Happy Thursday, everyone. Today's episode was a doozy. I felt like someone hit fast-forward. Lots of plot developments - but not in a good way. The Lexie-Paulina meeting we've been building to for months was casual and rushed. Philip finding out that Gabi destroyed his company was abrupt and underplayed. Days of Our Lives usually drags out what could be one episode into ten. Today it condensed ten episodes into one.

While there were a lot of storylines today, today’s newsletter is mostly focused on Lexie’s resurrection. It has to be. It’s time to call it for what it is - a colossal misfire. Let’s get into it.

Forwarded to you? I write The Salem Dispatch every weekday — recaps, spoilers, and the stories behind the stories.

Paulina Meets Lexie - And Steps Aside

Paulina shows up at Lexie's hospital room without Abe — no referee, no buffer. Lexie knows exactly who she is: "You're my husband's new wife." Paulina tries to set a gracious tone, saying she's happy for Abe and Theo. Lexie thanks her for being "a companion" to Abe while she was gone, and the word lands like a slap. Paulina fires back: "The pleasure was all mine."

From there, Lexie makes her position clear. She's not going anywhere. She invokes Paulina's history — the Horton Town Square zoning scheme, taking Abe's job during his amnesia — and Paulina holds her ground. She's not the same person. Abe supports her 100%. Then Lexie asks: if Paulina supports Abe 100%, will she step back and let him reunite with the love of his life?

And Paulina says yes. Not in defeat — in love. She tells Lexie she's stepping aside because she doesn't want to stand in the way of a miracle. It's a stunning choice. Later, Abe finds her packing. He's devastated. He now knows she kept EJ's secret — Theo told him everything. Paulina confirms it: she couldn't have forgiven herself for keeping Abe's wife from him, even though it broke her heart. "Goodbye, Abraham." And she's gone.

Theo Forces Abe's Hand

Theo sits Abe down at the Pub and tells him to stop stalling. Abe says he loves Lexie but he loves Paulina too — and there are other people to consider: Theo, Lani, Chanel. Theo cuts through it immediately: "Chanel is a cop-out." He tells Abe he can't keep using them as an excuse not to make a choice, and the longer he waits, the harder it gets for everyone.

Then Theo drops a bomb. Before Abe makes any decision, there's something he needs to know: Paulina knew about EJ's experiment. Her office started looking into the unusual power draw from EJ's lab, and when she confronted him, EJ told her the truth — that Lexie might actually be brought back. He dared Paulina to expose him. She couldn't do it. She couldn't be the one to keep Abe's wife from coming home. "Paulina is the reason Mom's alive," Theo tells him.

Later, Theo visits Lexie and tells her he's conflicted. Chanel, Lani, and Paulina are like family to him. "She's not a replacement for you, but she's like family to me, too." Lexie pulls him close and tells him she understands, but as she hugs him, a vaguely sinister look crosses her face.

Gabi and Julie see Eye-to-Eye for Once

Gabi corners Julie at the square with an unusual request. Gabi is desperate to get Liam out of town, but the court-mandated tutoring sessions with Julie are keeping him in Salem. Could Julie do them virtually instead?

Julie agrees, but not for Gabi's sake. "Despite your efforts to murder me, I've never doubted that you love your daughter." She sees it the same way Gabi does: Liam is no good for Ari, and maybe a fresh start somewhere else will break the spell. Julie will stop by the D.A.'s office to get sign-off. It's a rare moment of alliance between two women who can barely stand each other.

Philip Discovers Gabi's Betrayal

Anna pays Philip a visit at the Kiriakis mansion, and within minutes, she's done more damage than most characters manage in a month. She tells Philip that Tony offered Gabi the DiMera CEO position — news Gabi never shared. Then she starts tugging at a thread: Gabi turned the job down out of "loyalty and guilt." Philip asks what guilt. Anna dances around it until Philip pulls it out of her: Gabi planted the bug in the Titan office. She's the reason Tony got the leverage to take DiMera back. She's the reason Philip and Xander lost everything.

