Mother Load
Three shocking deaths rock Salem in a can’tmiss week of DAYS.
This week on DAYS, viewers will finally see how Adrienne died, along with Haley’s untimely demise, what happened with Kristen and Brady’s baby, Sarah and Eric’s and so much more.
Previews Head Writer Ron Carlivati, “We kind of always knew from the moment we did the time jump that we would set a full week on the air in one night in the past and the audience could really sink in and watch that whole day and night unfold, not in little bits and pieces, but all at once.”
The scribe has spent the past few months laying the groundwork for the powerful tales. “We knew that we wanted to set up these mysteries and let them unfold slowly over time,” he explains. “We also knew that some of these things are interconnected. So, revealing one will actually kind of reveal something about another related story, or maybe even a seemingly unrelated story. All of the pieces kind of fit together. We had to pick and choose our moments very carefully of when to reveal them. We talked about holding it to February sweeps but it really wasn’t holding, and we decided January would be the best time to do it and set the stakes for what happens in
February sweeps. If we could have a lot of big reveals in January, that would be satisfying to the audience. We realized that just showing a re-created flashback here or there would not be satisfying because so much stuff happened on one particular day in Salem.”
This one particular day is Mother’s Day, which has major ramifications across the canvas. “We sort of set everything up in the present and then on this mother of all weeks, we reveal what happened,” says Carlivati. “When we calculated the night that Sarah and Kristen would have had their babies, it would have been in May based on how pregnant they were before we did the time jump, and so we decided Mother’s Day was the perfect time to set this whole thing, to have two women about to be mothers. We have Sonny and Will and Justin celebrating Mother’s Day with Adrienne, we have Sarah celebrating Mother’s Day with Maggie, we have a Mother’s Day at Marlena’s house with Brady bringing Kristen over, which you can imagine is a lot of fun. We’ll see all of Mother’s Day play out and what happened that night that these babies were born, what happened to Adrienne, what happened to Haley. This is a monumental day in Salem
and so much happens. You really need to watch this week because you’re going to see it all unfold in a very dramatic fashion.”
Carlivati concedes that it isn’t going to be the most uplifting viewing experience. “It wasn’t until we went to thread it all together that we really realized that it all was happening on one night,” he notes. “In some ways, it was set up that way because the stories are connected, but on the other hand, it didn’t really sink in on me or the writers that we’d have three deaths in the space of one night. It’s very exciting, but I have to sort of warn people up front that it’s very tragic. I mean, obviously, they’ve been aware of these deaths since the time jump, but to see it all play out, it is very moving and it is very tragic. There is a lot of excitement. But it does solve a lot of mysteries and so, in a lot of ways it will be, I think, very satisfying for the audience.”
And it doesn’t signal the end of the story, he adds. “One of my
“This is a monumental day in Salem and so much happens.”
favorite things about it also is that there are so many satisfying reveals and answers to questions that the audience has been asking,” Carlivati says. “We definitely also have held back one or two big things that connect to this story that are still to be revealed. So, just when you think at the end of this week you know everything, there are one or two big mysteries yet to be told.”