Days of Our Lives Shocker: Sophia Is Alive as Rachel Boyd Returns

Apparently, death remains more of a suggestion than a permanent condition in Salem. Days of Our Lives is bringing Sophia Choi back from the dead this week, with Rachel Boyd returning to the role after viewers were led to believe the troubled teen had met a very different fate earlier this year.

Even better, Sophia’s reappearance puts her directly in the path of the woman who thought she had gotten rid of her for good: Kristen DiMera. Boyd officially returns in the Friday, October 9 episode, when Kristen, played by Stacy Haiduk, comes face-to-face with Sophia in Paducah, Kentucky.

Sophia isn’t exactly hiding in a secret DiMera dungeon somewhere, either. She is alive, apparently well enough to be working as a waitress at a local diner, and about to give Kristen the surprise of her life.

Sophia Choi Is Very Much Alive

Sophia was presumed dead in May after her increasingly dangerous storyline collided with Kristen. Kristen attacked Sophia, knocked her unconscious and pushed her into a river, leaving everyone to believe Sophia had died.

Kristen later disappeared from Salem, but her return this week brings her all the way to Paducah and directly to the person she presumably never expected to see again. That makes Sophia’s return more than another standard soap resurrection because Kristen is the reason Salem believes Sophia is dead in the first place.

The two characters being reunited immediately puts Kristen in an extremely dangerous position. Sophia being alive also raises a much bigger question: where has she been all this time? If she survived Kristen’s attack, someone may have helped her after she was pulled from the river. Sophia could also have deliberately stayed away from Salem, especially considering everything that happened before her disappearance.

Whatever the explanation, she has had months to live a completely different life while the people back home believed there was nothing left to find.

Rachel Boyd Returns to DAYS

Rachel Boyd joined Days of Our Lives as Sophia in 2024 and quickly became part of the show’s younger generation. Sophia’s story eventually grew considerably darker, particularly through her complicated history with Tate and Holly and the fallout surrounding her pregnancy.

What initially looked like another teen storyline gradually became something much more dangerous as Sophia made increasingly desperate choices. Her apparent death seemed to close the door on the character, but this is Days of Our Lives, so we probably should have known better. Boyd’s return gives the soap the opportunity to pick up several unresolved threads surrounding Sophia while also throwing another grenade into Kristen’s already complicated life.

Kristen DiMera Is Back Too

Stacy Haiduk also returns as Kristen this week after last being seen in Salem earlier this year. Haiduk has recently been pulling double soap duty after returning to The Young and the Restless as Patty Williams, but Kristen is back on DAYS just in time to discover that one of her biggest problems never actually went away.

Kristen finding Sophia before anyone else is probably the worst possible scenario for both of them. Sophia knows what Kristen did, and Kristen knows Sophia can expose her.

The last time they were together, Kristen believed she had made sure Sophia would never tell anyone anything again. Now she is standing right in front of her, which immediately raises the question of whether Kristen will panic and try to silence Sophia again or whether Sophia has something completely different planned.

What Happens When Salem Learns the Truth?

Sophia's survival could eventually hit several characters at once. Her relationships with Tate and Holly were already messy before her disappearance, and anyone who mourned or reacted to Sophia's supposed death is about to learn that the entire situation was built on a lie.

Then there is Kristen. If Sophia tells the truth about what happened between them, Kristen could find herself answering for considerably more than another one of her usual Salem schemes.

For now, though, the secret belongs to the two women standing in that Paducah diner. Sophia Choi is alive, and Kristen DiMera just found out the hard way that Salem's dead rarely stay that way for long.