Philip confronts Gabi immediately. He has other news first — his graphologist confirmed Vivian forged Stefan's signature on the divorce papers, meaning Gabi was still legally married to Stefan when he died. She's officially a DiMera heir. Gabi is overcome. Then Philip drops the hammer: "I know you planted the bug in my office. I know you're the reason Xander and I lost DiMera."

Gabi tries to explain, but Philip won't hear it. He says he might have forgiven her if she'd told him herself, but she stood there while he poured out his own shame and said nothing. "Pack your things and get the hell out."

Back at the DiMera mansion, Anna tells Tony what she did. Tony is livid — now Gabi will blame him and never take the CEO job. Anna hadn't thought of that. You’ve got to love Anna.

The DiMera Power Struggle

Tony is making moves. He's pushing Johnny out as CEO (Johnny was just discharged from the hospital) and offered the chair to Gabi, who turned it down. Theo tips off EJ, who storms through the mansion looking for Tony.

Kristen gets wind and immediately lobbies EJ: why not her as CEO? EJ mocks her track record — specifically that the last time she ran DiMera, it ended with Titan launching a successful takeover. They argue about Rachel, Johnny, and a decade of family dysfunction in about ninety seconds flat.

When EJ finally corners Tony, he demands an explanation. Tony is unmoved. He owns the company. EJ has no say. EJ insists he's the heir apparent. Tony tells him the CEO needs "a consistent and steady hand" — not an extension of someone's ego. EJ accuses Tony of punishing him for not swooping in during last year's crisis. Tony denies it, but you can see he's enjoying this.

Xander, Gwen, and Kristen

Xander wakes up next to Gwen at the Salem Inn with a hurt elbow he blames on an "overzealous workout." Gwen bumps it and he winces. Gwen pitches him on a business partnership: her Dimitri divorce settlement money plus Xander's ambition equals a bid to buy the hospital out from under EJ. Xander likes the idea but says Titan's precarious situation means he can't afford to partner up.

Then things shift — Xander tells Gwen their arrangement is getting complicated. She caught feelings, and that's not what he signed up for. Before the conversation can go further, the fire sprinklers go off. A neighbor burned toast, smoke filled the hallway, and Xander's room gets drenched.

Later, Gwen — drenched from the sprinkler disaster — runs into Kristen in the Salem Inn hallway. Kristen asks how Xander's elbow is doing (her cover story: she bumped into him at the hospital visiting Lexie). Then she starts nudging Gwen toward the door: go take a shower, put on some new clothes. Gwen narrows her eyes. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you're trying to get rid of me. He's on his way, isn't he? The mystery man you've been hooking up with."

Kristen admits it. Gwen leaves, promising cocktails later for "all those naughty juicy details."

The moment she's gone, Xander appears in the hallway. "I thought she'd never leave," he says, They make out in the hallway and stumble into Kristen's room. "Just be careful with my hair," she says. "I'll be very gentle this time.”

My Take

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I've been trying to give this storyline the benefit of the doubt. Really, I have. When I heard the show was resurrecting Lexie, I thought it was sacrilege. When Renee Jones decided to leave the show, the writers definitively wrote a beautiful story about her death, and no one ever expected to see her again. It was heartbreaking, but well done, and years later, it freed Abe up to move on. But I still hoped that Lexie’s return might be done well and prove me wrong.

After today, I can officially say: I think this Lexie resurrection story has been completely botched. It may be the worst story Days has done in years.

Let me start with what's been bugging me since the beginning: the reveal was wrong. Lexie stumbled into a room full of people during a will reading. That should have been one of the most intimate moments in the show's history — Abe seeing his dead wife alive for the first time. Instead, it happened in front of Tony, Kristen, Gabi, Leo, Abe, Theo, and half the DiMera family tree. You can't get that moment back. EJ's control-freak personality would have actually served the story well here — he could have orchestrated a private reveal. But the show chose spectacle over emotion, and the story has been paying for it ever since.

