On The Young and the Restless, the decades-long feud between Jack (Peter Bergman) and Victor (Eric Braeden) is perhaps the greatest in soap history. Their scorched-earth approach to battle often shakes up all of Genoa City and leaves members of the Abbott and Newman families as collateral damage. It’s because we’ve seen this movie before between the two most powerful men in town that we’re fairly certain this latest round of conflict isn’t going to end well.
Beyond just the history of the duo, our hunch about the disaster that’s coming stems from knowledge of Jack’s past year. Loyal viewers know that he hasn’t had the easiest go of it when it comes to his family. Ashley (Eileen Davidson) suffered for months due to a mental health struggle, Harrison (Redding Munsell) was kidnapped by the deranged villain Jordan (Colleen Zenk) and now Kyle (Michael Mealor) is treating Jack and Diane (Susan Walters) as if they’re monsters.
Additionally, Jack had to watch his best friend spiral out of control as Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) wrestled with alcohol addiction. As fans know, that got so bad that it ended with him purposefully falling in his own sobriety with pills and nearly dying. Diane was almost ready to leave him for his misguided sacrifice to save the Newman matriarch.
With all that being said, will Victor’s latest attack prove to be one crisis too many for Jack to handle? Could Jack soon succumb to all the stress and fully give into his pill addiction? Or worse, could he have a heart attack?
Unlike many of the previous dust-ups between Jack and Victor, this new one involves Kyle. Although Victor didn’t cause the rift between Kyle and Jack, The Mustache has exploited by stroking Kyle’s ego and then hiring Kyle as the co-CEO of Glissade.
In The Young and the Restless episode airing on July 8, Kyle tells his father that he’s not only working for Jabot’s competition, but he also shares his desire to destroy his family legacy. Jack looks both disappointed and infuriated, and he doesn’t even know yet that Victor now owns Glissade. We can only imagine when he gets the full picture, he’ll explode.
Now we don’t think the medical emergency will occur immediately when Jack discovers Victor’s role in hiring Kyle at Glissade. We believe Kyle will launch a few attacks at Jabot first and officially move him and Harrison out of the Abbott Mansion before that happens. Should our theory become reality and Jack finds himself suffering from a medical emergency at that point, then it’s likely Kyle will get a much-needed wake-up call.
If Jack winds up in a hospital bed due to his relapsing or having a heart attack, Kyle would probably take on a lot of guilt for his father’s condition, regretting his actions. While it’s possible Diane would attempt to alleviate her son’s guilt, it’s easy to see Billy (Jason Thompson) piling on Kyle and hurling insults at his nephew for how he treated the Abbott patriarch. Jack would probably pull through a health episode, so is there a reconciliation between father and son in the future?
On a final note, if Jack does face an emergency because of Victor’s latest need for revenge, you can bet that Nikki would be beyond furious and perhaps ready to divorce the love of her life — again.
New episodes of The Young and the Restless air weekdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream on Paramount Plus the next day.
