We hate to brag, but we told you so. After months of dealing with The Young and the Restless mystery of who’s behind Aristotle Dumas, in the episode airing on June 20, the big reveal occurs, and it’s Cane Ashby, now played by Billy Flynn.
Of course, we can’t call ourselves surprised as we’ve been speculating that Cane was Aristotle for a while, given the timeline of Aristotle’s emergence and his fascination with the Winters family and Chancellor.
The big unveiling happens at Aristotle’s big shindig at his Nice summer home. After most of Aristotle’s invited guests complete the maze he had them navigate through, Amanda (Mishael Morgan) pulls Lily (Christel Khalil) to the side and says that Aristotle would like to introduce himself to her before he makes his debut to the rest of the Genoa City residents present. A skeptical Lily follows Amanda until they reach Cane, who has his back to Lily. As soon as Amanda leaves, Cane turns around, and Lily is left completely stunned.
At first, she assumes Cane is just crashing the party. But then he insists that he’s actually Aristotle and has been using the alias to become a billionaire tycoon (in six years). Apparently, he wanted the allure of Aristotle to be separate from his actual identity as Cane.
Lily becomes furious with all the stunts Cane has pulled and the deception. When she asks if he forced their twins to lie about his “double life,” he's adamant he didn’t. She understandably wants more of an explanation for all of this, and he tells her she’ll get one, but after he shows his face to his other party guests first.
A fuming Lily storms off to try and reunite with Devon (Bryton James) and Damian (Jermaine Rivers), but she gets lost along the way, causing her to panic. When she screams for help, Devon and Damian come to her rescue, and she tells them all about Cane. Both men are left flabbergasted.
Fast forward to the end of the episode, and Cane appears in front of the rest of the partygoers, and everyone is shocked except for Victor (Eric Braeden). Apparently, he already knew Cane was Aristotle.
Having said all of that, we can’t help but think Cane has one surprise in store for Victor that he didn’t see coming. After all, with Victor being a masterful tactician and ruthless businessman, if Cane really is after Chancellor, he’s going to need one heck of a plan to get it.
Fueling our hunch that Cane has a big reveal for Victor in store is the following preview/behind-the-scenes clip. In it, Adam (Mark Grossman) pops up in France to join the Newmans. He wasn’t originally invited, and he had no plans on going to Europe, but he made the trip to deliver some important information he’s learned about Aristotle that Victor’s “not going to like.”
So what could Cane have waiting for the Newman patriarch? We can’t say. However, with Chance (Conner Floyd) also arriving in Nice soon, perhaps Cane was able to gather evidence to prove Victor committed a crime in Genoa City (or Cane is framing Victor for a crime), and Chance is there to haul Victor to prison.
We also can’t rule out the possibility we raised weeks ago that Cane somehow was able to get a foothold into Newman Enterprises. Cane attacking Victor’s crown jewel is actually brilliant if he’s able to use the attack as leverage to get Victor to begrudgingly part ways with Chancellor.
For now, even with Cane revealing himself as Aristotle, we’re left with more questions than answers about his motive and future intentions.
New episodes of The Young and the Restless air weekdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream on Paramount Plus the next day.
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