DAYS Turned The Abigail DiMera Murder Mystery Mess Around With Amazing Payoff

For months, it felt like Days of our Lives didn’t even know who killed Abigail DiMera after the soap decided to dispose of the legacy character because neither Marci Miller nor Kate Mansi — the two actresses most identified with the role — wanted to sign a contract. However, after a series of suspects that didn’t make sense, we finally realized who the killer was when Chad DiMera did. And it still didn’t make sense. Until it did.

Abigail DiMera Wasn’t Supposed To Die

It never occurred to us that Abigail wasn’t the intended victim that fateful night that she was stabbed to death in her bed while her husband and children were enjoying a night at the movies. That may be why none of the suspects made sense except the most obvious one, and clearly, it wasn’t going to be Leo Stark (Greg Rikaart) precisely because of how obvious it was.

Other suspects included Lucas Horton (Bryan Dattilo), Abby’s beloved uncle; Sarah Horton (Linsey Godfrey), who had no motive to kill Abby but was supposedly seen at the scene of the crime and was still feeling the effects of psychosis-inducing drugs; and Gwen Rizcech (Emily O’Brien), Abby’s half-sister who was wearing a Sarah mask. None of them had any true motive to brutally murder her, and although two were con-artists, we didn’t see them as cold-blooded killers.

But it turned out that Abby wasn’t the target that night. Instead, the killer was looking for Belle Black Brady (Martha Madison), who was canoodling with EJ DiMera (Daniel Feuerriegel) at the time and was in the mansion when Abby was killed. In addition, the killer turned out to be a cold-blooded maniac with absolutely no redeeming qualities. When Clyde Weston (James Read) was finally revealed to have done the deed, it brought an eight-year-old story full circle.

It Was All About EJ — And Ben

It’s hard to forget the moment EJ (as played by James Scott) was shot in 2014 and also apparently killed, but since dead is never dead on soaps, he is back. And the new EJ spent some time in jail earlier this year, got to know Clyde, and then finally learned it was Clyde who had him shot. Since EJ opened his big mouth and told Belle the news, Clyde wanted to eliminate her, but Abby found him wandering the mansion and was killed instead.

Eliminating Clyde as a suspect with video footage of him fishing that evening was pretty genius, but once the vanilla cologne scenario was out there, it was easy to guess that the video footage had an altered time stamp, and that is exactly what happened. While Chad DiMera’s (Billy Flynn) emotional showdown with Clyde was riveting, seeing EJ come up from behind to shoot the man who caused his own shooting all those years ago was just what we needed. It was even more glorious when EJ smiled and told Chad he only shot Clyde because he really wanted to.

Then, we got an unexpected moment that brought the story truly full circle and reminded us that Clyde really did hate Abigail. He survived the gunshot wound, and when Jack Deveraux (Matthew Ashford) confronted the man in his hospital room for killing his daughter, sociopathic Clyde cackled that Jack’s “bitch” daughter deserved it anyway because she cheated on his son, Ben Weston (Robert Scott Wilson), way back in 2015. This is how a soap can and should use history, and DAYS got it just right.

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