Cole Howard died on the Thursday, July 3 episode of The Young and the Restless. J. Eddie Peck had played the character on and off since 1993. But the character had been on the canvas even earlier, back in 1980, when the boy played by N.P. Schoch was known as Charles… and he was thought to be the son of Victor Newman.
Luckily, that turned out to be untrue, and paved the way for Cole and Victoria’s romance… and the eventual discovery of their previously believed to be dead daughter, Claire.
Back Together
The revelation that Claire (Hayley Erin) was the long-lost Eve Nicole also brought Cole back to Genoa City, where he and Victoria (Amelia Heinle) kind of rekindled their romance… albeit off-screen.
But, at long last, Claire had the parents she’d always wanted, Victoria and Cole had their daughter, and they were the happy family they’d always wanted to be. (Victoria’s other kids, Reed, Johnny [Paxton Mishkind], and Katie [Sienna Marino], could either love it… or get shipped back off to boarding school.)
So everything was great, if not particularly exciting. And then Cole died. Um… what?
What was the point of bringing Cole back to Genoa City and the reunion with Victoria if he was just going to be written off again, this time for good? If the writers didn’t want to include Cole in the fun, why not just ship him back to England, keep him in reserve in case they finally thought of something to do with him?
Cole’s death wasn’t even particularly romantic. It, too, happened primarily off-screen.
