Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI (5)

We had high hopes when the soap teased a comeback for the demon in fall of 2021.

We don’t fault Days of Our Lives for going back to the same well again with the devil. All of our shows do that. The Bold and the Beautiful reheats love triangles like they were leftovers that never start to mold. General Hospital and Young & Restless break up Carly and Sonny, and Victor and Nikki, only so they can reunite and remarry them for the umpteenth time. It’s standard operating procedure. We get that.

But there has to be a point. And months after the devil returned to Salem, nope, we just don’t see one.

Kristen raises a bloody knife over her head on Days of Our Lives

“Whad’ya mean, somebody’s cutting in on my troublemaking turf?”

Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI

Has the storyline been some fun? At times, yes. Johnny in particular made a helluva host for the demon (though we could have done without his unwanted come-ons to Gabi).

Have there been surprises? You bet. Doug as the devil? That’s swinging for the fences right there. And Eileen Davidson’s reappearance as John’s version of Kristen was an especially big shock.

More: Days of Our Lives’ nuttiest plots [PHOTOS]

But at the end of the day, we come back once again to… what was/is the point?

Days of Our Lives seemed to forget what every supernatural show from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to… well, Supernatural always knew: Your Big Bad has to have a big, bad goal. On Buffy, for instance, it was almost always the apocalypse. Here, though, the devil’s mission seems to be to make pretty much the same kind of trouble in Salem that EJ or Gwen might on any given day. There has been no “big” to the bad.

Belle lies tied up on a bed. Johnn, Marlena and Chanel surround her. Days of Our Lives

“‘Do a soap,’” they said. “‘You’ll get to tie the knot on screen.’”

Credit: Jill Johnson/JPI

Maybe it would have worked, had it been made clear that the devil came back with the single-minded purpose of possessing Ben and Ciara’s baby — you know, so it could stop bopping from one host to the next like it couldn’t decide what dessert to order. Alas, the story hasn’t been told that way, so the demon has made us scratch our heads as it’s made a mess of the lives of, in the grand scheme of things, a buncha not terribly powerful people in a small and inconsequential town.

Perhaps it’s a lesser demon? A demon trainee? Does hell have an internship program? That might explain the demon’s low-level pot-stirring. What do you think? Have you been into the storyline? On your way to the comments…

Check out our countdown of soaps’ all-time wildest storylines in the photo gallery below.