Happy Friday, Salem! Today's episode is one big walk down memory lane as Steve and Kayla relive forty years together before heading to China for Tripp's wedding. But it's not all flashbacks — Jack Deveraux shows up at Gwen's door with something she never expected to hear, and Gabi walks into the Kiriakis mansion and confesses everything to Xander's face.

Today’s issue also features my new weekly quiz, which test how closely you watched (or read my recaps) this week. Give it a try, and share with other Days fans.

Let’s get into it!

Forwarded to you? I write The Salem Dispatch daily for other fans of Days of Our Lives: full recap of yesterday's episode, tomorrow's spoilers, and what other fans are saying.

Jack Reconciles With Gwen

Jack shows up unannounced at Gwen's room at the Salem Inn. "I probably should have called," he says. Gwen is stunned — she knew Jack and Jennifer were in town but wasn't expecting him at her door. Jack gets right to it: he heard about her divorce from Dimitri, heard she felt like he only had room for one daughter in his life, and he's here to say that's not true. With the fourth anniversary of Abigail's death approaching, he wants this year to be different. "There will always be pain and sorrow, but maybe there could also be hope."

Gwen pushes back, asking what Jennifer would think. "She absolutely despises me," Gwen says. Jack doesn't deny it but stands his ground: what happens between him and Gwen will be between them. "As someone who's been granted forgiveness for some pretty despicable things, the least I can do is extend that same grace to my own daughter."

Gwen tears up — she's not used to hearing him call her "daughter." The divorce from Dimitri has stirred up old feelings of being unwanted and unloved. Jack tells her she is wanted and loved, and makes her say it back so he knows she believes it. "I am wanted and I am loved," Gwen says. They both agree they want to try to rebuild their relationship, even knowing it won't happen overnight.

Gabi Confesses to Xander

Gabi walks into the Kiriakis mansion and finds Xander nursing a hurt arm, having just moved back in after his apartment flooded. She wastes no time: she's moving out because Philip dumped her, and she tells Xander exactly why. She's the one who bugged Philip's office, gave the intel to Tony, and put Victor's company and the family's entire inheritance in jeopardy. "Go ahead, Xander. Let me have it. Scream. Threaten to kill me. Do whatever the hell you want because I deserve it."

Xander doesn't explode. "I've been working on my anger issues in therapy," he tells her, visibly seething but controlled. "Believe me, I am very angry. In fact, you have no idea how much I want to tear this room apart right now. I'm not going to do that." He admits that if he'd been in her position, he probably would have done the same thing — and clarifies that is not a compliment. Gabi says she regrets it and refused Tony's second offer of the CEO chair because she didn't want to compete against Philip.

Before she leaves, Xander makes himself crystal clear: "While I may be a new, improved version of myself, one who would never physically harm you, your betrayal guarantees that I will always hold you in contempt. And I will hold a grudge so deeply you will feel it every time you breathe." Gabi offers to financially compensate Titan from Stefan's inheritance if she succeeds in claiming it.

Gabi leaves, and Sarah walks in. That's when Xander drops the real bombshell: he tells Sarah he's moving back into the Kiriakis mansion. His apartment flooded, and he's already settled in. Sarah's face says everything.

Stephanie and Alex: A Spinning Heart Goodbye

Stephanie is packing when she finds a gift Alex left in her bag — a small electronic device connected to an app inside a box with a spinning heart on the outside. When Alex sends her a message, the device lights up and the heart spins. "It's just a way for us to communicate while you're gone," Alex tells her. "A little bit more personal" than calling or texting. Stephanie loves it but reminds him she won't be gone long.

She gives Alex a gift too — a copy of Pat the Bunny for his first official visit with baby Kelsey. "Julie swears it'll be a hit." They practice their Mandarin (badly) and Stephanie tries out a phrase she's been working on. It's supposed to mean "you're a beautiful bride," which, as she points out, won't exactly work on Wendy's father. Alex warns he'll be sending messages before her plane even leaves the ground. They head to her room to make love before she goes, and later join the family at the pub for the departure.

