Young And Restless Shocker: Colleen Zenk And Ray Wise Return As Jordan And Ian!
As Young and Restless viewers learned watching the last moments of the Thursday, November 14 episode, Ray Wise and Colleen Zenk’s villainous alter egos, Ian Ward and Jordan Howard, are back on the Genoa City scene. The two have been working together, seemingly to ruin lives, and setting up Phyllis and Sharon. It begs the question — were they, and not Sharon, the ones truly responsible for Heather’s murder?
Double Trouble
Sharon’s initial blackout was the first clue that she may not be guilty of having killed Heather. When she knocked Heather down, Heather was a little shaky but there wasn’t any blood. The next thing Sharon knew, she had blacked out and Heather was dead, bleeding from her head. From there, Sharon set about framing Daniel, Heather’s grieving lover, to make it appear as though he was her murderer.
Fast forward to this week, when Phyllis got a text from “Sharon.” But viewers saw evidence that Sharon — who was with her daughter Faith and couldn’t find her phone — was likely not the originator of the text. As Phyllis was in her car driving, she kept receiving more and more texts from Sharon’s phone. Sharon also got behind the wheel, and both women were in their respective vehicles when headlights blinded them into veering off the road. Phyllis was hurt badly enough to require medical care at the hospital.
Opposite that, a woman let herself into a hotel room and told the mystery man inside that everything went according to plan. The woman was revealed to be Jordan — and the man she was talking to was revealed to be Ian!
Y&R has yet to reveal the connection between Jordan and Ian, or how the two criminals managed to regain their freedom, but both characters have a long legacy of wreaking havoc across the Genoa City landscape.
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid
Ray Wise, who got his soap start playing Jamie Rollins on Love of Life and made an indelible mark on the macabre prime-time soap Twin Peaks as Leland Palmer, first joined the show back in 2014 as Ian, who, per a newly recreated backstory, had seduced impressionable Nikki back when she and Paul joined the cult he led. Nikki believed that Ian was the father of her long-lost son, Dylan McAvoy, and even though Ian knew this couldn’t be true (he was sterile), he enjoyed toying with Nikki and made an enemy of Victor Newman, Nikki’s devoted husband. He was also linked to Mariah, Sharon’s secret daughter, who he raised in the cult, and at one point, he kidnapped her and drugged her into marrying him. That sent him to jail, with Wise wrapping his first stint. In 2015, the actor received a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Performer for his work as Ian.
And before long, Wise was back — and this time, Ian was in cahoots with Adam, who was then posing as Gabriel Bingham. Using the alias Fred, he befriended Phyllis, and before being carted back to prison, he revealed to Phyllis that “Gabriel” was actually Adam. Of his first return stint, Wise enthused to Soap Opera Digest, “I was hoping [a reprisal] would happen and it did, so I’m very excited about that. I have to say I wasn’t really surprised. I’d like to think that having me back was the plan all along. It was certainly a wonderful working situation when I was here before. It’s a great group of people and I was always hoping I would be brought back again.”
Wise returned again when, dressed as the devil, Ian infiltrated the costume ball at Top of the Tower and set the building on fire (to get back at Victor, he said). Victor destroyed Paragon, Ian’s dangerous computer virus, and was sent back to prison. And a few months later, when Victor was shipped off to jail for kidnapping Jack and replacing him with look-alike Marco, he wound up in Ian’s orbit once again. Ian agreed to testify in court to help Adam prove that Victor had framed him for Constance Bingham’s murder, but when he realized Adam was not going to help him escape, he took Nikki and Phyllis hostage. Once again, he wound up behind bars. Now he’s back. The actor spoke about his return to Deadline. “I had a great time when I last appeared on the show and am having an even better time now with the talented, Colleen Zenk,” the actor said. “I look forward to the mischievous Ian Ward causing more havoc in Genoa City. Stay tuned, it’s going to be a whole lot of fun.”
Speaking of Zenk, the beloved As the World Turns alum (ex-Barbara Ryan) was introduced on Y&R in November of last year as Aunt Jordan, the sister of the late Eve Howard (Victor’s former secretary, ex-lover and Cole’s mother) and raved to Digest about how welcoming the Y&R cast had been to her. “This company has just opened their arms to me and brought me into the fold; I did not know if that would happen or not because I’m a New York actor,” she noted. “I’ve never worked out here before and the way that they have treated me has just been so lovely. In all these years of working in soaps, I’ve never had a conversation with Melody [Thomas Scott, Nikki] but it’s just been fabulous working with her and Eric [Braeden, Victor]. And Hayley [Erin, Claire] has really been fun.”
Like Ian, Jordan stirred up trouble aplenty for the Newmans. Jordan had secretly stolen Cole and Victoria’s newborn daughter from the hospital, and while they mourned the baby they were told had died, Jordan raised the young woman, Claire — and poisoned her against her family of origin. With Claire as her accomplice, she terrorized the Newmans for months (taking hostages, forcing Nikki off the wagon), but this past June, Victor turned Jordan over to the police (after keeping her hostage in a makeshift prison cell in his wine cellar, of course). Zenk also spoke with Deadline. “Jordan is lucky enough to have Ian Ward by her side and she settles some unfinished business while also finding the time to take on some new adversaries as well,” teased the actress.
Are you excited to see the troublemakers back in action? Sound off in the comments below!
Conversation
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