The Young and the Restless spoilers: Cameron is back… again!

It appears that The Young and the Restless’ Cameron Kirsten (Linden Ashby) is the gift that just keeps on giving, as it seems he’s back on the soap’s canvas. The first clue of his return was spotted in the show’s end credits for the episode airing on January 8, where his name is listed. You can see for yourself in the clip below around the 0.37 mark.

Almost immediately, we questioned why Cameron would return. Longtime viewers know he was killed back in the summer of 2023 by Sharon (Sharon Case), and returned in 2024 as a hallucination for her. We now know she was being dosed with PCP at the hands of Jordan (Colleen Zenk) and Ian (Ray Wise), which was causing the visions. With Sharon seemingly not on PCP anymore, we thought her hallucinations would seemingly go away. However, were we wrong?

At the moment, Sharon is handcuffed to a pipe thanks to Jordan, with no way of escaping (for now). Ian instructed Jordan to kill the Crimson Lights owner, but Jordan has her held hostage instead, thinking Sharon alive is an insurance policy against Ian in case he doesn’t help Jordan with her plans for Claire (Hayley Erin) and the Newmans. Although Nick (Joshua Morrow), Faith (Reylynn Caster) and Mariah (Camryn Grimes) know Sharon is missing and are desperate to find her, there’s no inclination that they’re close to accomplishing that.

With all that being said, our best guess for why Cameron is back is that Sharon is hallucinating again because Jordan has dosed her with PCP or because she’s mentally and physically exhausted. We tend to lean toward the latter explanation.

You have to remember, Sharon was kidnapped on New Year’s Eve, and it’s now days later. We aren't certain, but it doesn’t exactly seem that Jordan has made it a priority to feed Sharon or provide her with water. So Sharon could be starting to mentally break under the strain.

But regardless of why Sharon is imagining Cameron, we have to think this is somewhat of a good thing. When she was having hallucinations of him during the whole ordeal of framing Daniel (Michael Graziadei), Cameron pushed her to be “savvy” in covering her tracks. Perhaps Cameron can now push her to fight to stay alive and find a way out of this mess.

It’s worth noting that we believe Sharon will survive this whole ordeal and will get some help from unlikely places to do so. We originally suspected Sharon and Phyllis (Michelle Stafford) would come to rely on each other for survival in some capacity, but perhaps Cameron the Devious Ghost will also lend a helping hand.

New episodes of The Young and the Restless air on weekdays on CBS. If you miss an episode, you can catch up on Paramount Plus.