After the week of March 24 on The Young and the Restless, it’s become clear that Alan/Martin’s (Christopher Cousins) time on the soap is coming to an end (well, at least this recent stint, as neither jail nor the grave tend to keep villains down for too long in Genoa City).
Traci (Beth Maitland) now believes her new fiancé is not Alan, but his deranged twin brother, Martin. Hearing Sharon (Sharon Case) recount her ordeal at the abandoned mental health facility with Phyllis (Michelle Stafford) really put Traci on edge, especially considering she was already suspicious about the gas notification she saw on his phone. With her talking about her suspicions with Jack (Peter Bergman), and him validating her concerns, it would seem the walls are closing in on Alan/Martin.
With all that being said, let’s address the elephant in the room. If Martin really has been pretending to be his brother this whole time, how is that even possible?
Back on that fateful night in Paris at Alan’s home, Martin was upstairs holding Ashley (Eileen Davidson) hostage. Traci and Tucker (Trevor St. John) raced upstairs to rescue her, and later Alan managed to escape the closet his brother put him in and join the party. The brothers exchange some harsh words before getting into a scuffle, and in the blink of an eye, they fell off the upstairs balcony onto the ground. “Martin” was pronounced dead offscreen while “Alan” sustained an injury to his arm.
Given that Alan and Martin weren’t wearing the same thing, it should have been easy to distinguish between the twins because of their clothes and there shouldn’t have been a mix-up. However, to my recollection, neither Ashley, Tucker nor Traci ran downstairs outside to check on Alan and Martin until the paramedics arrived, and we didn’t see the trio laser-focused on the twins from the upstairs balcony.
So between the time the ambulance was called and when it arrived, Martin could have quickly swapped clothes with Alan and assumed his twin’s identity. I understand this theory may be a stretch, but it’s the soap world, so why not consider it?
If this theory rings false, then perhaps like Ian Ward (Ray Wise), Martin was declared dead at the scene, but woke up in the ambulance. Then he lay low for weeks and months to recover, before tracking Alan down and swapping places with him. This could mean the real Alan is stashed away somewhere and in trouble.
I know I’ll ultimately just have to watch and see how this whole Alan/Martin story unfolds, but I’ve learned not to rule out what seems impossible in daytime TV.
New episodes of The Young and the Restless air weekdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream on Paramount Plus the next day.
