and thought the baby was Sean Slater's and married him, Ronnie did her utmost to sabotage the relationship, even goading Sean into hating her. But that's not all Ronnie did.
• Ronnie had obsessions. Two big ones - Jack and having a baby to replace Danielle. When Roxy fell pregnant, Ronnie threw the fit of all coniption fits and demanded she have an abortion. Sometime later, she went on a quest to get pregnant, herself, by anyone she could. She slept with Ryan Malloy and then Owen, Denise's wife-beating, alcoholic ex-husband, who managed to plant his seed. When she returned from an inexplicable absence to find  Owen was nowhere to be found (he was actually six feet under a tree in the middle of the Square), she shrugged her shoulders. He was only a means to an end. But before that, she did something even more bizarre.
• After wet Danielle's death, she sought out the man, who - as a boy - had impregnated her.  His name was Joel, and he was a portly, balding, mediocre accountant, married with three daughters. Ronnie fucked him over his desk in his office and lured him away from his famiily. Poor Joel. He must have thought his ship had docked, or rather, dicked. He was living a happy, but mundane existence with an ordinary wife and three unremarkable daughters, when this beautiful blonde from his past gives him one on his desk, and he walks away from a marriage and into life at the Vic. Roxy was appalled that Joel was so unattractive; Peggy was appalled that Ronnie showed absolutely no remorse for doing what she did. She simply didn't give a rat's arse about anyone but herself. She had trouble dealing with Joel's daughters, who - understandably - didn't like her, so she told Joel, callously, to forget them, that they would have a wonderful child of their own. Ah, but then Joel lowered the proverbial boom: he'd had a vasectomy, which prompted Ronnie, there and then, to throw his belongings in a rubbish bag and throw him out with the trash. Joel was last seen, morosely climbing into a car driven by his wife, who was giving himthe tongue lashing of his pathetic life.
• Ronnie's obsession with Jack made her bribe Sam Mitchell to leave Walford with Jack's baby, Richard, thinking nothing of taking the money - £30k - from her sister. She then lied to Jack, telling him that Sam decided against having him raise Richard; besides, Ronnie was finally pregnant, herself, and her child was all that mattered.

I won't bore people with the vagaries of the baby swap, except to say that I wonder if Ronnie's obsession with a baby was not only to replace Danielle, but also to prove to everyone that she, too, was capable of having a child. In the end, the child was a reflection of her arrogance and ego (another trait of the psychopath), and her ego got the better of her with the child.

Ronnie came home from hospital one day after giving birth - a bitterly cold day at the end of December. Jack was abroad, Roxy was partying (it was New Year's Eve) and Glenda was nowhere to be found. There was no one on hand to help a new mother with a fractious newborn. Hospitals are wary of letting new mums go home unless they have a support network at hand, but Ronnie's arrogance was such that she wanted to do everything, herself.

Within hours of arriving home, she had her day-old infant in a pram, in the cold, parading him around the market. Who, one day on from giving birth, takes a day-old infant and swans about in the cold like that? Newborn anythings are born without a built-in biological heat mechanism, which is why they have the little thermal hats and remain in a controlled temperature environment for several days.

Then, after a brief visit from the Brannings, Ronnie puts the baby down in the bedroom, and goes into the lounge and falls asleep. Not on the bed in the bedroom with the baby in the same room, but in a different room. This was in the afternoon. Naturally, she's tired from all the events of the previous day - labour, childbirth etc - and she sleeps until just before midnight. She awakes, the flat's dark, the kid's gone a good NINE HOURS without a feed, and the heating's off ... and the baby's dead.

So Ronnie's new toy is broken.

You know the rest.

TPTB as was Kirkwood at the time, made much of Ronnie getting sentenced for a few years, and now she's out on licence. Many people hope she got psychiatric counselling inside, but I doubt it would help her if she did. Psychopaths are beyond help.

Remember the scene after her confession when the police shrink was interviewing her - that scene where she went through the elaborate ritual of groveling on the floor re-enacting Danielle's death. That over, she brushed herself off and sat back in the chair. The shrink asked her if she didn't feel any sort of remorse or guilt, harbouring the child and living across the Square from the Moons, whose grief was raw for all to see for four months.

