days of our lives killing off hope kristian alfonso
Credit: Paul Skipper/JPI (3), Jill Johnson/JPI, XT Arroyo/JPI

This article should probably come with a trigger warning. Um… can we consider this it? OK, then. Moving on…

We know that the wedding of Days of Our Lives’ Ciara and Theo was last-minute. And hey, plane trouble does happen. But — sorry — we don’t believe for a second that if she was getting remarried, mother of the bride Hope wouldn’t have gotten herself another flight, driven, teleported or, if need be, power-walked to the ceremony. Nope, just didn’t buy it, just as we didn’t buy it when she was nowhere to be seen when Ben first rescued his amnesiac missus. Which brings us to an issue that the NBC soap is overdue to address…

What should be done about Hope?

When Kristian Alfonso quit in the summer of 2020 rather than be removed from the canvas for a few months, she made it repeatedly, abundantly clear that she would not be reprising her role. Ever. Which left the daytime drama in quite a pickle. She and Hope had been key to Days of Our Lives for nearly four decades. The show would go on, of course. But how?

Thus far, the powers that be have contrived excuses to keep Ciara’s mom away from Salem. That won’t work long-term, though. (Really, it didn’t even work short-term, did it?) So one option is to recast. We even came up with a list of possible Hopes, soap vets with the chops to do justice to the part. But just because they could bring Hope brilliantly to life doesn’t mean that any of them should. (There’s a reason the heroine is on our list of characters who can never, ever be recast.)

That only leaves one other option — and it’s dark, man. Days of Our Lives needs to bite the bullet and kill off Hope. If a miracle occurs down the line and Alfonso has a change of heart about returning, Dr. Rolf could always be called in. But in the meantime, it would remove the elephant from the room in any storyline involving Ciara (that elephant being, “Uh, shouldn’t Hope be here?”)

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What’s more, the demise of the iconic character could spin Ciara into a less toxic plot with Ben. Supposing he, to honor the woman who’d come around to understand how hard the former Necktie Killer had worked on his mental health, decided to solve her murder. That would automatically put him on a collision course with Ciara, who could come to grudgingly accept his help. (Obviously, she’d set out to do the same thing!) While working to crack the deeply personal case, she could then come to see and appreciate the man Ben has become — in other words, the one with whom she fell in love and got married.

What do you think, Days of Our Lives fans? Should the soap kill off Hope, at least until Alfonso pulls a U-ey? While you contemplate, peruse the below photo gallery, in which we revisit highlights of her incredible run in the role.