Firstly, I don't agree with their deaths, a rest break would have done them the world of good in all honesty.

However, if SOC needed to kill them so badly then least have given them a decent SL and closure.

Could we have not had something like Vincent tell Ronnie she did actually send FatBoy to his death, and she feels guilty and decide to confess ALL her crimes to the police. She then should have binned Archie's ring and shown she was willing to pay for her crimes. However, Jack could have talked her out of it & we could have got remorse for Carl's death, FatBoy's death, Charlie's exit and some of her other bad stuff.

After we've seen Ronnie actually change and decide to start fresh away from the Square, then the deaths could have happened.

Ronnie was left with no closure at all, would it really have been hard to tie up her loose end SL's playing out the same time as the Roxy's drug taking SL?

If things played out like that then maybe their deaths would have been easier to take! The fact is (despite their last episode being shot and directed good) there was no full circle or any kind of closure with the characters especially Ronnie! Yes we saw the locket, her bin Archie's ring & the Glenda conversation but the rest was pretty meh!

The thing is in real life people don't always get closure.

It was more genuine this way.

"Closure" is very rare in real life. So this was the realistic way to go and was gutsy of SOC rather than pandering to the audience with an entirely unlikely happy ending.

They will always be iconic characters now.

Exactly this. No point saying what if they done this, done that. Freak accidents happen and that's part of life.

I am happy with how SOC is doing the show right now, it's gritty and what EastEnders needs to be imo.

I've been thoroughly enjoying it.

Whilst I don't agree with killing them off either, the OP has a point about their final storyline.

The death episode was good, but all the weeks beforehand? Episodes full of chat about moving to Ongar? R&R deserved more in the build up to their exit.

BIB Gritty? It's all sentimentality and musical montages. So far from gritty. R&R exit was perhaps grisly, but none of it has been truly gritty for a long time

If only they had kept the exits a secret it would have been so powerful in that situation

I think their deaths were handled brilliantly, beautifully chilling exits and they will forever be remembered and hopefully we won't have constant calls for their returns on here so it's a win, win in my book.

Gritty as in the freak accident part and it being realistic in that sense I meant.

I think this is what made the exit so good. It did come completely out of the blue and while it would've been lovely to have seen the characters get some closure, life doesn't work like that and that made the exit much more tragic.

I know life doesn't work out with closure but I mean for us as fans who have invested nearly 10 years into these characters. Everything otherwise was a 'typical' soap plot about moving away and living happily ever after. Then why not actually give the audicance the closure and for the audicance give Ronnie some kind of full circle. Tbh, the way it has played it has seemed rushed.

Exactly this! The storyline seemed rushed like SOC just waned it over and done with. If this was DTC (not that he'd ever kill R&R off) he would have given closure not for Ronnie but for the audience.

Maybe I'm wrong but I got a feeling that it'll be like Lucy's death, in that small details will be revealed over a period of time. I liked that, but the Lucy storyline went on for too long.

Do we actually know how they died yet? I wondered if it was something to do with Ronnie's dress getting caught in the pool filter or something, but what about Roxy? I didn't think she was drugged up, but I wasn't watching very closely, so she might have had something with her to top herself up with.

Apologies if I blinked at the wrong time and missed the death scene.

After the drive over the bridge and they survived siting on the stone wall i began to believe the was no death and they were just going to move to bog LOL.. It was a perfect surprise 'Normal Ending'.. Accidents happen.