When it comes to The Young and the Restless, the name on the tip of everyone’s tongue in Genoa City these days seems to be Aristotle Dumas, and for good reason. The mystery billionaire businessman has become an enigma and is slowly developing a connection with the most powerful families in town, and he hasn’t even shown his face.
He’s connected to the Newmans through his years of corporate rivalry with Victor (Eric Braeden), although that’s been offscreen. In fact, viewers didn’t even know The Mustache had a business foe who managed to best him occasionally, until he mentioned past dealings with Aristotle to Michael (Christian LeBlanc). Now that Victor knows Aristotle is coming out of hiding thanks to Lily’s (Christel Khalil) request to look into Damian (Jermaine Rivers), Aristotle’s frontman so to speak, The Newman patriarch is racing to discover what Aristotle is up to.
Speaking of Lily, the Winters/Hastings clan is also on guard because of Aristotle. After Victor shared with Lily that Aristotle looked into the Winters family 3 months before Nate (Sean Dominic) tracked down Damian, the family is questioning Damian’s motives and those of his boss.
Then there’s Billy Abbott (Jason Thompson). Aristotle himself reached out to Billy and dangled two giant carrots in front of the Abbott Communications CEO — revenge on Victor and the opportunity to run Chancellor again. Now Sally (Courtney Hope) and Phyllis (Michelle Stafford) have both warned Billy not to form an alliance with Aristotle, but he, of course, is ready to trust the wild card (a move he’s likely to regret).
Fast forward to The Young and the Restless episode airing on April 2, and Billy meets with Jack to finalize the latter’s investment in Abbott Communications. During their discussion, Billy talks about Aristotle offering him the chance to reacquire Chancellor, and Billy asks Jack what he knows about him. Jack cautions his brother about trusting anything Aristotle says, as there is so much unknown about him. Although, Jack has heard of Aristotle in the business world.
It’s around this time that Jack drops a big clue that could suggest Aristotle is Cane Ashby (Daniel Goddard). Jack briefly states that Aristotle arrived on the business scene about five or six years ago.
That may not sound like a big deal initially, but when we did some digging, Cane was last spotted in Genoa City in 2019, which was five or six years ago. Cane has a history of running cons, and he learned from the best conman he knows, his father. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that in his time offscreen, he managed to amass some money somehow to build a mysterious empire.
Now when you combine this with the fact that Goddard has taken to social media to tease that a big announcement is forthcoming, then anticipation only builds that he may resurface in Genoa City as Aristotle. It’s also worth mentioning that Cane has experience running Chancellor, so if he is Aristotle, his interest in the corporation isn’t so random.
With all that being said, we’ll ultimately just have to keep watching to see if this Cane theory rings true. Not for nothing, we also think there’s a good chance that the forthcoming debut of Billy Flynn’s character could be Aristotle, and Flynn could be a descendant of one of the original families of Genoa City, the Prentiss clan.
New episodes of The Young and the Restless air weekdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream on Paramount Plus the next day.
