jack diane, peter bergman susan walters mashup jpi yr
Credit: Howard Wise/JPI (2)

What if she hasn’t been acting alone?

Throughout all this Diane-returning-from-the-dead business on The Young and the Restless, there’s been one thing that’s really bothered us. OK, fine, there have been a few things that have been bothering us, but one biggie is the question of how Kyle figures into this whole storyline.

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Are we to believe Diane’s been alive all this time and she never let her son know? She says she’s thought of both Jack and Kyle, but why would she play all these games with her ex instead of calling her son and saying, “Hi sweetie, mommy’s alive!”

Worst. Mom. Ever.

Except, that’s just what we’ve been assuming. We don’t actually know that’s what happened — or rather didn’t! And that leads us to the next logical question: What if she did contact Kyle and he’s known all this time? Or at least for a few years.

The show’s been going out of its way to promote Diane as “the ultimate bad girl.” And that isn’t really how we remember her. She was a schemer, sure, and before “dying” seemed determined to tick off just about everyone in Genoa City. But the “ultimate bad girl?”

We’ve had a hard time figuring that out… until now.

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Think back to when Michael Mealor first joined the show and Kyle returned from New York with a huge chip on his shoulder and a burning desire to take Jack down.

At the time, it had us scratching our heads. Not that Kyle didn’t have reason to be ticked with Jack — he certainly wasn’t much of a father to the boy growing up — but it was a bit of a sharp turn for him, seeing as how he’d spent plenty of time in Genoa City as an adult and never really seemed to feel that way before.

Kyle’s spent a lot of time off-screen over the years, and we don’t really know a whole lot about what he’s gotten up to. That became clear when we discovered he had a child with Ashland’s first wife, Tara, while in New York.

So, what if, at some point over the years, Diane had reached out to him? She could have poisoned him against Jack, ticked at what went down with her “death.” Her ex had pretty much shrugged at Nikki killing the mother of his child, moved on and shuffled Kyle off to boarding school rather than being a father to him.

It wouldn’t have taken much to exploit Kyle’s own insecurities about his father and send him back to Genoa City with a plan for revenge. And tasking him with working with Victor would have been Diane’s natural inclination, since she herself had always been obsessed with the man. After all, she’d had Kyle after stealing what she’d thought was The Mustache’s sperm — which instead ended up being Jack’s!

It would have been a great way to knock Jack down a few pegs and get her son closer to the man she’d wanted to be his dad!

Eric Braeden, Maura West, Garrett Ryan, kyle, diane, victor, jpi, yr

Above: Even after learning she’d gotten Jack’s sperm, Diane (then Maura West) still wanted Victor to be a father to Kyle.

Credit: Sean Smith/JPI

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The problem is, it didn’t work. And after getting smacked down by Jack when trying to take Jabot public to sell to Victor, Kyle seemed to have a change of heart. But it was kind of sudden. He may have genuinely forgiven his father for neglecting him all these years, but could he have instead been secretly biding his time, waiting for Diane to make another move?

It’d be one heck of a long con, but that already seems to be the way things are heading with Diane popping up after a decade of playing possum. Peter Bergman himself previewed that she is “not here to set things right.” There’s got to be more lurking in the background than we know. After all, this is, apparently, “the ultimate bad girl.”

If that’s the case, all Diane’s talk of forgiveness could be a ruse. As mad as Jack is at her, he should probably start wondering what else she has planned.  And who else she’s been planning with — like Kyle. Jack’s angry enough with Diane right now, but finding out his son even so much as knew his mom was still alive and never said anything would be devastating.

What are your thoughts? Could Diane have really gone all this time without ever letting her mourning son know she was alive? Could they be have something up their sleeve?

Check out the gallery below following Kyle’s life in Genoa City without his mother to lean on! Or was it?