In September of 2015, Days of Our Lives (DOOL) had what we call Reboot 1.0, although it has had several reboots over its 50+ years on the air.
So Far, So Good
It started out with a proverbial bang and a literal strangle. Eric’s (Greg Vaughan) girlfriend, Serena Mason (Melissa Archer), was found dead and the last person with her was Chad, although he remembered none of it.
Before we got over that shock, Eve Donovan’s (Kassie DePaiva) daughter, Paige (True O’Brien), was also found dead, strangled by a necktie.
While she did not grow up before our eyes, Paige was the granddaughter of Shane Donovan and the girlfriend of Jennifer’s son, JJ, so she we had more of a connection to her than Serena.
Yes, We’re Interested, Keep Going
We knew the killer was Ben Weston pretty early on and that his obsession with Abigail made him want to keep her to himself, so he killed women to set up Chad. Your typical sociopathic serial killer played brilliantly by Robert Scott Wilson made us look forward to the next show to see what he’d do next.
Okay, Just Stop
Until…he killed Will (then-Guy Wilson), and we all said WHAT?!?!?!?! That’s when it all went wrong and VERY quickly. Not only did we watch a legacy character (son of a Horton and a Brady) who we saw grow up onscreen in real time die–we saw him die in the most gruesome way — from his own point of view.
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Sami’s heart broke. Lucas’s heart broke. Marlena’s heart broke. And Salem’s heart broke. And so did ours.
The performances of Billy Flynn, Kate Mansi, and Robert Scott Wilson kept us tuning in over the next half year, but then it hit us when Mansi and Wilson were gone was that underneath all that madness, DAYS killed Will. Nothing about the show has felt right since.
And Rewind
But, tomorrow, it will again, so to speak. While Will’s first appearance will be as his father’s hallucination, we do know the character is somehow alive — thanks to an interview Chandler Massey gave to The New York Post. We will see Will whole again, and Sami.
It almost feels like new Head Writer Ron Carlivati came in, looked at the last two years, and said scrap this without really scrapping it–like let’s say calling it a dream a la Bobby in the shower on Dallas. There’s just too much story to do that with a daytime soap after two years, unlike a primetime one.
Press Play
But, since this is a soap, Will could be resurrected somehow and The Great Wrong can then become right again. While we have yet to see how this plays out, our feeling is this was an absolutely brilliant move.
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