Why has Officer Dwayne Myers returned to Death In Paradise?

Danny John-Jules in character as Officer Dwayne Myers, in uniform and leaning against a motorcycle with his arms folded while standing under a palm tree
(Image credit: BBC)

Officer Dwayne Myers has just made a triumphant return to Death In Paradise — but not everyone in Saint Marie was pleased to see him! 

Following the departure of Marlon Pryce in last week's episode, when the young officer left Saint Marie behind for a new life in Jamaica after his younger sister Jocelyn was been offered a scholarship at a prestigious school there, a job opened up at Honoré police station. Unfortunately for Officer Darlene Curtis (Ginny Holder), who was left picking up the lion's share of Marlon's workload, the new officer that Commissioner Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington) had hired to replace Marlon dropped out of the job shortly before they were due to start, citing personal reasons.

Keen to get someone in the post as quickly as possible, the Commissioner had a back-up plan — but one that he needed to run past Darlene first, because it involved hiring Dwayne Myers, who Darlene briefly dated before she joined the police herself! Darlene was not best pleased to see Dwayne when he returned to the island, because he seemed to think he could pick things up with her right where he left off — but she made it very clear that their relationship was to be strictly professional, and that as far as he's concerned, she's "Officer Curtis" now.

To hear Dwayne's version of the story, the Commissioner pleaded with him to come back because the team desperately needed him (the Commissioner's telling of it was more along the lines of "you were available and you already know the ropes"), so Dwayne returned to his old job in Saint Marie, having previously left to go on an extended sailing trip with his estranged father Nelson (Ram John Holder) at the end of the seventh season — although he made a brief return to the island in the show's very first Christmas special back in 2021.

As it turned out, the job opening wasn't Dwayne's only reason for coming back to Saint Marie — after Darlene overheard him on the phone to a doctor, Dwayne admitted that his father's health is failing, and that they'd returned to the island so that Nelson could live out the rest of his days there. This helped to build a bridge between Darlene and Dwayne, with Darlene offering to have Dwayne and Nelson both over to her house for dinner.

Dwayne's return to the show may not have come as a total surprise to some viewers — fans were already speculating that the character could come back to fill Marlon's job, and star Ralf Little, who plays DI Neville Parker on the show, had previously said that Danny was "always welcome" to return to the show as far as he was concerned.

Steven Perkins
Staff Writer for TV & Satellite Week, TV Times, What's On TV and whattowatch.com

Steven Perkins is a Staff Writer for TV & Satellite Week, TV Times, What's On TV and whattowatch.com, who has been writing about TV professionally since 2008. He was previously the TV Editor for Inside Soap before taking up his current role in 2020. He loves everything from gritty dramas to docusoaps about airports and thinks about the Eurovision Song Contest all year round.