DAYS BRATS Rachel Black & Sophia Choi: Salem’s MOST PSYCHOTIC Friendship BLOSSOMS at the SANITARIUM! Isn’t THAT Tenders?

TWO TRAUMATIZED KIDDOS BOND OVER SECRETS AND MANIPULATION IN A PSYCHIATRIC FACILITY — BECAUSE THAT’S TOTALLY HEALTHY

TL;DR: Days of Our Lives is serving up what might be the most DISTURBING friendship in soap opera history when Rachel Black and Sophia Choi bond at Bayview Sanitarium. Rachel not only shot her uncle EJ DiMera, she tried to kill Sarah Horton with pistachio-laced ice cream, which was just RUDE. Because since when does a nutty nut used a nut-flavored ice cream to try and take someone out? But we digress. She is now in Bayview for long-term psychiatric treatment. And you can bet she’s scheming.

It’s at Bayview that Rachel encounters Sophia, who’s been faking a catatonic state after having a breakdown over giving up her baby. The winter spoilers revealed Sophia’s ability to speak is part of a sinister scheme, and instead of, you know, THERAPY and HEALING, these two troubled kids are going to team up and keep each other’s secrets. FABULOUS idea! What could POSSIBLY go wrong? Salem has a long history of creating child villains, but watching two deeply traumatized girls enable each other’s worst impulses at a psychiatric facility is next-level dysfunction. Even for Days of Our Lives.

Rachel’s Bayview Transfer: A Heartbreaking Necessity

Let’s start with the genuinely tragic part of this storyline—Brady Black having to leave his ten-year-old daughter at Bayview while she screams and begs him not to abandon her. That scene is going to be ABSOLUTELY gut-wrenching, and Eric Martsolf is probably going to rip our hearts out with his performance. Of course, he let her do anything she wanted to do, which is part of the problem, but we won’t go there right now. Rachel needs serious professional help after everything she’s been through: remembering that she accidentally shot EJ, watching her mother go to prison to protect her, and spiraling so badly that she tried to murder Sarah with pistachios. Why couldn’t it have been Rocky Road?!

The decision to send Rachel to Bayview’s pediatric wing is the RIGHT call. She’s too dangerous out in the real world. This child has been acting out in increasingly dangerous ways, and Brady can’t handle this level of psychiatric crisis on his own. Rachel needs intensive therapy, medication management, and round-the-clock supervision from mental health professionals who can actually help her process her trauma and learn healthy coping mechanisms. As in kindly don’t try to kill others.

But here’s where Days of Our Lives takes a hard left turn from “realistic mental health treatment” into “soap opera chaos”—because instead of focusing on Rachel’s recovery and healing journey, the show is setting up Rachel to bond with Sophia, who is ALSO deeply troubled and actively manipulating everyone around her. These two dumplings have a lot on common!

And once a bed opens up in Bayview’s adolescent ward, Rachel will be transferred there for inpatient treatment. And that’s when she’ll encounter the LAST person a vulnerable, traumatized child should be spending time with: Sophia! Who apparently forgets she can’t talk and…talks.

Do you think Rachel and Sophia’s friendship will help or hurt their recovery? Email [email protected]with your thoughts on this disturbing pairing!

Sophia’s Fake Catatonic State: The Con That Fooled Everyone

Here’s where this storyline gets REALLY twisted. Sophia Choi has been pretending to be in a catatonic trance after her breakdown over giving up baby Trey for adoption to Johnny and Chanel. Everyone in Salem—including her mother Amy, Aaron Greene, and Holly Jonas—genuinely believes Sophia can’t communicate or interact with the world around her. They’ve been visiting her at Bayview, sitting with her in silence, desperately hoping for ANY sign that she’s still in there. Aaron even brought Ari Horton to visit Sophia, praying his presence might trigger some kind of response.

Except SURPRISE! The winter spoilers revealed that Sophia can talk perfectly fine. In fact, we bet she’s a regular Chatty Cathy who’s been FAKING this entire catatonic state the whole time. And when Rachel arrives at Bayview, Sophia doesn’t just reveal her secret—she actively recruits Rachel into her scheme. When Tate mentioned to Rachel that Sophia couldn’t talk, Rachel arrives expecting to find a girl in a vegetative state. Instead, Sophia greets her, speaks clearly, and then makes a shushing motion—asking Rachel to keep their secret interactions hidden from everyone else.

