Rivals season 2 dropped today, and it did so with a brief surprise for EastEnders viewers: Pam St Clement, the actor many still know as Pat Butcher, turns up in a cameo that lasts only a moment but lands with a grin. About 15 minutes into the episode, Aidan Turner’s Declan O’Hara is seen without clothes in a hotel corridor, and St Clement’s character is standing right outside when he appears naked.
Her reaction is pure Pat Butcher. St Clement looks at the scene and says, “Is that Terry Wogan?” It is a throwaway line, but it is the kind of line that instantly carries a memory for viewers who remember why Pat mattered in the first place. The first three episodes of Rivals season 2 are streaming now on Disney Plus, with the next three episodes to follow weekly and the second half of the season due later in the year.
The cameo also works because of who St Clement is. She left EastEnders in 2012 after 25 years, but for many viewers she remains inseparable from Pat Butcher, one of British television’s most recognisable soap characters. Rivals is set up as a hedonistic 1980s drama, and the appearance is a deliberate nod to that era as much as to St Clement’s own history on screen.
That history mattered behind the camera too. Rivals showrunner Dominic Treadwell-Collins and producer Alexander Lamb both worked on EastEnders when St Clement was in the series, and Lamb said the reunion came from a long memory rather than a casting stunt. “We love Pam! We used to storyline for Pat on EastEnders, then we went away and they killed [her] off,” he said. “We stayed in touch with her. And for this little cameo park, we needed an actress. So we said, ‘What about Pam?’”
Lamb also pointed back to Pat Butcher’s peak years, saying the character “was at her total peak in 1987 on TV” and that viewers were “all tuning in to see her ruin Pete and Kathy Beale’s lives on EastEnders.” That is the point of the cameo today: it is not just a wink for nostalgia’s sake, but a small return for a figure who once helped define the soap age. In a series set in the same decade, St Clement’s appearance gives Rivals a sharper connection to the television world it is trying to evoke.
The broader release plan suggests the show is being rolled out as a steady event rather than a one-night drop. But the scene people will likely talk about first is the corridor moment, because it delivers something television rarely resists: a familiar face arriving at exactly the wrong time, with exactly the right line. For viewers who grew up with Pat Butcher, the joke is simple. She is back just long enough to notice everything.
