When Days of our Lives’ Gabriella Hernandez arrived in Salem — mainly to scold siblings Rafe and Arianna for not phoning home often enough! — Gabriela Rodriguez played the part. But within a year, the powers that be realized that they’d made a mistake and should have hired in the first place Camila Banus, who’d also auditioned. How they passed her up, we’ll never understand!
Though Gabi offered her heart to Chad Petersen — this was back before he was a DiMera, when Casey Diedrick and his amazing hair held the role — he was still hung up on his ex, Mia McCormick, who was busy ignoring the fact that her new beau, Will Horton, spent a lot of time in the closet. We don’t have to mention that he wasn’t picking out clothes, right? Good.
Devastated when Arianna was killed by a hit-and-run driver, Gabi had grief sex with Will — a mistake on at least two levels. One, he was still so gay that he could’ve founded the Salem chapter of the Nuke Fan Club (As the World Turns joke, folks), and two, he’d been the driver of the car that had killed her sister. No wonder he thought years later that he’d made roadkill of Adrienne!
The next time Gabi set her cap for Chad, Mia was thankfully out of the picture; Melanie Jonas, however, was very much in it. So Gabi invented a stalker — and then went so far as to cast the role with a guy named Andrew Stark. The gambit worked in that it got her Chad’s attention. But it also didn’t in that her chances with the object her obsession went up in smoke along with Andrew — literally — after he kidnapped his boss’ rival!
Against all odds, Gabi and Will again had sex, after which she discovered that she was pregnant. Since by then she had started seeing Nick Fallon — well, that was fast! — she said, “Yep! That’s the ticket!” when he suggested that they tie the knot and pretend the kid was theirs. What could possibly go wrong, right?
Having been kidnapped by Nick’s prison rapist — OK, a lot to unpack in that phrase! — Gabi gave birth to daughter Arianna with the help of her babydaddy’s new boo, Sonny Kiriakis. (Who knew abductions were such a help in inducing labor?) Afterwards, a freaked-out Nick annulled his marriage to Gabi, who moved in with WilSon and starred in her own personal version of Will & Will & Grace.
Deciding that he wanted Gabi back — dude, get it together — Nick became so desperate that he fought with his former missus — to the death. Sorry, the “death.” No sooner had Gabi dumped him in the river with the help of an unlikely tag team — nemeses Kate Roberts and Sami Brady — than he bobbed up again alive and… well, needing to be killed. For doing the deed, Gabi was sentenced to 10 years in the pokey. (If only she’d been a General Hospital character… and in the Mob… and had a name that rhymed with bunny… )
… and also the worst. Thanks to a sentencing error, Gabi was released from prison just in time to mourn the death of babydaddy Will — sorry, the “death” of babydaddy Will — at the hands of the Necktie Killer, aka Ben Weston. She also had to grieve for half sister Paige Larson — sorry, the… oh, wait. No. Paige actually stayed dead. Never mind. Keep reading.
Following a brief fling with JJ Deveraux, Gabi reconnected with Chad, who was by then Billy Flynn and the widower of JJ’s sister, Abigail. Sorry — again, we need quotation marks; “widower.” Though Chad couldn’t deny that he loved Gabi, he loved Abby more, so he threw over his girlfriend and committed himself anew to his “late” wife.
While Gabi’s love life continued to do its damnedest to resemble a trainwreck — her involvement with Eli Grant ran off the rails when she learned that he’d knocked up Lani Price — the rest of her life worked hard to keep up. Or down, as the case was. After Andre DiMera yanked away Gabi Chic — her fashion house, don’t ya know? — she was sent back up the river for murdering Chad’s half brother. The real killer? Abby — or, rather, her wiggy alter ego, Gabby!
Owing to a beating that she took in prison, Gabi was left unable to have more children, a fact that so enraged her that she doctored a paternity test to make it appear that Chad wasn’t Abby’s babydaddy, “Gabby’s” loverboy Stefan DiMera (then Tyler Christopher) was. Oh, and Gabi was just getting warmed up! (What, did you think that she was done? Ha!) She also drugged her former friend in order to make it appear that Gabby was once again large and in charge. If only that pesky Julie Williams hadn’t figured out what she’d done… But more on that later!
Never mind that Gabi had always gotten along with Stefan (by then Brandon Barash) the way that the Hatfields did with the McCoys — or that he’d kidnapped her. (No two ways about it: She was catnip to abductors!) The odd couple entered into a marriage of convenience in order to keep him from losing control of DiMera Enterprises. And, just when they’d admitted that they’d misplaced the thin line between love and hate, he… wait, what? Yep, he croaked after throwing himself in front of a bullet that was meant to put Mommie Dearest Vivian Alamain in a grave. Permanently, it bears mentioning!
To all the world, it appeared that Gabi had re-affixed her halo by agreeing to fork over Stefan’s ticker to an ailing Julie. But viewers were not all the world. We knew that she’d only done it so that she could control Lani, who’d fired the shot that had ended Stefan, by threatening Julie’s life with an app that doesn’t exist. (Don’t ask us why we’ve checked. Move along now… )
What comes after a double take? A triple? A quadruple? Whatever it is, that was what Gabi did when she got a gander at her late husband alive and well and in the flesh, walking around Salem like there weren’t flowers wilting on his grave. Sure, rough-around-the-edges Jake Lambert turned out to be not Stefan but his heretofore-unknown twin brother, but that did little to lessen Gabi’s fascination with him.
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