Once again, we got the trademark shoulder shrug. Ronnie said it never bothered her. She didn't know the Moons, really, didn't consider them friends and couldn't care less. She wouldn't. A psychopath doesn't have empathy.

Now, she's about to be released on licence and return to Walford, in the most supreme act of arrogance yet: returning to live on the Square in daily contact with the victims of her crime, a crime that did a lot to smash an already fractured relationship. Kat and Alfie are now separated. Alfie is living with Ronnie's sister, and Tommy, the child she kidnapped, is as much with his dad in the Vic as he is with his mother.

I'm wondering how she's going to manage to return. I know EastEnders is lax on reality of late, but they made a point of Kat informing Jack that the police authorities had written to her, informing her of Ronnie's release and asking if she, as the victim of Ronnie's crime, had any conditions to impose upon her probation. Kat pointedly told Jack that she had responded by telling them that she didn't want Ronnie anywhere near Walford, nowhere near her son or her. 

"I may have forgiven her," Kat told Jack. "But that doesn't mean I want to see her day in and day out."

When Alfie found out she was being released, he went ballistic.

Sam Womack is returning for six months. Some are speculating she may stay longer. The actress is contracted for pantomime, which means her filming will be done by November. Blurbs have stated that she will affect storylines during the summer and autumn, which means that she will be filming imminently. That sounds right, because she'd just wrapped filming the Sky soap sitcom Mount Pleasant.

I'm resigned that she's going to be on our screens for six months and that the show will, once again, become The Ronnie Show. I'm certain her presence is primarily to effect a split in the Roxy-Alfie romantic dynamic and to aid in the reunion of Alfie and Kat. Most likely, Roxy will move Ronnie into the Vic, which will conflict Alfie and drive him back to Kat, as Roxy's loyalties will lie with her sister.

She'll probably also figure someway in Jack Branning's departure. That's only natural.

And she'll probably also be a factor in Michael Moon's departure and his dysfunctional relationship with Janine.

There you have the three main storylines dominating the future, bar the Max Branning-Kirsty situation and Phil's romance with Sharon, and if they can wrangle Ronnie into those, they will.

As I said, I can live with The Ronnie Show for six months, as long as she leaves on schedule. I don't think her return will mean she'll leave with Jack. Scott Maslen is due to leave the screen in late autumn, Steve John Shepherd afterward; thus, I think EastEnders' Christmas 2013, will be entirely Moon-centric. Could there be something in a Ronnie-Michael connection? The meeting of two great psychopaths? Who knows?

Mute Banana, a contributor to Walford Web Bully Emporium and Kindergarten, is a long-time viewer with whom I rarely agree regarding his misogynistic interpretation of EastEnders, but he raises an interesting point: perhaps Ronnie is returning to facilitate Roxy's departure?

Now this is interesting. Newman would, naturally, keep any inkling of Rita Simons' leaving a secret, but I can see a dumped Roxy, secretly pregnant with Alfie's child, skulking away from Walford with her control-freak sister back to the safe haven of Ibiza, where she'll deliver a child Ronnie can control. It also leaves a door open for Roxy to return and cause problems in the future for Alfie and Kat.

Finally, whilst on the one hand I'm surprised at Womack returning so soon (I expect a hefty pay packet will come in nicely for the school fees), I'm not, in hindsight, on the other hand. Bryan Kirkwood and Lorraine Newman oversaw the return of Kat and Sharon. A writing room, the majority of whom were totally unfamiliar with these characters, have fucked their characterisations up, almost beyond redemption. Two much-loved female characters are now hated and derided. Bianca, a heart-rendering little cockney sparrow with drive and a business sense, under the past two regimes has been rendered a retard.

But Ronnie was a post-2006 character, and most of the hacks in the writing room know her well. In what will seem on the surface to be a brilliant coup by the beleagured and pedestrian Lorraine Newman, is really familiarity breeding contempt.

I wish Womack well in her latest six-month stint on the show, but I hope she doesn't stay a minute longer than she's contracted. I hope she gives Ronnie closure, and I hope she doesn't return.