Let’s think about what Sophia is actually DOING here. She’s faking a severe psychiatric condition to avoid taking responsibility for her actions and facing the consequences of her choices. She lied about Tate being the father of her baby, she manipulated the entire situation with the pregnancy, she gave up her child for adoption, and now instead of dealing with her grief and guilt in therapy, she’s playing everyone for fools while they waste emotional energy visiting her comatose bedside.

Poor little lamb. Who’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Because this is SOCIOPATHIC behavior. Sophia is watching people who care about her suffer while she pretends to be unable to respond. That takes a special kind of cruelty and calculation that goes way beyond typical teenage drama.

The Most Dangerous Friendship in Daytime Television

Now let’s talk about why pairing Rachel and Sophia together is such a spectacularly BAD idea. These are two deeply traumatized girls – one older and one a pre-teen who shouldn’t even be bonding with someone who just had a baby –who both have demonstrated patterns of manipulation, deceit, and dangerous behavior. Instead of being separated and given individualized treatment plans, they’re being put together where they can enable each other’s worst impulses.

Rachel has already shown she’s willing to:

• Shoot someone (even if accidentally)
• Attempt murder via allergen exposure
• Manipulate situations to get what she wants
• Target anyone she perceives as a threat to her relationship with her parents

Sophia has demonstrated she’s capable of:

• Elaborate long-term deception
• Faking severe psychiatric conditions
• Manipulating multiple people simultaneously
• Lying about paternity and pregnancies
• Maintaining a facade for extended periods

Put these two together and you get a POWDER KEG. Sophia is essentially teaching Rachel that manipulation and deception are viable strategies. Not that Rachel didn’t write THAT book long ago. But she’s also showing Rachel you can fake your way through psychiatric treatment, that keeping secrets is more important than healing, and that other people’s feelings don’t matter as long as you get what you want.

The winter preview makes it clear this “friendship” is going to involve “concocting some plan” together. What plan could two troubled teenagers in a psychiatric facility possibly be cooking up? Nothing good, that’s for certain. Are they planning to escape Bayview? Are they scheming against the staff? Are they plotting revenge against people in Salem? Whatever they’re planning, it’s going to undermine their treatment and make both of them MORE dangerous, not less.

What plan do you think Rachel and Sophia are cooking up? Drop your theories below!

Salem’s Long History of Creating Child Villains

Days of Our Lives has a TERRIBLE track record when it comes to child characters. Instead of writing realistic, age-appropriate storylines about teenagers dealing with normal problems, Salem keeps creating mini-villains who commit serious crimes and engage in adult-level manipulation. The show has cycled through multiple generations of children who:

• Commit felonies before they’re old enough to drive
• Manipulate adults with sophisticated psychological tactics
• Engage in schemes that would challenge experienced con artists
• Face virtually no real consequences for their actions

Rachel Black is following in the footsteps of previous child characters who were written as unrealistically evil rather than troubled kids who need help. At ten years old, Rachel has already:

• Held Ava Vitali captive
• Convinced Thomas DiMera to target Cat Greene
• Shot EJ DiMera
• Attempted to murder Sarah Horton
• Repeatedly manipulated her parents

And she was probably still playing with Barbies at the time! This isn’t a realistic portrayal of a troubled child—this is a mini-supervillain origin story. And now the show is pairing her with Sophia, who at barely eighteen has demonstrated manipulation skills that would make veteran soap villains proud.

The problem is that Days of Our Lives doesn’t seem interested in exploring the psychological reality of what would cause children to behave this way, or what actual treatment and recovery would look like. Instead, the show uses these young characters as plot devices to create chaos and drama, without considering the message it sends about mental health treatment and troubled youth.

