Days of our Lives Character Recap: Adrienne Johnson Kiriakis

Adrienne Johnson Kiriakis – despite her upbringing (or lack thereof) she remained one of the most positive, selfless individuals right up to her (supposed) untimely end.

Who Is Adrienne Johnson Kiriakis?

Adrienne Josephine is the youngest child of Duke and Josephine “Jo” Johnson and the sister of Steve “Patch” Johnson and Jack Deveraux – though she never knew her siblings, owing to the fact that Jo put them up for adoption in order to save them from their father’s abusive wrath.

As Adrienne matured, she witnessed firsthand the violence that her father inflicted and after becoming convinced that he would soon kill Jo, she left home in search of her brothers.

Her journey led her to Salem, where she made the acquaintance of Kayla Brady – the director of the Riverfront Emergency Clinic – whom she eventually roomed with. By happenstance, the man that Kayla was romantically involved with turned out to be Steve.

Life-Altering Moments
However, Steve disappointed Adrienne with his indifference to their mother’s plight and insistence that he didn’t care one way or another about her safety. But he did ride to his sister’s rescue when she shot Duke to death after he beat and raped her.

Despite not remembering the incident, Adrienne questioned Steve’s account of Duke’s death and with Kayla’s help, she eventually remembered committing the murder and the events that preceded it.

Afterward, Adrienne found herself consumed by a deep melancholy and she was only roused from her state by the friendship she forged with a construction worker named Justin.

To her great surprise – and utter chagrin – Justin was eventually revealed to be the heir to the vast Kiriakis fortune and the man behind the gentrification of the Riverfront area.

Felling used and angry that she had been lied to, Adrienne rejected Justin but he eventually won her forgiveness, and her heart, when he helped prove that Steve had not been responsible for the attempted assassination of Harper Deveraux.

Trouble, Trouble
Proving that the course of true love never runs smooth, Adrienne and Justin’s courtship was besotted with problems from the moment it began. Victor, the Kiriakis family patriarch, opinioned that Adrienne was socially beneath his nephew and Adrienne found it hard to reckon with Justin’s involvement in his uncle’s criminal empire.

And yet, they persisted in their desire to be married, an event which took place in Greece in 1987. A series of unfortunate events – chief among them an incident of domestic violence (Justin struck Adrienne when he thought she had undergone an abortion), a tragic miscarriage, extramarital affairs (she slept with Emilio Ramirez and he impregnated Anjelica Deveraux) and Justin’s inability to extricate himself from Victor’s malignant influence – culminated in the couple’s first divorce.

One Big Family
Luckily, a reunion was right around the corner and a second wedding ceremony was held in 1990. By that time, the pair had welcomed Justin’s love child – Alexander Neil – into their home and into their hearts and in quick succession, they adopted twin boys, whom they named Joseph and Victor Kiriakis II, and learned that Adrienne was expecting.

This joyous news spurred the recent marrieds into relocating to Texas, where they started A.J. Construction, and there they remained until Adrienne was summoned back to Salem in 2007 to try and jog the memory of a brainwashed Steve.

Marry Go-Round
Justin and the children eventually joined her and the family attempted to re-establish roots in Salem – Adrienne even purchased a bar, The Cheating Heart – but the experiment was eventually halted and they instead moved to Dubai when Justin accepted an offer to work there.

Life in a foreign country proved hazardous for them, and Justin’s eventual return to Salem and interest in Hope ultimately led to divorce number two. They eventually remarried in Vegas but were again estranged when Justin had an affair with a colleague and Adrienne started seeing Lucas Horton, a man many years her junior. Cue the third divorce.

The passage of time in conjunction with Adrienne’s battle with breast cancer, the machinations of a still-obsessed Anjelica and the acceptance of Sonny’s homosexuality and marriage to Will, resulted in yet another reconciliation.

Adrienne Johnson Kiriakis – The End?

In October 2019, Adrienne and Justin remarried in a double ceremony alongside Jennifer Horton and Jack Deveraux – the latter having long been revealed to be the missing “Billy” – and set about making a home for themselves at the Kiriakis mansion alongside Sonny and Will.

And that was apparently a decision that proved just as fateful as the one Adrienne made to escort an in-labor Sarah to the hospital. Out on the highway, the vehicle the women were in was run off the road and Adrienne presumably died from her injuries.

But just as the identity of the negligent driver has come into question – was it Will or Maggie – there’s the slim chance that perhaps Adrienne was not the car’s operator but rather her doppelganger Bonnie Lockheart (who had impersonated her before). Days of our Lives (DOOL) airs weekdays on NBC. Check your local listings for airtimes.