Young & Restless Plays the Oldest Trick in the Book — and We’re Here for It! (2024)

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1/16

<p>Rare are the characters who were allowed to grow up with more misapprehensions than Lily. As far as she knew, she was the biological daughter of Lucinda Walsh (nope) and she was an only child (also nope). Only after learning that she’d been given up for adoption by Iva Snyder did Lily discover in the early 2000s that she had a twin, Rose, a showgirl who liked just one thing more than a rhinestone headdress: a good scheme.</p>

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2/16

<p>When the Quartermaines’ sweet-tempered adopted daughter became a victim of the Text-Message Killer in 2007, all of Port Charles wept bitter tears…which suddenly dried upon the arrival in town of her heretofore-unknown twin sister. Unfortunately, Rebecca was counting on looks being deceiving in order to continue her shady life as a con artist. When the schemer took her leave, nobody bothered to shrug, much less weep.</p>

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3/16

<p>It pays to have a spare. After Vivian Alamain’s son with Stefano DiMera met his maker, she was as shocked as viewers in 2020 when manservant Ivan Marais revealed that she had, in fact, had twins all those years ago. Though auto mechanic-turned-businessman Jake didn’t live any longer than sneaky Stefan, Vivian’s period of mourning was especially brief as, this being <em>Days of Our Lives</em>, the OG brother was simply resurrected.</p>

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4/16

<p>Back in 1986, Bob and Kim Hughes’ daughter came home to Oakdale from a trip abroad with much more than souvenir-shop trinkets. She discovered that she had a twin in Sabrina. But while Frannie was as straight an arrow as ever they came, Sabrina was more than willing to bend the truth — to the point that she allowed her newfound sibling’s fiancée to make love to her without disclosing that he had the wrong sister.</p>

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5/16

<p>Though these brothers have never been played by the same actor or looked anything alike, they are nonetheless identical twins. They just didn’t find out until 2017, when hitman Jason came back from the dead to reclaim his life from Drew, who’d mistakenly believed that he was the husband that Sam McCall had mourned. By 2024, Jason and Drew had both made a round trip to the afterlife, with the latter even taking on yet another new face.</p>

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6/16

<p>“What, what, <em>what</em> could have caused Ashley Abbott’s personality to split?!?” wondered her friends and family in 2024. She had a history of mental instability, sure. But this was some next-level [bleep]. Thank goodness she had in her corner Alan, whose psychological training (eventually) prompted him to consider that maybe Ashley had had a run-in with his sociopathic twin, Martin. Had he neglected to mention that he had one of those? Mon Dieu!</p>

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7/16

<p>And you thought <em>your</em> sibling was embarrassing! Jonny Carrera tried to woo Lauren Fenmore (at the time on loan from <em>The Young and the Restless</em>) despite the fact that she’d already run afoul of his twin brother, Rush, a total psycho who was as rape-y as he was unoriginal. Just look at the photos — he copped not only Jonny’s hairdo but his facial hair, too! Weak, bro.</p>

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8/16

<p>Jabot photographer Rick “Blade” Bladeson thought that he’d left his past behind him after letting evil twin Rick drown. (We <em>know</em>, right? And Blade was the <em>good</em> twin!) Unfortunately, it turned out that Rick was harder to sink than a cork, and once he followed his brother to Genoa City, he pulled more switcheroos on sister-in-law Ashley Abbott (then Brenda Epperson) than you’d get from every <em>Parent Trap</em> movie combined.</p>

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9/16

<p>We’d have sworn that scheme queen Amber Moore was one of a kind. Heck, <em>she</em> would’ve, too! So her jaw dropped along with ours in 2003 when she made the acquaintance of lookalike April Knight, the twin sister that mom Tawny had never mentioned she had. And whereas there was no low to which Amber wouldn’t stoop, aspiring singer April charted a course that kept her on the high road.</p>

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10/16

<p>“Anything you can do, I can do <em>badder</em>” was sort of the motto of Shane Donovan’s twin brother, Drew. They both trained at the ISA, but whereas Shane chose to walk the straight and narrow, his ne’er-do-well sibling veered <em>so</em> far from the righteous path that he was recruited as an assassin by no less than Stefano DiMera! Drew was even given a scary, Shakespearean henchman handle: Iago.</p>

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11/16

<p>When Alex Devane was on <em>All My Children</em>, she didn’t seem like much of a conniver at all. But once she joined sister Anna on <em>General Hospital</em>, her true colors shone as brightly as a warning sign, and we came to realize that if one of them had it in her to be a <em>double</em> agent, the other had it in her to be a <em>triple</em>, even a <em>quadruple</em>, agent!</p>

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12/16

<p>Some evil twins aren’t born, they’re made. Case in point: André DiMera, who had his face rearranged to resemble that of his nephew/brother (it’s complicated!) in order to go on a murder spree for puppetmaster Stefano. And while Tony’s candidacy for sainthood seems unlikely —there’s more tarnish on his halo than there is halo! — André is by far the greater of two evils.</p>

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13/16

<p>“What does Marlena have that <em>I</em> don’t?” wondered sibling rival Samantha Evans (played by Deidre Hall’s real-life twin sister, Andrea). To find out, the green-eyed monster swapped places with the shrink — and went so far as to have her institutionalized. But karma bit Samantha hard a few years later when she was mistaken for Marlena by none other than — ack! — the Salem Strangler.</p>

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14/16

<p>You can’t tell from these pictures of Ellen Wheeler and Anne Heche, both of whom won Emmys playing the yin/yang twins, but the Hudson sisters<em>were</em> identical, at least for most of their time in Bay City. Oh, and fun fact: Between <em>Another World</em> stints, Wheeler earned another statuette for her work as Cindy Parker, the ill-fated twin sister of <em>All My Children</em>’s Karen.</p>

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15/16

<p>Their face is just about the <em>only</em> thing that these polar-opposite siblings have in common. Ryan Chamberlain’s a serial killer whose reign of terror in Port Charles has spanned decades; Kevin Collins is a shrink whose greatest sin was keeping it from his friends and family that his brother wasn’t <em>nearly</em> as dead as they slept easier believing.</p>

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16/16

<p>The quintessence of good and evil twins, Adam Chandler was ruthless, remorseless and never slipped into one of his schmancy suits without first sticking a trick up its sleeve; his brother was kind, gentle and always paired his trademark cardigans with a smile that was so open, it might as well have been a welcome mat.</p>