Patty Williams being back on The Young and the Restless means nothing, but trouble is coming Jack Abbott’s way for the foreseeable future. It’s been a decade since Paul’s obsessive sister was on the soap. But she sashayed through the door in a surprise return on Friday, March 6’s episode. Turns out Jack’s disappearance has something to do with her (and Victor?!).
Stacy Haiduk has returned to play Patty in a slinky reprisal that’s bound to go awry, at least for the Abbotts. Patty’s history on the daytime drama is fraught with violence. See, the apple of her eye is Jack, and she’s not known for being reasonable when it comes to what she wants from him.
Key Takeaways
- Patty Williams’ history.
- Why she is a problem for Jack.
- What Patty wants this go around.
Who Is Patty Williams?
The last time Patty was on Y&R was in 2016. She’d been a part of a baby swap storyline involving Sharon Newman (Sharon Case), Nick Newman (Joshua Morrow), and Sage Warner (Kelly Sullivan).
In this rare instance, Patty wasn’t the instigator. She was the one who revealed that Dr. Sandy Anderson (Elizabeth Bogush) had tricked Sharon into thinking she was still pregnant so that, when Sage gave birth, she could give the baby to Sharon. Though Sharon tried to hide the truth, Patty managed to tell Nick the sordid revenge plot Dr. Anderson had hatched.
This was Patty’s one good deed in a sea of bad ones that she’s responsible for in Genoa City. But she wasn’t always a villain on the soap opera. When she got her start in 1980, with Tammy Taylor originating the role and Lilibet Stern taking over shortly after, Patty was Paul’s (Doug Davidson) teenage little sister.
She was rebellious, yes, but she had her heart set on modeling and, later, on building a life with Jack (then Terry Lester). What she didn’t know was that he’d only married her because he wanted to become the president of Jabot. Jack’s callous actions, including an affair with Diane Jenkins (then Alex Donnelley), led to Patty suffering a miscarriage.
When she learned Jack had no intention of starting a family with her, and that their marriage was born from ambition and a self-serving attitude, Patty shot him. However, the rage she flew into left as quickly as it came, and with it went her memory of the event.
She took care of Jack until her memory returned and then divorced him, but this first bout with love colored the rest of her life.
Patty’s Weaponized Obsession
Patty left town in 1984 after a love triangle between her, Danny Romalotti (Michael Damian), and Traci Abbott (Beth Maitland) resulted in Traci losing her baby, just as Patty had lost hers.
It would be 25 years before she stepped back into Genoa City, and she’d do so in 2009 because of Victor Newman (Eric Braeden). He wanted her to get close enough to Jack that she could destroy Jabot, the one thing Jack loves above everything else.
At the time, Patty was going by the name Mary Jane Benson. She was also unrecognizable to the people who’d known her in the ’80s because she’d undergone plastic surgery to look just like her psychiatrist, Emily Peterson.
It wasn’t long before Victor’s plans went off the rails because Patty wasn’t in her right mind. He’d opened a can of worms, and it was too late to stuff them back inside.
In a fit of jealousy, Patty used Summer Newman’s (Samantha Bailey) peanut allergy to try to split Jack and Phyllis Summers up (Michelle Stafford) by landing the child in the hospital. She also took Colleen Carlton (Tammin Sursok) hostage, which resulted in Colleen’s death, and she shot Victor to boot. It was Paul who got Patty to surrender and turn herself in instead of continuing to spiral and cause harm.
The First Wife That Won’t Go Away
Patty is a problem of Jack’s own making, and his foolishness as a young man has gotten him shot more than once. In failed attempt after failed attempt, Patty has tried to make love bloom between them.
She’s disguised herself as Emily, her psychiatrist who Jack had fallen in love, but was caught. She adopted the name Myrna Murdock and worked as a housekeeper for Genevieve Atkinson (Genie Francis), who grew close to Jack, much to Patty’s ire.
Patty even attempted to marry Jack when Genevieve decided she couldn’t go through with the wedding. That ended in gunplay when he thought she was Emily. Volatile and unpredictable, Patty has been in and out of the psych ward on Y&R for years.
The only person who believed she could get a handle on her impulses is Paul. He also tends to be the only person who can get through to her. But the detective isn’t on the yacht with Jack and Patty. It’s just the two ex-spouses, with Patty holding the upper hand.
If Jack was hoping Patty had moved on from him, he’s going to be surely disappointed. In the spoiler preview, she’s bartering a kiss in exchange for letting him see the boat. It seems she’ll still do just about anything for Jack’s affection. The Abbotts will need to move quickly to find him; otherwise, Jack may need to barter more than he’d like to keep Patty from doing something they both regret.