Then came the reactions — or the lack of them. Abe wasn't angry at EJ. Steve and Kayla treated the news like someone came home from a long trip. A woman was dead for fourteen years and brought back to life in a secret lab, and Salem shrugged. I wrote in the May 13 newsletter that someone could at least act surprised. No one did.

And here's the bigger problem: the show doesn't seem interested in Lexie. It's interested in the Paulina question. Every scene with Lexie has been in service of the love triangle — will Abe choose Lexie or Paulina? The show keeps skipping past the parts that should be fascinating: What is it like to wake up after fifteen years? What does it feel like to not recognize your own son? How do you process a world where your phone is a relic, your friends have aged, and your father died while you were in a pod? We got one real conversation between Lexie and Kayla on Monday, and it was the first time Lexie felt like a person instead of a plot device. One scene in two weeks.

Compare this to the Sophia storyline. Amy Choi's grief has played out across multiple episodes with patience and specificity. We've watched her arrange flowers at the memorial. We've seen her go after Holly. We've heard Sarah try to comfort her and get shut down. That story earns its emotional moments because the show is willing to sit in the discomfort. The Lexie return, which should be the bigger story, has been handled with half the care.

Today should have been the culmination of weeks of tension. Paulina walks into Lexie's hospital room, gloves off, no referee. And what happens? They spar for a few minutes — Lexie brings up the town square zoning scheme, Paulina fires back about being a modern woman — and then Paulina announces she's stepping aside. Just like that. A decision this enormous, one that ends a marriage, resolved in a single visit. Paulina didn't agonize on screen. She didn't have a breakdown with Chanel afterward. She packed a bag and said goodbye to Abe. Jackée Harry was wonderful in those final moments, but the writing didn't give her enough runway to make them land the way they deserved to.

And I keep coming back to what fans have been saying. The community is firmly pro-Paulina — not because they don't love Lexie, but because Paulina's relationship with Abe was earned on screen over years. We watched her help him through amnesia and a kidnapping. We watched her raise his stepchildren. Readers of this newsletter have told me directly that they don't want Lexie to be a wrecking ball, and that's exactly what the story has turned her into. She's not a character right now. She's a complication.

None of this is Nikki Crawford's fault. She's doing strong work in an impossible situation — stepping into a role Renée Jones defined across three decades. But the show hasn't given Crawford the material to make Lexie her own. Every scene pushes Lexie toward the triangle instead of letting her breathe.

I wanted this to work. A resurrection story with real stakes, real consequences, a genuine exploration of what it means to come back to a world that moved on without you. Days has done this before — the Roman return in 1991 was messy and complicated and took its time. This version has been rushed at every turn: rushed reveal, rushed reactions, rushed resolution. Paulina deserved a slower, more painful reckoning. Lexie deserved scenes where she's more than Abe's first wife. And Abe deserved to be genuinely torn instead of passively waiting for someone else to make his decision for him.

What a waste of a premise.

Tomorrow's episode is a flashback special celebrating Steve and Kayla's love story. So here's a fitting question: How many times have Steve Johnson and Kayla Brady been married on Days of Our Lives? Answer at the bottom of today's newsletter.

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A Love Story, Four Decades in the Making

Friday's episode is a flashback special honoring Steve and Kayla's epic romance, timed to the 40th anniversary of Mary Beth Evans's debut as Kayla on May 23, 1986. Expect the episode to be packed with clips spanning their entire history — the bad-boy-meets-good-girl origin, the iconic 1988 yacht wedding, and four decades of separations, reunions, and the kind of love that soap operas were built on. Evans told TV Insider that the experience was deeply meaningful, and Stephen Nichols gave his own reflections to Soap Opera Digest. If you love Steve & Kayla (and how can you not?), this one's for you.

