Young & Restless Preview: Summer Is About to Go All ‘Phyllis’ — and Possibly Reunite a Couple of Exes in the Process (2024)

Image: CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection

1/18

<p>When Phyllis Summers first hit Genoa City, she had about as much to do with Nick Newman as Victor would a discount store. She was busy scheming left, right and center to live happily ever after with Christine Williams’ stolen husband, pop star Danny Romalotti, whom she’d tricked into thinking was son Daniel’s biological father.</p>

Image: Cliff Lipson/CBS/Courtesy of the Everett Collection

2/18

<p>Prior to catching fire with Phyllis, Nick was caught up in a tempestuous marriage to the former Sharon Collins. The couple was tested time and again, by his infidelity with Grace Turner, by the revelation that she’d had a daughter in high school — hi, Cassie! — by the fact that she had gotten pregnant with son Noah. But miraculously, the Newmans had passed every test.</p>

Image: John Paschal/JPI (2)

3/18

<p>One fateful night, Cassie made the terrible decision to try to score points with crush Daniel by driving the drunken dreamboat home from a party. Not even having a license, she crashed and ultimately succumbed to the injuries that she sustained. Thinking that Daniel had been behind the wheel, Nick wanted his head on a platter. Or, at least, being struck over and over again by his fist.</p>

Image: Aaron Montgomery/JPI

4/18

<p>When the truth came out that Daniel had not driven, much less driven drunk, Nick was at a loss. Unable to direct his rage at the boy any longer, Cassie’s father became utterly consumed by his grief over her death. As he and Sharon pulled apart instead of together, he soon, he found himself dulling the ache in the arms of, of all people, Daniel’s mother.</p>

Image: Brian Lowe/JPI

5/18

<p>No sooner had Nick and Sharon resolved to stay together after all than Phyllis discovered that she was pregnant. Complicating matters — as if they weren’t complicated enough! —she couldn’t be sure whether the father was Nick or her <em>other</em> lover, his former stepfather Jack Abbott. #awkward</p>

Image: Brian Lowe/JPI (3)

6/18

<p>Following Nick and Sharon’s divorce, he and Phyllis eloped to New Mexico. Back in Genoa City, she gave birth during an ice storm while trapped in an elevator with Jack. (What are exes for if not to lend a hand, huh?) Ultimately, she and Nick decided to take inspiration from her surname and christen their newborn Summer.</p>

Image: Aaron Montgomery/JPI

7/18

<p>Although Nick managed to survive a plane crash, neither his shirt nor his memories of Phyllis were so lucky. So when he returned to Genoa City, he could only recall being in love with Sharon, who by then — just to make things extra uncomfortable — was married to Jack. Once Nick’s head was screwed back on, he and Phyllis reunited just in time for the long of the law to wrap itself around the scheme queen.</p>

Image: Aaron Montgomery/JPI

8/18

<p>As many plots as Phyllis had hatched over the years, she should have known that crime costs as much as it pays. Nevertheless, she couldn’t resist blackmailing Brad Carlton with her knowledge that he’d cheated on Nick’s sister Victoria with Sharon. As a result, she wasn’t just arrested, she was arrested on the day that she and Nick were retying the knot.</p>

Image: Sean Smith/JPI

9/18

<p>Short of give up wine, we can’t imagine anything that we’d like to do <em>less</em> than start a magazine with our spouse, our ex and our ex’s new significant other. Yet that was what Nick and Phyllis did when they teamed up with Sharon and Jack to run <em>Restless Style</em>, which as far as we could tell, was like <em>People</em>, only just <em>People in Genoa City</em>.</p>

Image: Brian Lowe/JPI

10/18

<p>Time and time again, Phyllis forgave Nick. When his thoughts strayed to Sharon. When his lips strayed to Sharon’s. Even when the rest of him strayed to Sharon, too. And Phyllis might have kept right on giving her husband second chances, had he not pulled the plug on “Phick” to reunite with his high-school sweetheart.</p>

Image: Brian Lowe/JPI

11/18

<p>Nick and Sharon were happily rebuilding their life together and even expecting a child when Summer fell into a coma. Rather than simply support her partner through this, Sharon lied that Jack was her babydaddy so that Nick could be there for Summer. (What?!?) He went back to Phyllis but their rematch had about the life expectancy of that avocado that you bought when it was already pretty ripe.</p>

Image: Howard Wise/JPI

12/18

<p>It’s a good thing that Phyllis looks great in green, because that was most definitely the color that she turned when Nick took a shine to sibling rival Avery Clark. And by “took a shine to,” we obviously mean “started a hot-and-heavy affair with.” They might’ve even married if her old flame hadn’t come back from the dead — and without RSVPing to the wedding, either!</p>

Image: Howard Wise/JPI

13/18

<p>After Nick confessed that he’d known for years that Jack and not he was Summer’s father, Phyllis overheard Sharon admitting that she’d switched the paternity-test results way back when. A tussle on a flight of stairs ensued — and that’s <em>never</em> a good idea! — and before you could say “thunk,” Phyllis had more than fallen, she’d fallen into a coma that turned her into Gina Tognoni.</p>

Image: Sean Smith/JPI

14/18

<p>Just as Sharon was about to remarry Nick, Phyllis awakened and made tracks to the ceremony. Unfortunately, her memory of what had transpired was hazy at best. So rather than pursue Nick anew, she got involved with and subsequently again engaged to Jack.</p>

Image: Howard Wise/JPI

15/18

<p>Even without an assist from Maury Povich, the question of Summer’s paternity was eventually answered definitively: Nick was Supergirl’s dad. Which made it a lot less ick-inducing when Summer (then Hunter King) was flirting with Jack’s son, Kyle.</p>

Image: Howard Wise/JPI

16/18

<p>In the years that followed, Nick and Phyllis fell into new affairs. She cheated on Jack with his brother, Billy. Nick got seriously involved with half brother Adam’s “widow,” Chelsea Lawson. But the exes kept being drawn back to one another. They even had a deal-breaking one-night stand right before he was set to exchange vows again with Sharon.</p>

Image: Howard Wise/JPI

17/18

<p>Want a “Phick” reunion? All you ever have to do is be patient, and the show will get there. Alas, Nick and Phyllis’ next stab at happily ever after was no more successful than their previous ones. He didn’t like having rival Jack hovering around, and his significant other (now Stafford again) didn’t like Nick’s family. At all. So they went their separate ways once again.</p>

Image: Howard Wise/JPI

18/18

<p>In the wake of Nick’s split from Sally Spectra and Phyllis’ attempt to win back Danny after all these years, the old flames seemed poised to catch fire once more. Nick had been royally pissed when Phyllis had let him, Summer, <em>everybody</em> think that she was dead. But not so pissed that he wouldn’t still flirt with her like it was his true calling.</p>