EastEnders was being tweeted about 8,000 times per minute at its peak

Twitter is the place to be if you want to find out who’s talking about who – especially with all the wild theories that have been circulating recently.

We recorded the tweets sent per minute using the most popular EastEnders hashtags, to see just how many people were sharing their excitement on social media – and what exactly it was they were getting excited about.

The number of tweets per minute reached its peak at the end of the night’s first episode, when we were left with Ian confronting Jane. There were a lot of twists and turns up to that point, and certainly many after – but interestingly the killer’s reveal wasn’t the most tweeted about event.

We also recorded the amount of tweets per minute sent using different suspects’ names, to decipher who the Twitter public thought dunnit throughout Thursday’s shows. Here’s how it turned out.

As you can see – and as would be expected – Jane was way out in front by the end of the first episode. It took a while for her to get there though, and Twitter was suspicious of a number of different people at different times throughout the hour.

When we kicked off, Bobby and Jane were ahead with 34 tweets per minute – that was because of a popular theory that Bobby had accidentally killed his sister, and Jane helped him cover it up.

That theory kept Bobby as the most tweeted about for the episode’s first 15 minutes, peaking at 103 tweets per minute. But, by 7:45, Cindy was well in front – 328 tweets were being sent every minute about the character.

This was perhaps due to Cindy acting quite panicked in the five minutes leading up to 7:45, and the discussion she had earlier in the episode where it was revealed that Lucy was killed in Ian’s house – where Cindy was living at the time.

Despite the fact Denise was also living there she only received 43 tweets per minute at 7:45, while Jane was significantly higher at 113.

Things got a bit quieter between then and 8:10 for the suspects, with the episode concentrating instead on Kim having her baby and the plot about Dot and the discovery of Nick’s body.

Ian started whetting the appetite of viewers after the hour, when outside the Vic he asked Mick: “Have you ever killed?” But he wasn’t done. He said that he’d put the pieces together and realised who had killed Lucy – this had Ian Beale being tweeted about 485 times per minute.

It quietened down from those dizzying heights over the next 10 minutes, with Ian, Peter, Jane and Denise all being tweeted about the most – receiving over 140 tweets per minute each.

However, the peak of the first episode came in true EastEnders style, with the climax right before the “doof doof doof” – when Ian rang his home and uttered the words we’ve all been wanting to hear: “I know you killed Lucy.” No name was given, but the next shot saw him at home, where he turned to face Jane, at 8.25, and asked her to tell him exactly what happened “that night”.

Understandably, this sent Twitter wild. Was Ian really insinuating that it was his wife that killed his daughter? Jane received 766 tweets per minute – rising up to more than 1,000 tweets per minute five minutes later.

Interestingly, the end of the episode also saw Bobby claiming a place at the top of the suspect list once again – with him getting 570 tweets per minute by half eight. But, while there were still a number who believed he was responsible for Lucy’s death, most of the tweets were actually from people saying they had been wrong about Bobby. That poor kid…

Next up was the flashback episode, where we discovered exactly what went on the night Lucy was killed.

As the episode started, Bobby and Jane were once again the most tweeted about characters – clocking over 40 tweets per minute.

We saw a brief argument between Lucy and Billy Mitchell, followed by Lucy boarding the bus and being followed by Jay. The tweets really pick up when Lucy gets to her destination and Ben is there. He starts shouting at her and immediately he was everyone’s number one suspect, with 89 tweets per minute – but that would’ve been too obvious, wouldn’t it?

Abi became the most tweeted about when she “battered” Lucy, after seeing her and her dad together. The people of Twitter were more taken by Abi’s reaction than actually thinking she was the killer, though.

We thought we’d all figured it out with 10 minutes left of the episode, when Denise became the next person to pick a fight with Lucy. Lucy was having a very, very bad evening – and we knew it was only going to get worse. Denise pushed her to the ground, got on top of her, and Twitter went mad – tweets with her name reached 213 per minute by 9.55.

We should’ve known she wasn’t the killer though, because the fight happened too soon into the episode for it to end on a dramatic note – plus Lucy left the house right after.

Little Bobby Beale heard the whole fight, but went back to bed with Cindy and pretended like nothing had happened. It was at this time that tweets about him started to pick up, reaching 131 per minute at 9.55 – second only to Denise.

Tension was really starting to rise by now. This was the culmination of 10 months of carefully-constructed television. Lucy returned home, and took a seat in the living room. Suddenly we cut to Jane who gets a panicked phone call – she heads straight over to Ian’s where she finds the door open…

Jane was being tweeted 248 times per minute by this point, but we were about to experience a massive twist. As she walked in, she found Lucy on the floor, dead. So who, and where, was the killer?

“Whatever she says, she started it.” said Bobby. “She made everyone unhappy.” He spoke as he stood with a hefty speaker in his hand.

And there he was, Lucy’s killer. Her younger brother Bobby, trying to exact some kind of justice. The moment we found out, Bobby was being tweeted about 856 times per minute, but that soon shot up to 2,000 when the reality of this murderous child had sunk in.

The conspiracy theorists were right.

On Friday we’ll get Ian’s reaction, as we presume Jane will tell him the truth about what happened in a fully live episode.