This week on Home and Away in Australia, in the 2025 Season Finale, a surprise proposal leaves one resident with a big choice to make.
On Wednesday, Home and Away comes to an end for another year, as the Season Finale airs in Australia in a triple-bill from 7pm.
The show will then be off the air until January, and as is usually the case, we’re set to end the year on a massive cliffhanger.
But while it’s already been revealed that the year will end with a dramatic train crash from which someone won’t survive, one mystery still remained – who would be proposing in this year’s final week?
In a press release for the finale released earlier this month, it was announced that “inside the train carriage, spirits are high, music is pumping and the drinks are flowing… there’s even a surprise proposal set to drop jaws.”
There were a few options for who would get down on one knee, with at least three unwed couples on board.
Sonny (Ryan Bown) and Dana (Ally Harris), Levi (Tristan Gorey) and Mackenzie (Emily Weir), and Eddie (Stephen Madsen) and Jo (Maddison Brown) are all expected to board the train to disaster.
The identity of the proposer has now been uncovered, with TV Week revealing that Eddie will pop the question to Jo in this year’s final episodes.
Musician Eddie Shepherd only arrived in Summer Bay a few weeks ago, as he became the first artist to sign to Remi (Adam Rowland) and Sonny’s new record label, Back on Track.
As he got acquainted with Summer Bay, Eddie was taken by surprise as he bumped into a familiar face outside the Surf Club – Sergeant David Langham (Jeremy Lindsay Taylor), who’s pretty new to the bay himself.
It was soon revealed that Eddie is Jo’s ex-boyfriend, with the pair having dated before the Langhams moved to Summer Bay.
In recent weeks, Jo has been struggling to decide between Eddie and new love interest Tane (Ethan Browne), and asked Tane if they could put their fledgling relationship on hold until she figured out if there was still anything there with her ex.
“Eddie and I have history,” Jo told her sister as she battled with her feelings. “But I don’t know, Tane and I, we just, we have a connection.”
As Jo asked for her dad’s advice after an awkward family BBQ, David revealed that back when they were dating, Eddie had asked him and wife Kristina (Fiona Noonan) for permission to ask Jo to marry him.
The pair gladly gave their approval, and an excited Kristina decided to take Jo on a shopping trip, planning on buying her a beautiful dress for the big moment.
Unfortunately, it was that shopping trip which saw Jo and Kristina driven off the road by Councillor Craig Wendell (Justin Smith), resulting in Kristina’s death.
A distraught Jo ended her relationship with Eddie soon after her mum’s passing, and David decided to keep Eddie’s proposal plans from her until now.
Now knowing the truth about the strength of Eddie’s feelings, Jo headed back outside to the barbecue and, in a moment alone with her ex-boyfriend, kissed him.
“There’s so much water under the bridge between her and Eddie, she lost her mum and then their relationship fell apart,” Maddison Brown previously told TV Week
“He was her first love, and the ‘what ifs’ of their love story draw her back to him.”
Later in the week, upon learning that Wendell had been given a life sentence, Jo seemingly cemented her choice when she slept with Eddie, after apologising to him for the way she treated him following her mother’s death.
Yet it seems her mind still wasn’t made up. As she debriefed with her sister later that evening, she admitted that she was still really into both Tane and Eddie.
“With Eddie, it feels good, like where I belong. But with Tane…” Jo began, before Lacey interrupted: “It feels like nothing else matters in the world?”
When Lacey then asked if getting back with Eddie would be a backwards step, Jo admitted that she’d wondered the same thing herself.
Lacey then pointed out that not only have she and Eddie become different people in the years since the accident, but Eddie seems like the ‘safe option’.
Lacey’s words resounded with Jo, and when she bumped into Tane at the beach the following morning, she asked if he finally wanted to grab a coffee.
However, having seen how happy Jo and Eddie have seemed in recent days, Tane told her that he wasn’t willing to play games, and that it was best that they go back to just being friends.
With the decision seemingly made for her, Jo then officially confirmed to Lacey that she was now with Eddie.
In the final week of the year, Jo joins Eddie and a number of other Summer Bay residents as they head to Off the Rails festival in Broken Hill, some 1000km west of Summer Bay.
Sonny has managed to book Eddie a last-minute performing slot at the prestigious festival, allowing them to officially launch Back on Track‘s first artist, and Jo was excited when Eddie extended her an invite to see him perform.
Justin (James Stewart) has also now re-joined the record label as Artist Manager, and as he and Remi put the final preparations together for Eddie’s set this week, they invite along some of their closest friends to join them at the gig.
A specially commissioned train picks the revellers up from Yabbie Creek station, before they and other music-lovers from across the region begin the journey to the festival site, near the border of New South Wales and South Australia.
Joining them on the train are Mackenzie and Levi, Abigail (Hailey Pinto), Dana, Jo and Lacey, and it seems that Leah (Ada Nicodemou) will make a last-minute decision to tag along, having recently decided to put some distance between her and husband Justin.
However, while Jo does her best to keep a smile on her face as she joins Eddie and Lacey at the station, she’s struggling to get Tane off her mind.
“Jo is grappling with what is the right thing to do, but when it comes to the festival, she is just looking forward to a few days to catch a breather,” Maddison explains.
After a pre-party on the station, the festival-goers board the train where the party continues.
As the joyful atmosphere gets underway, Eddie decides it’s the right place and time to pop the question.
Getting down on one knee in front of Jo, Lacey, and his new friends from the record label, he asks Jo to marry him.
However, with their rekindled romance only days old, and with Jo still harbouring feelings for Tane, what will she say?
Soon after the proposal, disaster strikes as the party train heads into a tunnel.
Inside, two teenagers are busy spray painting the tunnel walls. As they see the train coming towards them, they make a run for it, leaving their bikes on the track – a decision which will prove fatal.
The driver does his best to brake, but it’s too late.
As the train hits the bikes, it derails, screeching through the tunnel.
By the time it emerges, it’s on its side, and it’s a race against time to rescue our Summer Bay favourites.
Maddison Brown has confirmed to TV Week that someone won’t survive the incident.
“We know someone dies, but we don’t know who,” she teased to the Aussie publication.
We know that all of the regular Home and Away cast members have been seen filming since the finale was recorded back in July, making guest character Eddie a potential victim.
Yet it would certainly be a cruel twist of fate for the Langhams, with the family having already lost matriarch Kristina some two years ago, before Lacey lost boyfriend Theo (Matt Evans) at the start of October.
Would producers really be close enough to kill off a third Langham partner so soon? We’ll likely have to wait until January to find out.
Home and Away’s 2025 season finale airs as a triple episode, at 7pm on Wednesday 19th November on Seven
