Days of our Lives Primer: Where Salem Left Off Before Olympics

As a prelude to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, Days of our Lives produced several storylines intended to keep their fans waiting on tenterhooks…but what were those cliffhangers exactly?

Days of our Lives – When We Last Left Salem…

Sami//Nicole/Eric/Xander

With Eric Brady (Greg Vaughan) and Nicole Walker Brady’s (Arianne Zucker) one-year wedding anniversary party soon to begin, Sami Brady DiMera (Alison Sweeney) had to think fast. How to best ruin the festive day and ensure that Nicole’s adultery with Xander Cook (Paul Telfer) gets exposed? Well, why not go to the source!

For a cool $1 million, Xander agreed to reveal all – even if it meant doing so at a public event, and at the cost of his job at Basic Black. With the stage set and Xander sprung from the police station after a run-in with Eli Grant (Lamon Archey), Sami sat back and bided her time.

Come the appointed hour, come the interloper who humiliated the guests of honor. For his effort, Xander received a split-lip courtesy of Eric Brady and his walking papers from Brady Black (Eric Martsolf). Afterward, after a gut-wrenching row with Nicole, Eric decided to return to the Congo, and the two of them agreed to call their marriage quits.

Paulina Price

Having lost the love and respect of her family, and become a pariah in the town she intends to make her home, Paulina (Jackée Harry) decided to reverse course and halt the demolition of the Horton Town Square.

But her attempts to make right her wrongs may have been all for naught. Despite Abe Carver’s (James Reynolds) seeming acceptance of her apology – and willingness to take her at her word, Lani Grant (Sal Stowers) refused to even entertain the possibility that her aunt had mended her selfish ways.

Ben/Ciara/Theo

Though he briefly considered giving in and leaving his ex-wife to her own devices – and allowing her to go through with her marriage to Theo Carver (Cameron Johnson) – Ben Weston (Robert Scott Wilson) snapped out of his funk and began plotting his next move.

Allie Horton (Lindsay Arnold) and Claire Brady (Isabel Durant) gleefully volunteered themselves to assist in Ben’s endeavors, and they successfully engineered Ciara Brady’s (Victoria Konefal) kidnapping.

EJ/Sami/Lucas/Nicole/Philip

Upon realizing that Lucas Horton (Bryan Dattilo) had no intention of exposing his and Sami’s liaisons to EJ DiMera (Dan Feuerriegel), Philip Kiriakis (Jay Kenneth Johnson) ferried Kristen DiMera’s (Stacy Haiduk) tell-all missive over to Nicole, and encouraged her to blow Sami out of the water…which Nicole promptly did!

Days of our Lives (DOOL) airs weekdays on NBC. Check your local listings for airtimes. For more about what’s coming up in Salem, check out all the latest that’s been posted on DAYS spoilers, and for an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.