Days of Our Lives Spoilers: Abe Carver Betrays Theo Carver as EJ Alliance Erupts

TL;DR: Abe Carver confesses that he schemed with EJ DiMera to force Theo out of DiMera Enterprises. Theo is gutted, Lexie is dying, and Paulina is already gone. On Peacock, this is the week Abe becomes the villain of two stories at once.

The Confession That Blows Up the Carver House

Days of Our Lives spoilers for Abe Carver land like a gut punch on Tuesday, July 14. Abe sits his son down and admits he cut a private deal with EJ DiMera, the deal that quietly shoved Theo Carver out of the CEO chair at DiMera Enterprises. Abe was not caught. He confessed. That distinction is going to matter to exactly one person in Salem, and it is not the man on the other side of the couch.

Here is the shape of it. Back in the spring, Abe went to EJ and asked for help removing his son from the family business. EJ said yes, because EJ says yes to anything that hands him a lever. Theo stepped down on April 6 believing the choice was his. It was not, it was two men in a room, deciding what a grown man’s life should look like.

The cruelty is in the timing. Theo climbed back in on June 17 as co-CEO alongside Johnny DiMera, and he did it holding Stefano’s estate wishes in his own hands. He looked EJ in the eye and said checkmate, and for one bright minute the honest man was winning in a house built by liars. Now he finds out his own father had been playing the other side of the board since before the game started. If you have been following every move of this arc, you saw the crack in Abe long before Theo did.

Got a take on Abe’s confession? Write to the editor at amber@soapoperamagazine.com and tell us where you land.

What Abe Carver Did, and the Excuse He Is Leading With

Abe Carver’s defense is the oldest one in the book. He wanted to protect his son from the DiMera machine, from the buyouts and the body count and the poisoned wells. Fine. Nobody doubts he loves Theo. But protecting a man does not require sitting down with EJ DiMera and building the exit door together, then watching your son walk through it and thank himself for the idea.

The person who finally forced the truth out was Lexie Carver. Abe told her first, days ago, and she told him to tell his son. A woman who came back from the dead and is quietly running out of time again is the only honest broker left in that family. There is something almost unbearable about that. She got a second life, and she is spending it cleaning up the messes the living made while she was gone.

Why Did Abe Team Up With EJ DiMera Against His Own Son?

Abe says he did it because he believed DiMera Enterprises would swallow Theo whole and he did not trust his son to survive it. That is the answer he gives, and it is probably a sincere one. Here is the part nobody is connecting. That deal was struck in the same window EJ was quietly bringing Lexie back from a grave everyone had visited, and EJ never once told Abe that the two moves were braided together.

Abe thinks he used EJ. Read the sequence again and it looks like EJ used a father’s fear as a handle and turned it. If I know these writers, that reveal is sitting in a drawer with Abe’s name on it, waiting for the worst possible week to open.

The Fallout Lands on Theo Carver, Not on the Man Who Earned It

Theo does not scream. He drinks. Circulating spoiler chatter puts him at the Small Bar and then flat on Stephanie Johnson‘s couch, too far gone to drive and too raw to sleep under the same roof as his father. Abe Carver comes back Friday with an apology in his mouth. Don’t be surprised if it hits a closed door and stays there.

And Paulina Price is standing in the rubble of her own marriage while all of this detonates. Her marriage certificate was revoked on July 9, because Lexie’s death certificate was voided the moment she walked back into Salem alive. The state now says that marriage never happened. Abe took the ring off before anyone made him. My gut tells me Salem is about to decide, loudly, that one man broke two families in a single week, and that he did it while telling himself he was being noble.

Where do you land on this one? Drop your verdict in the comments and let the rest of Salem hear it.

Want more from Salem this week? Head over to our Days of Our Lives coverage for every spoiler as it drops on Peacock.

A Good Man Can Still Wreck His Son’s Life

Here is our take, and we are not softening it. Abe is not a villain. He is worse, because a villain you can hate cleanly. Abe is a decent father who decided he knew better, went behind his son’s back, and picked the single most dangerous partner in Salem to do it with. Love is not a permission slip.

But Theo has a reckoning coming too. He took Stefano’s chessboard and he liked how it felt. Ask us in six months who the DiMeras got. Come argue with us about it on our Facebook page, because this one is going to split the room straight down the middle.