Emmerdale star James Chase has teased how his stint as evil abuser Tom King could end.

Fans of the ITV soap have watched on in horror in recent months as Tom has continued to abuse wife Belle (Eden Taylor-Draper) in a groundbreaking coercive control plot.

Things are set to take another dark turn in next week’s episodes, as Tom discovers Belle has had a secret abortion.

When Tom smashes up a barn in a rage and ends up getting electrocuted, his own life looks to be hanging in the balance – however, it turns out there is still a while yet to go with the storyline.

James spoken out about his hopes for Tom to get his comeuppance further down the line, saying in a press Q&A: ‘It’s what he deserves. He can’t get away with it.

‘I don’t know to what extent that would be, or how the storyline would end but I would think it would have to be something like that because she needs justice for what’s happened to her,’ he went on.

‘The viewer needs that, for all the hell we’ve seen Belle get put through we have to see her win in the end, or at the very least for him to lose.’

On what he thinks the outcome should be, James added: ‘I think definitely at least prison. There needs to be at least that. I don’t really know. They’re all interesting.’

Meanwhile, Emmerdale producer Laura Shaw has teased that viewers should expect the storyline to run ‘until the end of this year’.

She said: ‘We said right from the beginning that we wanted to tell this story as authentically and truthfully as we can. Let’s face it, for people who are subjected to domestic abuse this isn’t something that’s over in a couple of weeks, it’s something that goes on for a long length of time and we wanted to be truthful to that.’

Laura also said that the team have ‘always had a good idea in our heads exactly where we wanted it to end’, and in the coming weeks and months, viewers will start to see more people ‘look a bit more quizzically’ at Tom and Belle’s relationship and ‘question certain things that they’re seeing’.

However, she added: ‘I think from the research that we’ve done and what the charities have said to us, quite often people don’t really pick up on these things. It’s very difficult as an outsider looking in to kind of even push that and ask those sorts of questions.