For weeks now on The Young and the Restless, Mariah (Camryn Grimes) has been wrestling with a secret that she refuses to tell anyone.
No matter how hard Sharon (Sharon Case) and Tessa (Cait Fairbanks) press Mariah to share what’s been plaguing her since her return from her European work trip, Mariah has remained tight-lipped about it. She has been so afraid to reveal whatever skeleton is in her closet that she even separated from Tessa.
With all that being said, in The Young and the Restless episode airing on July 8, after a contentious run-in with Tessa, Mariah finds herself alone and distraught when she has a flashback to her infamous time overseas. In the scene, Mariah is straddling the mysterious older man (Michael Swan) on the couch while smothering him with a pillow. It looks as if she kills him.
If that turns out to be the case, then it’s no wonder Mariah is horrified to disclose to her mom and wife what she did. Merely telling them could make them accessories after the fact. However, we wouldn’t count on Mariah necessarily being hauled off to prison in the foreseeable future.
As with many murders on The Young and the Restless lately, there appear to be some interesting twists. For example, it was initially believed Sharon killed Heather (Vail Bloom), but as it turned out, the guilty party was Jordan (Colleen Zenk). Then, when Phyllis (Michelle Stafford) killed Jeremy Stark (James Hyde), she allegedly did so out of self-defense. And Nick (Joshua Morrow) killed Ashland Locke (Robert Newman) in defense of Victoria (Amelia Heinle).
So while Mariah is seen smothering the mystery man, there is likely some twist that hasn’t yet been revealed. Along those lines, as we’ve said in a previous post, we can’t help but think that Ian (Ray Wise) has a hand in Mariah’s developing storyline. While the rest of Genoa City believes he’s dead, viewers know he’s very much alive.
If we had to guess, Ian could be involved in one of two ways here. First, it’s possible that Ian stalked Mariah to Europe, and he orchestrated this whole ordeal to make Mariah believe she murdered a man. Considering Ian worked with Jordan to drug Sharon and make the Crimson Lights owner think she killed Heather, who’s to say Ian didn’t enact a similar scheme with Mariah and this man?
It’s also possible that Mariah didn’t see Ian alive and well necessarily, but while in Europe, she was suffering from Ian PTSD. We can’t forget, it wasn’t that long ago when Ian tortured Sharon and killed Heather, and Mariah felt responsible for all the chaos that he unleashed.
Given the mystery man is an older gent, we think it’s conceivable that as she was knocking back drinks with him, at some point the PTSD and alcohol led her to believe that the man was Ian, and she killed him. After the deed was done, Mariah then found herself stunned by what she had done. This is a plausible homicide defense for Mariah.
Again, this Ian theory is just that. However, we’ll have to wait and see how this storyline unfolds.
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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