As we’ve suspected when it comes to The Young and the Restless, the new show villain Claire (Hayley Erin) is the once presumed-dead daughter of Victoria (Amelia Heinle) and Cole Howard (J. Eddie Peck). That’s what Clarie infers anyway.
To give a brief history lesson of The Young and the Restless, in the early 90s, Victoria (then played by Heather Tom) was madly in love with Cole, and the two got married. However, her parents, especially Victor (Eric Braeden), weren’t happy about the marriage as Victor was holding the secret that he was allegedly Cole’s father from his affair with Eve Howard (Margaret Mason) years prior.
Eventually, a DNA test proved that Victor was not Cole’s father and Cole and Victoria remarried. It wasn’t long before Victoria found herself pregnant with a baby girl they named Eve after Cole’s mother. Unfortunately, the child died a few days after birth due to an infection, or at least that’s what everyone thought.
Fast forward to the episode airing on November 27, and Claire (aka Eve) not only drags an injured Cole in front of Victor, Victoria and Nick (Joshua Morrow), but she also claims Cole "had to be here for the family reunion, didn’t he mother?"
Those words send a shockwave through Victoria’s system who is already worried about Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) and how her family gets out of this current hostage situation.
Now how the family escapes Aunt Jordan and Claire’s deadly plans is arguably even more important at the moment than Victoria’s reunion with her long-lost daughter. The Newmans are trapped in a house with no way out and Aunt Jordan claims to have poisoned the water bottles Victoria, Nick and Victor all drank from. The crazed Aunt Jordan, who states she’s doing this to the Newmans to exact revenge for her dead sister Eve, is adamant the family is going to die.
With all that being said, the probability of the Newmans dying is pretty much zero, which means someone is likely to rescue them. Although Claire is a co-conspirator in this murderous scheme, we can picture her quickly becoming the hero.
Up until this point, it’s been pretty obvious that Aunt Jordan has been pulling the strings here and she’s poisoned Claire against Cole and the Newmans. We can imagine that Aunt Jordan fed Claire lies that Victoria and Cole didn’t want to raise her or that the Newmans were dangerous and would have eventually harmed Claire.
However, the utter shock of disbelief that their daughter survived may cause Victoria and Cole to have an emotional outburst that pulls at Claire’s heartstrings. Victoria, with the help of her father and brother, may even pitch that while the Newmans bicker, they know the value of family and always protect their own when push comes to shove.
Aunt Jordan has previously told Claire not to get soft or lose her resolve when dealing with Nikki, so that lends to our point that Claire could develop some sympathy and remorse if she hears the right words. Could Claire soon see that her aunt is a liar, deranged and has wrongly targeted the Newman clan? Perhaps.
If Claire doesn’t play the role of hero, then we of course can’t rule out that The Mustache has something up his sleeve to play the role.
New episodes of The Young and the Restless air weekdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream on Paramount Plus.
