“Sophia wasn’t at Bayview for the summer theater program!” – EJ

I love a deranged femme fatale on my daytime dramas. The parallels to horror and exploitation films within their dramatic arcs are often inescapable…and often very, very fun. 

Of course, controversies abound.

In fact, you can count Days of our Lives‘ Kristen DiMera, General Hospital’s Esme Prince and The Bold and the Beautiful‘s Luna Nazowa among the soap villainesses who have resorted to revenge porn and rape while putting their various diabolic plans into motion. This past year, Days‘ Sophia Choi (Rachel Boyd) also joined this perverted coterie when she sent inappropriate pictures of a drunken Holly, her sworn rival, to Johnny, their film studies professor. 

Even once her crimes were discovered and she was sent away to the show’s infamous mental facility, Sophia continued her demented manipulations. Besides pretending that her traumas, which included giving birth to her son in her childhood bedroom with no assistance, had rendered her mute, she eventually found a way to torment her favorite frenemy again. 

Pretending to apologize, Sophia stole a bottle of skin supplements from Holly (Ashley Puzemis), replacing them with her anti-psychotic meds. She also roped the young and unwitting Rachel, a fellow patient, into her madness.

That might have been her biggest mistake. Rachel’s mother, the above mentioned Kirsten DiMera (Stacey Haiduk), deviously set a trap for the psycho-in-training upon her release. Pretending to take the younger woman under her wing, she convinced her to kill Johnny (Carson Boatman), her brother’s beloved son, in a calculated attempt to avenge herself against her frequently duplicitous sibling.

Of course, ever unreliable Sophia decided to augment Kirsten’s easily achievable death-by-gunfire, instead deciding to torture Johnny and then blow him up. 

Planting a fake suicide note, she then swung off to start her new life. Of course, angry Mama Bear DiMera didn’t offer up the promised getaway money, but, in retaliation, conked Sophia on the head and threw her into Salem’s murkiest waterway.

 (& that was even before Kirsten discovered that Johnny had survived his pernicious assault. Imagine what she would have done if she had known that?!?!)

Since then, Sophia has only made a ghostly, Bava-like appearance to Kirsten in her dreams. 

Thus, it seems, unlike many a Salemite, that this mini-demon has actually sloughed off her mortal coil. 

Thankfully, Boyd, who has done surprisingly sympathetic work in the role, has true star power and is sure to pop up elsewhere, waterlogged hair or not, very soon.

Let’s just hope that said role involves no stolen bra pics – a sentiment fully endorsed by this show’s ever vulnerable, yet surprisingly resilient Holly!