SPOILER WARNING…

Episode 8 of the supernatural drama’s third series, which aired on BBC Three last night, saw vampire Mitchell (Aidan Turner) killed by werewolf housemate George (Russell Tovey).

Speaking to SFX about the decision to kill off Mitchell, Whithouse commented: “We always knew he was going to leave at some point. So I think I probably started writing him out subconsciously from the moment we conceived of the Box Tunnel 20 – in our show there are always consequences, nothing is ever forgotten. It could have taken another five years for the payoff, but ultimately from that moment we were moving him towards an exit, whether that had been in one series or three series time.”

He continued: “Aidan was cast in the latter half of the filming of Series 3 and the turnaround time means I’m always writing the last few episodes at that point anyway, so it was fairly easy to move it. Aidan was encouraging us to give him a good exit. If he’d wanted to stay we’d have found a way to put him into Series 4, but he was going off to do three movies, he was in New Zealand which isn’t a great commute, and so we knew this was an opportunity to give him a good send-off.”

He added: “As I say, this was with Aidan’s blessing – I can’t underline that enough.”