When it comes to The Young and the Restless, there’s an argument to be made that it’s the Newman way for relatives to go after the same romantic partners.
Off the top of our heads, we can recall Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) and Victoria competing for Cole’s (J. Eddie Peck) affection. Nick (Joshua Morrow) and Adam have come to near blows over a few women including Sharon (Sharon Case), Chelsea (Melissa Claire Egan), Sage (Kelly Sullivan) and Sally (Courtney Hope). And who can forget Abby once cheated with Summer’s husband Austin (Matthew Atkinson), and now Summer (Allison Lanier) is dating Chance (Conner Floyd) who is Abby’s (Melissa Ordway) ex-husband.
With all of that being said, we’re hardly surprised that there may be a potential love triangle brewing between Summer, Kyle (Michael Mealor) and Claire (Hayley Erin). It was only a few short months ago when Summer and Kyle couldn’t stand each other after they got divorced, and every conversation they had became explosive. As he navigated through rough times co-parenting and dealt with tension building between him and his parents, Kyle came to rely on Claire’s friendship. From her perspective, Kyle was really her first friend in town.
Fast forward to today, and Kyle and Claire are now more than friends and even talked about traveling together to the UK. The two also have earned a romantic hashtag from The Young and the Restless fans on social media — #Kylaire.
Meanwhile, Summer and Kyle are in a much better place as co-parents, and have shown semblances of their old friendship. In the episode airing on November 1, they share some nice moments with Harrison (Redding Munsell) before sending him to bed, and the duo also have a nice one-on-one conversation before Claire shows up. Claire feels as if she’s interrupted something, but once Summer leaves, Kyle assures her she hasn’t and plants a big kiss on her.
Now Summer so far hasn’t signaled that she wants Kyle back, and is still very much in a relationship with Chance. However, as he continues to perform his duties as a police officer in Heather’s (Vail Bloom) murder case, pointing to Daniel (Michael Graziadei) as her killer, this is likely to have quite the toll on Summer’s relationship with the Chancellor heir. She may come to resent Chance the longer this drags out. With Sharon still not ready to confess to her alleged crimes and Phyllis (Michelle Stafford) not yet finding concrete proof to prove Sharon’s guilt, who knows how long Chance and Summer may face tension?
Considering Summer doesn’t have a ton of friends in Genoa City except Chelsea and maybe now Sally, she’s likely going to want someone to lean on, and that person may increasingly become Kyle. As she gets more and more comfortable with him again, it’s not hard to imagine her realizing she wants him back and making a play to win him over, effectively trying to steal him from Clarie.
Unfortunately for Summer, Claire may be nice and sweet now, but she wasn’t raised that way by Jordan (Colleen Zenk). Considering Kyle may be Claire’s first love, we don’t think she is just going to roll over if Summer wants him back. Summer may stoop to her old manipulative ways to win his heart, but Claire could pull a page out of Jordan’s book to get what she wants. While we hope that doesn’t mean things will get deadly for Summer, we can’t rule it out.
Summer may want to think long and hard before crossing her cousin.
New episodes of The Young and the Restless air weekdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream on Paramount Plus the next day.
