In 1990, Ridge Forrester lost his beloved first wife when she lost her battle with leukemia. And unlike subsequent missus Taylor Hayes, when Caroline died, she stayed dead. She did, however, get a surprise twin sister when Joanna Johnson was re-added to the cast a year later.
Here, Ridge’s second spouse (then Hunter Tylo) demonstrates how mightily he grieved when she was presumed to have perished in a 1994 plane crash. But rumors of her death, it turned out, had been greatly exaggerated. And not for the last time!
When the designer (Charles Grant) promised Macy Alexander that he was hers “till death do us part,” he meant it. Sadly, death was listening and decided to part them sooner rather than later by having the big C snip the knot they’d only recently tied in 1998.
Oo… burrito… or cancer? D’oh! It was the latter that took C.J. Garrison from being a groom to being a widower in record time in 2000, when his newly minted bride (Marissa Tait) succumbed to the disease before they’d so much as eaten all of their leftover wedding cake.
The shock of true love Thorne Forrester’s affair with Brooke was almost enough to kill Sally Spectra’s daughter in 2000. But what really did in Bobbie Eakes’ character — or so we thought — was a car crash with her rival that was as explosive as their confrontations.
Doc used the second of her nine lives in 2002 when she slipped into a coma after being shot by Sheila Carter. Ridge (then Ronn Moss) and everyone else thought that Taylor had died again. And again, she hadn’t. Next time, she’d better expect a lotta no-shows at the funeral!
Dead woman singing! Macy had only been back in the land of the living for three years when the songbird was Phantom of the Opera’d by a falling chandelier and left to perform her encores in the afterlife.
Viewers saw the Forrester heiress die of colon cancer in 2006 in mom Stephanie’s arms. And though seeing is believing, no one should’ve, because Lesli Kay was soon back in her role, her character having been miraculously saved off screen.
It seemed like Forrester matriarch Stephanie and sister Pam had only just thawed out their previously chilly relationship with their mother (the late, great Betty White) when pancreatic cancer brought a heartbreaking end to their reunion in 2009.
Where’s AAA when you need it? In 2006, Thorne’s wife (Schae Harrison) was on her way to help niece Phoebe change a flat on the highway when boom! Into her crashed the young woman’s mother, Taylor, two if not three sheets to the wind.
The homicidal maniac wasn’t just killed on The Young and the Restless in 2007, she was killed with the face of Michelle Stafford’s Phyllis Summers. She was so very killed, in fact, that her sister made herself into a lookalike of Lauren Fenmore to torture her killer. Yet we all know how dead Sheila really was.
In 2008, the Logan family’s unstable only son (last played by soap vet William deVry) accidentally shot sister Katie, then took his own life to provide her with a heart to replace the one that he’d broken.
In 2008, Steffy’s suddenly-fraternal-twin sister (MacKenzie Mauzy) wouldn’t let ex-beau Rick Forrester drive away while she was yelling at him about seducing every woman in her family. But beating on him and the steering wheel and the pedals of his car did less to make her point than get her killed.
As Alzheimer’s took its toll on the Logan matriarch (in the end, Robin Riker), she got into an altercation with Stephanie in 2010 that left her reaching into a swimming pool for a piece of lace onto which she’d sewn pictures of her children so as not to forget them. Unfortunately, it was the last splash she’d ever make.
As Thorne and Darla’s daughter (Ashlyn Pearce) went from intolerant to flat-out insane in 2015, she attempted to make roadkill of Steffy and wound up being fatally whacked with a tire iron by her intended victim.
We heard she was happy in New York with son Douglas and babydaddy Thomas Forrester. And maybe she was… until a blood clot in 2019 cut very short the life of the original Caroline’s namesake niece (future Days of Our Lives star Linsey Godfrey).
Neither the Forrester mansion nor the show was every the same after Susan Flannery’s queen bee succumbed to lung cancer and passed away in the arms of, ironically, her worst enemy… and dearest friend.
One last video message to BFF Thomas in 2021, and the paternity-test-switching sometime drug dealer that Joe LoCicero played hurled himself in front of Liam Spencer’s car, after which… Whoa, that’s cold. Bill left him to die. Yikes.
In 2022, Steffy learned too late that the mistake she’d made in confronting monster-in-law Sheila in a dark alley was one of the fatal variety. No sooner had the madwoman pulled a gun than into the fray ran her son and Steffy’s husband (Tanner Novlan) to take the bullet that had been meant to make him a widower! Ed. note: As you well know, we later discovered that Finn had only “died” and the show had pulled a total fast one on us.
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