The Young and the Restless spoilers: what is Aristotle’s real motive?

One of the biggest mysteries in all of daytime TV right now is the identity of The Young and the Restless’ Aristotle Dumas. Sure, there are questions swirling around who’s been trying to kill Sonny (Maurice Benard) on General Hospital, and what Martin (Brandon Claybon) has been hiding on Beyond the Gates, but the real person behind Aristotle Dumas is arguably bigger than those for one simple reason in our eyes — Victor (Eric Braeden).

It’s been teased that the successful Aristotle is the only one who has been able to go toe-to-toe with The Great Victor Newman in business, and those are bragging rights no one really has the pleasure of having. Plus, Aristotle has managed to impact every major family in town, and yet, no one seems to know what he’s up to. They don’t know what he’s after, who he’s after and why he’s inserting himself in the Genoa City corporate world.

Zeroing in on this last point, what is Aristotle’s real motive? That’s a question we’ve given some real thought to. Most people don’t go around provoking Victor, because whether you like him or not, he’s a masterful tactician and has a knack for usually coming out on top. So doing anything to prompt Victor to do so much as raise an eyebrow is dangerous.

According to Billy (Jason Thompson), Aristotle allegedly has a vested interest in acquiring Chancellor to get one up on Victor. However, this seems like a lofty goal for Aristotle just to say he beat The Newman patriarch.

Not only is the company huge, but we’re still having a hard time imagining the complexities it would take to steal Chancellor from The Mustache. When Victor took it from Billy, he technically bought the company from the owner, Billy’s mom Jill (Jess Walton). We don’t envision Victor just stripping the business from Nikki (Melody Thomas Scott) and handing it to Aristotle, nor do we see a plan yet for how Aristotle could launch a hostile takeover. Again, because of this, we picture Aristotle would have to jump through a lot of hoops just to tell Victor, “I beat you.”

Now if Aristotle turns out to be Tucker, then Aristotle’s motivation to get Chancellor makes sense. Chancellor was the corporate baby of Tucker’s mom, and he’s been trying to acquire it for years to preserve a legacy for Devon (Bryton James). Plus, we imagine Tucker is still livid with Victor for working with Audra (Zuleyka Silver) to steal Glissade.

Even if Aristotle is Cane, it makes sense for him to want Chancellor if he wants it to make a grand gesture to win Lily (Christel Khalil) back. After all, Aristotle has been doing some digging into Winters, but was that fact-finding mission more about Lily herself?

But with The Young and the Restless writers opting to bring back blasts from the past lately, we have to think that Aristotle's gripe with Victor is both deeply personal and from yesteryear. If writers can bring back storylines involving Cameron Kirsten (Linden Ashby) and Eve Howard (Margaret Mason) via Jordan (Colleen Zenk) and Claire (Hayley Erin), we have to consider that Aristotle could be a member of the Prentiss family.

In the early days of The Young and the Restless, the Prentiss family was one of the core clans of Genoa City and had a corporation that Victor once stole. Lucas Prentiss (Tom Ligon) came up with a scheme to get it back, in which Lorie Brooks (Jaime Lyn Bauer) seduced Victor and convinced him to marry her. Then, right before the wedding, she got Victor to sign over the company to her so she could get it to the Prentiss family. Lucas wound up leaving town, but could he return, still peeved by Victor’s actions decades ago and hoping to go after Victor? Anything is possible.

With summer around the corner, we just hope the real Aristotle surfaces. We don’t want all the mystery surrounding this enigma carrying into the fall.

New episodes of The Young and the Restless air weekdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream on Paramount Plus the next day.