While most fans of The Young and the Restless can’t help but be focused on Claire (Hayley Erin), Aunt Jordan (Collen Zenk) and their plot against the Newmans these days, with Cole (J. Eddie Peck) joining the mix, there are plenty of other things happening in Genoa City. Case in point, Tucker (Trevor St. John) is knee-deep in a game of cat and mouse with the Abbotts, with each side vowing to beat the other.
For his part, Tucker is still crushed due to his split with Ashley (Eileen Davidson) and blames the Abbott family for tearing the couple apart. He wants to take the most precious thing of value to the Abbotts as payback, and we of course mean Jabot.
The Abbotts in turn, have been on the defensive. Although they suspect Tucker is plotting to go after Jabot, tipped off by his attempt to frame Billy (Jason Thompson) for embezzlement, the family has been scrabbling to develop a plan to naturalize Tucker’s pending schemes, with Ashley even wanting to play on Tucker’s emotional connection to her and to Devon (Bryton James).
In the midst of all this, there’s Kyle (Michael Mealor). He’s spent the last few months playing the role of "spoiled brat," feeling dejected because Jack (Peter Bergman) wouldn’t fire Billy at Jabot and give him the job as co-CEO of Jabot. Kyle even cozied up to the enemy, and through his connection with Audra (Zuleyka Silver), partnered with Tucker, with the promise that Kyle would be named co-CEO.
Eventually, Kyle realized he couldn’t go through with betraying his family and turned to Diane (Susan Walters), confessing that he was going to work with Tucker. She convinced her son to remain quiet about his now-scrapped plans to partner with the soap villain and even talked him into going back to Tucker claiming to have changed his mind, wanting back in on Tucker’s plot.
The idea is that he would trick Tucker into thinking he wanted to sink his family, but in reality, Kyle would operate as a mole and feed the Abbotts some intel. Additionally, this plan is a closely guarded secret between the mother/son duo, with Jack completely left in the dark.
With all of that said, we can’t help but believe this whole ordeal is going to blow up in Kyle’s face. For starters, Tucker already correctly predicted that after Kyle claimed to be done with their partnership, Kyle would run home to inform Diane and he would likely return to Tucker and Audra pretending he again had a change of heart. Tucker is much too cunning to fall for Kyle’s act and appears to be ready to use Kyle’s naivety to his advantage.
Then there’s the fact that Kyle and Diane are actively keeping this secret from Jack. The Jabot CEO does not like being left out of the loop and he’s expressed several times his concern about his family members getting too entangled with Tucker in a one-on-one battle of the wits.
Jack is likely to blow his lid finding out that his son just accepted a COO position at Jabot as part of a larger-scale effort to deceive Tucker. Furthermore, we can’t imagine Jack being thrilled to discover his son was willing to work with Tucker in the first place just because his entitlement led him to believe he should be co-CEO of Jabot over his uncle.
So what happens next?
Well if we were to guess, Tucker will probably go rogue and leak the news to Jack that Kyle came to him wanting to be business partners. We wouldn’t even be surprised if Tucker has recordings of Kyle and all the hurtful things he said about the Abbotts when he was upset about being passed over for co-CEO of Jabot.
Hearing this news from Tucker is again likely to send Jack’s head spinning, and Kyle may soon find himself demoted at Jabot or even fired. As far as Diane lying to Jack, Mrs. Jack Abbott may spend a few nights in the proverbial doghouse for her part in the deception.
By the way, if Tucker is the one to expose Kyle, we can picture Billy loudly screaming, "I told you so," as Billy has been skeptical of his nephew for months.
New episodes of The Young and the Restless air weekdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream on Paramount Plus.
