The Bold and the Beautiful Needs To Address The Late Emma Barber

Matthew Atkinson has emerged as one of The Bold and the Beautiful’s strongest leading men, having taken on a challenging storyline involving mental illness last year. His character, Thomas Forrester, has put his obsession with Hope Logan Spencer in the past, but there’s one thing that needs to be resolved before the Forrester heir can have a happy future.

The Bold and the Beautiful: Whatever Happened To Emma Barber

We’re talking about a storyline that’s been left a dangling plotline. Back in 2019, it appeared as if one by one, characters learned about baby Beth being alive and living as baby Phoebe, the adoptive daughter of Steffy Forrester (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood).

Forrester intern Emma Barber (Nia Sioux), Justin Barber’s (Aaron D. Spears) niece, overheard the truth and set out to contact Hope (Annika Noelle) to let her know her daughter was alive.

Thomas was hell-bent on keeping this secret. If Hope and Liam Spencer (Scott Clifton) knew that Beth was alive, they’d reunite and Thomas would lose Hope for sure. He wanted her as both his wife and to be a stepmom to his son, Douglas (Henry Joseph Samiri).

Determined, Thomas followed Emma in her car as she drove along winding Mulholland Drive. While Emma was trying to text Hope to tell her the truth, Thomas tapped her car with his.

The Bold and the Beautiful’s Mysteries And Scandals

Next, Emma lost control of her car, drove into a ravine, crashed, and died as a result of her injuries. Later, pint-sized blabbermouth Douglas shared the news that Beth was alive so Thomas’s actions were for naught. Has he really gotten away with murder? Why doesn’t Emma’s death haunt him? It’s as if B&B forgot this story beat took place.

It was particularly odd not to see this addressed when Justin held Thomas hostage in the basement of Spencer Publications in a cage. Justin must not have suspected Thomas of Emma’s death. While he had him there for a different reason, Justin surely would have brought up Emma’s death when he had Thomas under his control. Did even her own uncle forget about her?

Hope For Thomas Forrester’s Future

The good news is that Soap Hub has some great ways in which the show can get around this and give Thomas a fresh start. For starters, it’s possible that Emma’s alive. We’ve seen other characters who presumably died return to the land of the living. Maybe Justin whisked his niece away from the hospital and brought her to a clinic where she’s been recovering the past few years?

Another possibility is that Thomas merely dreamt that he caused Emma to plunge to her death. Maybe Emma really left town and Thomas imagined the demise of the Forrester intern? There’s the option of Thomas not being liable for his actions if he were mentally unwell at the time but that doesn’t match the timeline for when Thomas developed a psychiatric illness. Or was it the beginning — after all, this wasn’t his typical behavior?

If B&B doesn’t resolve this by exonerating Thomas, perhaps Sheila could discover what had happened and use it as leverage against the Forresters? Then, it could come out later that Emma’s really alive. What’s important is that this story beat is resolved one way or another.

B&B is coming up on 35 years of history and much of its audience, we imagine, has been watching since Day One. They owe it to Emma and to the longtime fans to address the fact that Thomas should not be getting away with murder.

The Bold and the Beautiful (BB) airs weekdays on CBS. Check your local listings for airtimes. For more about what’s coming up in Los Angeles, check out all the latest that’s been posted on B&B spoilers, and for an in-depth look at the show’s history, click here.