When it comes to The Young and the Restless, corporate infighting is hardly a new concept. Victor’s (Eric Braeden) children have spent years bickering and backstabbing one another in their quest for the top seat at Newman Enterprises (they’ve even taken the fight to Victor on a few occasions). The Abbotts aren’t much better over at Jabot as their sibling rivalry has grown to legendary status in soap culture.
Over the last several months, it’s seemed like Chancellor-Winters is establishing its own tradition of executive feuding. Since Mamie (Veronica Redd) purchased a minority stake in the company and declared her decades-long vendetta with Jill (Jess Walton) is far from over, battle lines have been drawn in the sand between the Winters and the Abbotts.
The division was only worsened as Billy (Jason Thompson) was brought on as Lily’s (Christel Khalil) temporary replacement as she was away helping her daughter. He and Devon (Bryton James) have proven themselves to be like oil and water. Even with Lily now back, Billy has made it annoyingly clear that he will continue to be a key figure at Chancellor-Winters and wants top-level information on decision-making as a member of the Chancellor-Winters board of directors.
An example of Billy asserting this point came when he voiced his strong opinion that Lily not fire Daniel (Michael Graziadei) and Heather (Vail Bloom). Billy thought Lily was allowing her personal feelings to cloud her business judgment, and insisted Daniel and Heather had committed no fireable offense. Lily didn’t listen of course, and fired Daniel and Heather anyway.
Initially, Daniel insisted that he wouldn’t fight being fired, but Heather has been whispering in his ear that he may want to fight to retain ownership of Omegasphere, or at the very least, retain the rights of the platform’s biggest game inspired by their daughter.
Then in The Young and the Restless episode that aired on April 2, Daniel was again pushed to fight for his gaming brainchild by Heather who was backed this time by Phyllis (Michelle Stafford). Someone else was also whispering support of the idea into Daniel’s ear — Billy.
Billy was all too eager to support Daniel in an attempt to regain ownership of the game Princess Louisa and possibly the entirety of Omegasphere. While no one has filed a lawsuit yet, it seems likely that’s where things are headed as Lily stands by her decision to fire the duo and it would be bad for business to just let Daniel walk off with Omegasphere.
With all that in mind, we wouldn’t be surprised if Billy uses a pending legal battle to make a play for Lily’s job as co-CEO of Chancellor-Winters. We can imagine Billy subtly pushing Daniel and Heather to pursue legal action. Then in the same breath, he talks to Jill about how "awful" Lily’s blunder is. He may even stress that if Jill had an Abbott in the co-CEO role, one adequately representing Jill’s business interests and removing personal feelings from the equation, an Omegasphere court battle would have never occurred.
Then as the case heads to court, it’s possible that Billy strikes a backdoor deal with Daniel and Heather. He could promise that if they are willing to drop the lawsuit, they can both return to Chancellor-Winters and Daniel possibly have a seat on the board. Billy could even promise to restructure Daniel’s contract to better benefit the gaming genius.
Now if Daniel and Heather are willing to such an agreement, we envision Billy running to Jill and letting her know that only he can make an Omegasphere lawsuit go away, but in order to make that happen, he needs to be in the co-CEO role. If such a scenario plays out on The Young and the Restless, Lily should be a bit fearful about retaining her position at the company.
With the infighting at Chancellor-Winters likely to get worse before it gets better, if it ever gets better, be sure you stay tuned to see what happens next.
New episodes of The Young and the Restless air weekdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream on Paramount Plus the next day.