What This Storyline SHOULD Be (But Won’t Be)

If Days of Our Lives were actually interested in telling a meaningful story about troubled teenagers in psychiatric treatment, here’s what the Rachel/Sophia storyline could explore:

For Rachel:

• The trauma of accidentally shooting someone and the guilt that comes with it
• Processing her mother’s imprisonment and feeling responsible
• Learning healthy ways to express anger and fear instead of violence
• Understanding that her parents’ relationship issues aren’t her fault
• Developing empathy for people she’s hurt, including Sarah

For Sophia:

• Grieving the loss of her baby and the adoption
• Taking responsibility for her lies about paternity
• Understanding why she felt the need to manipulate situations
• Processing her feelings about Tate, Holly, and the love triangle
• Learning to communicate honestly instead of through deception

But that’s NOT what we’re getting. Because that would be BORING! So instead, the winter spoilers make it clear that Sophia is going to encourage Rachel to keep her secret about being able to talk. This immediately establishes their relationship on a foundation of deception and manipulation. Sophia is literally the WORST possible influence for Rachel right now, and vice versa.

The fact that Bayview’s psychiatric staff apparently doesn’t notice that Sophia can talk or that these two are conspiring together raises serious questions about the competence of Salem’s mental health professionals. Are there no security cameras? No staff observations? No therapy sessions where someone might notice Sophia responding to stimuli? This is a psychiatric facility, not a sorority house—there should be professional oversight preventing exactly this kind of situation.

The Inevitable Disaster This Friendship Will Cause

Here’s what we can expect from the Rachel/Sophia alliance based on the winter spoilers and Days of Our Lives track record:

Phase One: The Secret Friendship Rachel keeps Sophia’s secret about being able to talk. They bond over their shared experiences of loss, trauma, and feeling misunderstood. Sophia probably positions herself as Rachel’s only true friend who “gets it,” isolating Rachel from potential positive influences and actual treatment.

Phase Two: The Plan The winter preview explicitly mentions they’ll “concoct some plan” together. This could involve escaping Bayview, seeking revenge against people they blame for their situations (Sarah? Johnny and Chanel? Tate and Holly?), or some other scheme that will inevitably blow up spectacularly.

Phase Three: The Betrayal Because this is Days of Our Lives, one of these girls will eventually betray the other. Either Sophia will use Rachel to accomplish her own goals, or Rachel will reveal Sophia’s secret when it benefits her. Trust among manipulators never lasts.

Phase Four: The Consequences Both girls will face some kind of fallout from their schemes, but knowing Salem, the consequences will be minimal and short-lived. They might get transferred to different facilities or face additional restrictions, but they certainly won’t face the kind of real-world legal and psychiatric consequences that would actually result from their behavior.

Of course, this storyline could have been an opportunity to show what real psychiatric treatment looks like for troubled teenagers. Instead, Bayview is being portrayed as basically summer camp where the kids can scheme and plot without meaningful supervision or intervention. Ruh Roh, Scooby! We smell trouble. As in diabolical, scheming, psychotic naughtiness no one will believe. Because they’re too easily manipulated by these young ladies’ method acting.

Should Brady pull Rachel out of Bayview if he discovers what’s happening? Share your thoughts below!

The Bigger Picture: When Will Salem Learn?

This Rachel/Sophia storyline is symptomatic of a larger problem with how Days of Our Lives handles mental health, trauma, and child welfare. And we love it! Because realistic mental health treatment takes a backseat to drama and shocking plot twists. So instead of healing, we’re going to watch two troubled young ladies make each other WORSE by trading their favorite manipulative tricks while the adults in Salem remain oblivious until something terrible happens.

And when Rachel and Sophia’s inevitable scheme explodes and causes chaos in Salem, everyone will act shocked and wonder how this could have happened. Here’s how: you put two manipulative, traumatized teenagers together in a facility with apparently zero oversight and let them plot freely. What did we THINK was going to happen?

So buckle up, Days of Our Lives fans, because the Rachel/Sophia friendship is going to spell DISASTER. And not the entertaining kind of disaster—the kind that makes you wonder if anyone involved in writing this show has ever actually spoken to a mental health professional or a traumatized child. This friendship isn’t heartwarming or healing—it’s a ticking time bomb that’s going to explode all over Salem while we all watch in horrified fascination. We should be appalled. Instead, we’re here for it ALL!

WATCH THIS: Is Rachel the worst of the worst?