Jack Shows Up at Gwen's Door

Matthew Ashford returns as Jack Deveraux, and his first move is to surprise Gwen at the Salem Inn. These two have one of the most complicated father-daughter relationships on the show. Jack didn't even know Gwen existed until 2021, and since then she's killed his mother-in-law Laura Horton (accidentally), blackmailed him into handing over The Spectator, and driven him to leave Salem for Boston with Jennifer. The last time they were in the same room, Jack told Gwen he loved her but needed distance. Now he's back — reportedly with a peace offering and a genuine desire to try again.

Gabi Comes Clean

After getting dumped by Philip today, Gabi reportedly makes a confession on Friday. The question is: to whom, and about what? She has no shortage of secrets to choose from right now.

Finally, Xander has a surprise for Sarah. Details are thin on this one — we don't know what he's bringing to her door, but given everything we learned about Xander today, it'll be interesting to see what he's up to.

Jackée Harry: "She's Fighting for Him" — In a joint interview with James Reynolds, Harry told SheKnows that Paulina isn't done yet. She may have stepped aside today, but Harry says Paulina has too much pride to beg — and too much love to quit. Reynolds hinted Abe is genuinely torn, not just passively waiting. Primetimer and ComingSoon also covered the interview.

Mary Beth Evans Almost Missed the Role That Changed Everything — In a new SoapHub interview published yesterday, Evans reveals she was about to take a restaurant job when the DAYS audition came through. Forty years later, she says Steve and Kayla still work because the show is willing to portray a happy long-term marriage. She also told TV Insider she feels lucky to have been paired with Stephen Nichols from the start. Soap Opera Digest previewed tomorrow's flashback special.

SoapHub: Abe's Real Problem Isn't Choosing Between Lexie and Paulina — A SoapHub commentary published yesterday argues that framing Abe's situation as a simple love triangle misses the point. The piece says Abe's real struggle is that one love doesn't cancel out another — and the pressure from everyone around him to decide quickly is making things worse, not better.

No surprise - the Lexie return has become the most talked about story in the DOOL fan community right now, and the verdict is not kind.

Over on Reddit, the overwhelming consensus is that fans want Abe and Paulina together and resent Lexie being used as a wrecking ball. One fan put it bluntly in a thread that blew up this week: the story "undermines everything Abe and Paulina built for the last few years." Another added that Abe helped ground Paulina, and watching all of that get swept aside for a resurrection plot feels cheap.

The recast is a big part of the disconnect. Multiple fans said there's simply no emotional connection to Nikki Crawford's Lexie — not because Crawford is doing a bad job, but because Renée Jones defined the role across three decades. One fan called it disrespectful to recast a character that iconic, comparing it to recasting Hope. Others said they can't invest when word is already circulating that Crawford may have wrapped her run, which would make the whole disruption feel even more pointless.

SoapHub ran a full piece on the fan backlash this week, calling out the "painful detail" that changed everything about Abe's reunion with Lexie — the lack of emotional resonance that comes with watching a new face in a role this loaded with history.

There's also broader fatigue at play. Fans are tired of back-from-the-dead stories. The show has gone to this well too many times in recent years, and this one landed without the weight it needed. As one Reddit commenter put it: if you're going to bring someone back, you'd better make it worth the disruption. So far, this hasn't been.

Yesterday I asked how you thought Gabi's $150,000 bribe to Liam would play out. The results were decisive: 71% said Liam tells Ari everything, and they get closer because of it. You're betting on Liam's honesty — which is interesting, because today Gabi doubled down by asking Julie to move the tutoring sessions virtual so Liam can leave town entirely. We'll see who's right.

Now on to 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.

Have thoughts that don't fit in a poll? Hit reply — I read everything.

Four times. Steve and Kayla have been married on Days of Our Lives in 1988 (the famous yacht wedding, later invalidated when Marina turned up alive), 1990, 2017, and 2021. Tomorrow's flashback special revisits their entire journey — forty years of the supercouple that helped define the genre.

I am really looking forward to tomorrow’s episode. For those of you who are newer to Days, you may not realize how compelling Kayla & Steve’s love story has been. They are no longer front-burner characters. But boy, were they a supercouple once upon a time. Make sure to watch so that you can get a sense of why they are so beloved.

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