Steve and Kayla's 40-Year Walk Down Memory Lane

Much of the episode is centered at the Brady Pub, where Steve and Kayla are waiting for Stephanie to finish packing for their trip to China for Tripp and Wendy's wedding. Roman surprises them with a traditional Chinese breakfast of congee and hot tea to get them acclimated.

The conversation drifts to their own first voyage to the Far East, and the flashbacks begin. Over the course of the episode, Steve and Kayla relive more than a dozen moments from their forty years together: their honeymoon in Thailand, caring for Benji and teaching him sign language, Kayla's deafness after an explosion and how Steve's ability to sign kept her from feeling alone, their first wedding on a boat, Kayla in a nun's disguise hunting for Kristen at a convent, Steve and Kayla undercover at a bar pretending she is Ava Vitali, the births of both Stephanie and Joey, and their three weddings across the decades. Stephanie asks which wedding was Kayla's favorite. "They were all pretty great," Kayla says. "I don't think I could choose." Steve jokes they should keep the streak going — maybe a skydiving ceremony, with Roman getting ordained to perform it midair. Kayla shuts that down fast.

The episode closes with the whole family gathered at the pub. Jack stops by and pulls Steve aside to give him a red envelope stuffed with cash — following Chinese tradition for Tripp and Wendy's wedding. Roman refuses to let them pay for their meal. Steve and Kayla head for the airport, forty years of memories behind them and a family wedding ahead. "Are you ready for another adventure?" Steve asks. "With you by my side, always," Kayla says.

My Take

Think you caught every detail this week? Five episodes, five days of Salem drama — from Lexie and Paulina's first face-to-face to Gabi's corporate spy reveal to today's forty-year flashback trip. Put your knowledge to the test with this week's quiz.

Kayla Brady first appeared on Days of Our Lives in January 1982, played by Catherine Mary Stewart. But the Kayla who became half of daytime's most enduring love story arrived on May 23, 1986, when Mary Beth Evans took over the role. Tomorrow marks exactly forty years.

Evans walked into Salem at exactly the right moment. Stephen Nichols had debuted as Steve "Patch" Johnson the year before — a one-eyed drifter with a leather jacket and a chip on his shoulder the size of the Brady Pub. The writers paired them almost immediately, and what followed was the love story that would define Days of Our Lives for a generation.

Kayla was a Brady through and through: warm, principled, a healer who became a doctor. Steve was damaged, dangerous, and convinced he didn't deserve anyone's love. Kayla saw something in him that nobody else in Salem could see, and she refused to give up on it. That tension — not will-they-or-won't-they, but can-he-believe-he's-worthy — became the emotional engine of the show's highest-rated era.

The late 1980s put Kayla through some of the most harrowing material in daytime history. In 1987, she married Jack Deveraux, Steve's own brother, believing her relationship with Steve was over. When Jack discovered Kayla still had feelings for Steve, he raped her. The storyline was brutal and groundbreaking, and it forever changed the trajectory of three characters. Kayla divorced Jack, pressed charges, and eventually found her way back to Steve — but she carried the scars of that violation through every scene that followed.

Then came the deafness. In 1988, an explosion robbed Kayla of her hearing. The world went silent, and the woman who had always been the person everyone else leaned on suddenly couldn't communicate with any of them. Except Steve. He had learned sign language years earlier while caring for Benji, a young deaf boy he and Kayla had taken in together. Now that knowledge became something far more intimate — Steve was the only person who could reach Kayla when no one else could. Their bond, already deep, became unbreakable. They married on a boat that same year, surrounded by the water and the quiet.

The marriage didn't last — not because the love failed, but because soap opera history demanded otherwise. Steve's presumed-dead wife Marina surfaced, and the wedding was invalidated. Steve and Kayla married again in 1990, the same year their daughter Stephanie was born. And then, devastatingly, Steve was killed. Kayla buried her husband, raised their daughter alone, and Evans eventually left the show.

