Leah and Justin are forced off the road in the dramatic 2023 season return, and a new Home and Away promo shows us for the first time what happened to her after that.
The 2022 season finale ended abruptly with Felicity (Jacqui Purvis) and Eden (Stephanie Panozzo) gleefully departing for the rural farm where Felicity was scheduled to wed Tane (Ethan Browne).
Even though Felicity had nearly called off the wedding just hours before, encouragement from her brother Cash (Nicholas Cartwright) and best friend Eden helped her realise that she was truly prepared to dedicate her life to Tane.
Even though they put a bounty on Cash’s head soon after Cash shot and killed gang boss Marty, the gang that had been pursuing the Paratas just a few months earlier had long since forgotten about them (Ben Wood).
Cash took his father’s old ute to Summer Bay in the final weeks with the intention of fixing it and giving it to Felicity on her wedding day.
The day before the wedding, the gang saw an opening and one of their buddies tampered with the ute’s brakes, perhaps thinking that Cash would be the one to drive Felicity to her wedding. Eden took the wheel after a last-minute change of plans, sending the bride and bridesmaid down the wrong path.
Felicity and Eden jumped in the recently restored truck and drove to join Tane, Cash, and their friends and family as they waited at the wedding venue, Tane unaware that his fiancée had almost bailed. Felicity and Eden were unaware that the brakes were about to fail at any minute.
In the climactic scenes, we also saw Leah (Ada Nicodemou) and Justin (James Stewart) depart the wedding site after Leah received a call from Marilyn (Emily Symons) informing her that there had been a problem with the wedding cake and she needed to head back to the Bayside Diner to rectify it.
Then, while brake fluid spilled out from under the car, we witnessed Eden and Felicity drive quickly through rural roads on their route to the event. Disaster was coming, but we wouldn’t witness it until 2023 because 2022 concluded with the couple driving off into the distance.
Now, a second 2023 return trailer shows Justin as Leah and Eden as Felicity approaching each other and offers us our first glimpse of Leah’s wounds, which will put her life in danger.
The minute-and-a-half-long bumper advertisement depicts Flick and Eden as they excitedly continue their journey to the venue on January 9, 2023, when Home and Away will return.
As Leah and Justin move in the opposite direction, Leah is less content.
She is seen urgently talking on the phone, urging Marilyn, we suppose, to simply put the cake in the refrigerator until she returns to the harbour.
She tells Maz, “We’ll be there soon.
Tragically, she will never return to Summer Bay since disaster is literally racing in their direction.
Felicity begs the ute to slow down as it approaches the orange camper van in front of them dangerously close.
Eden can’t, though, because the brakes aren’t working.
As their situation becomes apparent to them, Eden exclaims, “I’m trying,” in a panic. She repeatedly presses the brake pedal, but nothing occurs.
They must veer off of the camper’s path in order to miss it. Leah and Justin, sadly, are in the other lane.
Felicity’s expression of panic says it all.
They turn into Justin and Leah’s lane as they swerve around the camper, leaving Justin with little choice but to swerve out of their path to prevent a crash.
He flips the car as a result.
We’ve seen this before, as the collision was hinted at in earlier trailers, but this latest trailer depicts the catastrophic events that followed their collision, in which Leah sustained serious injuries.
Before the car comes to a stop, we see some rather terrifying close-ups of Justin and Leah being hurled around the vehicle as it flies through the air.
The most dramatic part of the promo, though, is the last few seconds, which show what happens when Justin decides to veer the car off the road.
Justin wakes awake, and as he grabs his head and observes the broken glass all about him, he notices to his left that the windscreen has been penetrated by a massive metal pole.
When he realises that the pole has impaled Leah to her seat and smashed through the windscreen, he becomes terrified. She is plainly in shock since she is taking weak, gasping breaths.
He is able to get his phone and dials 000.
“I need an ambulance,” you say.
Will Leah’s life be saved by the time the paramedics arrive?
The extent of Leah’s injuries is ultimately confirmed by the promo. The wedding and disaster sequences were filmed in August in the Central West NSW town of Blayney, which is around 240 kilometres west of Sydney.
We first learned that Leah and Justin would be in a serious collision when a nearby homeowner posted a picture of Leah’s destroyed car under a tree and surrounded by rescue workers on social media.
Ada Nicodemou was depicted in a blood-stained clothing in a subsequent fan photo with James Stewart, suggesting that she would have an abdominal injury in the collision.
Thankfully, Leah is still alive; Ada has been seen filming in recent weeks; but, the seriousness of her wounds suggests that Leah will need a lot of time to recuperate.
The effects of the crash on Flick and Eden were also more clearly depicted in the new promo.
After knocking Justin and Leah off the road, the couple appears poised to continue driving; nevertheless, they only come to a halt after crashing into a gas station’s barrier.
Eden appears to be comatose while Flick checks on her, and when Felicity shakes her, she doesn’t seem to wake up.
Tane and Cash are unaware of what is happening beyond the wedding location.
The terrible chore of informing the husband that his bride-to-be won’t be attending falls to Cash, who now thinks his sister has stood Tane up.
As Gary (Peter Phelps), Felicity and Cash’s foster father, races down the aisle, the alarm is somehow triggered.
He says, “We’ve got to go, there’s been an accident,” and then he, Cash, and Tane dash out in the direction of the collision.
The new promo doesn’t show anything, but we already know that Flick’s car will catch fire when the gasoline that is leaking from the ute’s engine ignites.
Will everyone survive when Home and Away returns in 2023 with many lives on the line?
