‘The Young and the Restless’ Reveals Major Recasting

There’s another major cast shakeup on The Young and the Restless.

After making his debut on Thursday’s episode of the long-running CBS soap opera, the true identity of Billy Flynn’s Aristotle Dumas has been revealed, and he’s a familiar character.

Although it was previously confirmed that Flynn would be portraying the mysterious Aristotle Dumas, the character revealed to Lily (Christel Khalil) after going through a maze that he was her ex-husband, Cane Ashby. The character, originated by Daniel Goddard in 2007, marks a return to Y&R following Goddard’s departure in 2019. Flynn, known for his role as Chad DiMera on Days of Our Lives, admitted to TV Insider that he was initially in the dark when having discussions with executive producer and head writer Josh Griffith.

“I didn’t really know what I was going to be doing at the time,” Flynn said. “Josh gave me the breakdown of character, and I was like, ‘Yeah, that sounds awesome. Let’s do that.’ And then it wasn’t until a little bit of time later that I was like, ‘Can you tell me more?’”

Once the cat was out of the bag, Flynn did a lot of homework, saying he “started watching old stuff, but that was really hard because I’m not Daniel.” He continued, “So, I read Wikipedia pages and fan pages. I have 25 pages of Cane and Lily’s entire history printed out. I keep it in my bag.”

“It starts with, ‘Lily Winters, who divorced Daniel Romalotti, and Cane Ashby, recently divorced from Amber Moore, first met in 2007, to an instant chemistry,’” Flynn explained. “So, it goes way back. I did that just to know what significant moments were, to know that Valentine’s Day is very significant for them. You’re a new person, and you’re going to be playing a different written version of that person, but I wanted to have that history.”

It was announced in March that Billy Flynn would be leaving Days of Our Lives after 11 years to hop over to The Young and the Restless. His final episode on Days won’t be airing until sometime in 2026. At the time of his announcement, his role on Y&R wasn’t revealed. The series was keeping a lot of it under wraps, obviously for good reason. What things will look like now that it’s been revealed that Cane is back is unknown, but fans will just have to tune in to new episodes of The Young and the Restless weekdays on CBS.