Emmerdale is set to tackle an enormous story as it’s revealed where missing Bear Wolf (Joshua Richards) has been.

In a first for Emmerdale, and possibly any soap, Bear’s story will tell the tale of a vulnerable older man being sucked into an incredibly dangerous situation – modern slavery.

It’s the gut-wrenching truth behind Paddy Kirk (Dominic Brunt) telling his dad to leave and Bear having nowhere to go, leaving him vulnerable to criminal gangs offering him what seems like a lifeline but instead drag him into an underworld. He’s not chosen to stay away from home, he has had no choice.

It’s a devastatingly prevalent issue – and Bear actor Joshua Richards, a seasoned actor, confessed to metro.co.uk that taking on such a massive story was ‘frightening’ to him.

Explaining how Bear came to be in such a harrowing situation, he said: ‘Basically it’s something that you can slip into and if you’ve been manipulated a certain way, and being a certain age as well, where maybe you do think that you’re useless and redundant, if someone convinces you that no, you are worth something, that you do have some kind of currency.’

He explains that it was easy for Bear to fall into a trap: ‘You can be somehow manipulated into a situation that you didn’t envisage seeing yourself in, in the first place. So it’s quite fascinating how these things actually do happen.’

The episode will show how Bear comes to be caught up in such a dire situation and unable to ask his family for help. The episode will go on to show how things evolved and darkened over time.

Joshua explains how the time lapse was filmed: ‘You first see Bear when he’s at the real bottom, looking really filthy and scraggly and unkempt. Then bit by bit we took it away. As you can see, I’m almost back to where I was before.

‘But it’s been a very complicated way of portraying various stages in Bear’s journey and very confusing for all of us, because each day I’m in a different time zone or different part of the story. So it’s been quite exciting and quite weird.’

When asked how he thinks the viewers will react to learning exactly what’s happened to Bear, Joshua revealed: ‘They’ll be furious!’

The fury will come from how Bear is tricked and treated, how Paddy has turned his back on him, how he’s so far in, it’s too hard to get back out..

Speaking of how modern slavery is a far more common problem than we realise, Joshua said: ‘It’s other things, it’s people who are picking your spuds, it’s people who are fixing your driveway, maybe there’s somebody doing work on your roof. You really don’t know. I mean, there are bona fide proper people – builders, farmers, other people – out there.’

Paddy attempts to look for his dad, but during his investigations it starts to look like his dad chose to leave and he considers giving up.