But nobody stays dead in Salem, and nobody stays gone. Evans returned, and so did Steve. Their son Joey was born in 2008. They married again in 2017 and again in 2021 — four weddings across four decades, each one a little older, a little more weathered, and no less meaningful. When Stephanie asked in today's episode which wedding was her favorite, Kayla's answer was perfect: she couldn't choose.

What makes Kayla's forty-year arc remarkable isn't just the dramatic peaks. It's the quieter stretches — the years of being a working doctor and a present mother, the scenes at the hospital and around the kitchen table, the long middle chapters of a marriage that the show actually let be happy. Daytime loves to blow up its couples. Steve and Kayla got blown up plenty, but they also got something rarer: long stretches of just being together, raising their kids, showing up for their family. Kayla's arc with her mother Caroline during Caroline's dementia was some of the most grounded, emotionally honest work the show has produced. No villains, no schemes — just a daughter watching her mother disappear and trying to hold on.

Forty years playing one character on one show is nearly unprecedented in any medium. Kayla Brady Johnson has been a bride four times, a widow, a rape survivor, a deaf woman learning to navigate a silent world, a doctor, a mother, a grandmother, and through all of it, the steady center of whatever storm Salem was throwing. Mary Beth Evans didn't just play the part. She built Kayla into someone so fully realized that it's impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. That's not longevity. That's legacy.

Before Steve returned to Salem as himself, Kayla was in a serious relationship with another man — they even exchanged "I love you’s." Who was it?

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Sophia's Funeral Opens a Week of Reckoning

The week opens with Sarah pressuring Holly to attend Sophia's memorial service. Holly doesn't think Amy wants her there, and she's probably right, but CDL's week-ahead breakdown reports Sarah won't take no for an answer. The funeral itself likely lands mid-to-late week, and Amy's grief has been hardening into something sharper. Could Holly's presence be the thing that pushes Amy toward the cyberbullying arrest she's been circling? The funeral shapes up as the emotional spine of the week.

Gabi's Fallout Keeps Spreading

Gabi isn't going quietly. SoapDirt and Primetimer both report she'll keep trying to save things with Philip, but he's holding firm after Thursday's blow-up. Meanwhile, Theo steps up to comfort her, and he may be less a shoulder to cry on and more the start of something new. If Liam tells Ari about Gabi's $150,000 bribe to make him leave town, her daughter could turn on her too.

EJ Chases His Lost Memories

CDL reports EJ pushes forward with hypnosis, hoping Marlena can help him access buried memories from the Italian clinic. Cat knows exactly what he might find — including her ISA connection — and she's reportedly pressing Rafe about it. Does EJ surface something that blows Cat's cover, or does she find a way to steer him off course?

Finally, Kristen Pulls Xander Into a Plot Against EJ

Primetimer's two-week roundup flags Kristen luring an injured Xander into a "deadly plot" against EJ, running parallel to the funeral and Gabi-Philip arcs. SoapHub previews a Xander-versus-EJ hospital vote on May 29, suggesting the corporate war comes to a head by Friday. Given that Xander and Kristen were secretly sleeping together as of yesterday's episode, the line between personal and professional is already blurred.

Yesterday's poll results:

I asked whether you agree that the Lexie resurrection story has been botched and may be the worst story Days has done in years. The results leaned heavily in one direction:

While I don’t agree with the small fraction of folks, I will cross my fingers that they are right. For now, I stand my ground: The Lexie return should be one of the biggest stories of the decade, and so far it hasn't been treated that way. Hopefully the Paulina-Abe-Lexie triangle this week starts delivering on the emotional weight this story deserves.

Today’s Poll:

Please click below to participate in today's poll. The results will be shared in the next edition of The Salem Dispatch.

As always, if the poll doesn't capture your full take, just hit reply and tell me what's on your mind. I read every response.

Justin Kiriakis. After Steve disappeared and Adrienne died, Kayla and Justin found comfort in each other and became a real couple — sharing a home, exchanging declarations of love, and building a life together. When the real Steve finally resurfaced, Kayla had to choose between the man she'd built a future with and the man she'd never stopped loving.

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