When The Young and the Restless’ Ashley (Eileen Davison) returned from Paris for Abby (Melissa Ordway) and Devon’s (Bryton James) wedding, many fans assumed she was back and was doing much better in terms of her mental health. Well, in The Young and the Restless episode airing on December 10, Abby returns from her honeymoon with Devon and hears some interesting news from her mother.
In the episode, Abby asks how her mother is doing, and Ashley suggests that while Belle, Ms. Abbott and Ash are no longer making appearances, the brilliant chemist and businesswoman is still unable to determine what trauma occurred in her childhood that caused her dissociative identity disorder as an adult in the first place. Viewers will recall that while Alan (Christopher Cousins) firmly believed Ashley’s DID was triggered by the behavior of his brother Martin (Christopher Cousins), Alan believed the condition itself first originated after she went through some distressing events in her younger days.
Unfortunately for Ashley, her stay at the mental wellness facility did little to jog her memory, and she relays that message to her daughter. This, of course, means that the show's writers may be gearing up for a resurgence of Ashley’s various personalities at some point in the near future, especially since she never discovered the cause of them.
With that being said, we think Ashley may soon start to unravel this mystery thanks to one Genoa City resident. Given Sharon’s (Sharon Case) deep legal troubles, we doubt she’ll be using her therapy background to help Ashley anytime soon. So we think the person who could assist Ashley in unpacking her childhood may be Martin.
Now if you’re thinking to yourself that Martin died in Paris after that fight with Alan, you’d technically be correct. However, we’ve long suspected that Martin switched places with Alan at some point after they both fell off the balcony, and the sinister twin has been living life as his psychologist brother ever since. If our theory about swapped identities proves true, Traci (Beth Maitland) will have some heartache in the future as Martin is unhinged and obsessed with Ashley.
This obsession with Ashley may oddly help her start to remember things about her childhood. We can imagine her having conversations with Martin, thinking she’s talking to Alan, and she opens up to him about her need to find answers. He then may use some pseudoscience or mimic things his brother may have done to help probe her mind. In fact, given Alan previously used hypnosis on Ashley to assist her in remembering what happened in Paris, it’s not hard to picture her asking him to try using it again.
However, if this is Martin we are talking about, we don’t think it will be safe for Ashley to trust him. His obsession with Ashley could start to grow until he becomes a viable threat to her safety. When you add that Alan (again possibly Martin) is now living at the Abbott Mansion, you practically have a tinderbox of danger awaiting Ashley and her entire family.
It’s bad enough that Jordan (Colleen Zenk) and Ian (Ray Wise) are up back in Genoa City, picking victims to torture at will; but, if Martin is revving up his own unique brand of chaos, 2025 for the Abbott family may be quite dramatic.
New episodes of The Young and the Restless air on weekdays on CBS. If you miss an episode, you can catch up on Paramount Plus.
