Call The Midwife Christmas special 2022: Fans despair as it's revealed TWO beloved characters are leaving the hit BBC series

Each year the hit BBC show Call The Midwife turns its fans into blubbering messes with its Yuletide edition. However, news that the Call The Midwife Christmas special 2022 will see the loss of TWO beloved characters may just be too much for its devoted viewers to handle. SPOILER ALERT for anyone wanting it all to be a surprise, best avert your gaze now.

After the Call the Midwife train crash in the penultimate episode of season 11 of the period drama, fans were left on a knife's edge wondering who died in Call the Midwife's epic finale. Especially as the show has made it abundantly clear throughout its 11 seasons that not one character is safe from the cruel hands of fate.

Fate needn't mean shuffling off this mortal coil, but it can mean shuttling off somewhere else and according to reports - two midwife nuns will be on their merry way. Needless to say, snow won't be the only thing falling on the 1960's streets of Poplar this festive period, as there's a lot of weeping forecast ahead of the beloved characters' departure.

Sister Hilda, played by Fenella Woolgar, and Sister Frances, played by Ella Bruccoleri, will be leaving the show according to reports from the Mirror, after being sent back to the Mother House for very different reasons. 

Seemingly, Sister Hilda will already have departed before the Call The Midwife Christmas special 2022, as she was called away for God’s work. Whereas Sister Francis will be sent off to recover after falling off her bike and injuring herself in the snow while attending to a birth emergency.

As any loyalists of the emotional rollercoaster of a show are all too aware - few nuns return from the Mother House. However, an insider told the Mirror, “Ella and Fenella are off doing other things now - but that doesn’t mean they won’t come back again at some point. They’ll both be missed.”

On top of losing two hit characters, who've been a part of the cast since 2019, it's been revealed that the Call The Midwife Christmas special 2022 will feature one of its most challenging ongoing storylines - the Thalidomide scandal. Though a harrowing watch, the show's creators received high praise for their depiction of the pharmaceutical scandal, which saw 10,000 babies affected by the drug worldwide. Per the Science Museum, around half of these babies died within months of being born, with those who survived and their families left to live with the effects of the drug. 

It's not all painful storylines that feature in the Call The Midwife Christmas special 2022 as one of the original midwives Trixie Franklin, played by Helen George, makes her return. Trixie, whose battle with alcohol addiction featured in the series, is set to finally get her ring as her long-time boyfriend Matthew Aylward, played by Olly Rix, finally pops the question.