Six Years Later: Matthew Atkinson’s Bold & Beautiful Debut Sets the Stage for Thomas’ Shocking Comeback!

On March 15, 2019, Ridge and Taylor’s son got the ultimate makeover.

Six years ago today, The Bold and the Beautiful revealed its fourth Thomas Forrester: soap vet Matthew Atkinson, who had already made waves as Summer Newman’s ill-fated first husband Austin Travers on The Young and the Restless. But it wouldn’t be until a little bit later in the actor’s run that we’d come to realize that the change wasn’t merely a cosmetic one. The Thomas who returned to L.A. was very different from the one who had left…

Going Dark

During Adam Gregory and Pierson Fodé’s stints as Taylor and Ridge’s son, the character was played mostly as an ab-tastic nice guy. Once Atkinson was tapped to take over, however, the show began revisiting the instability that had been a hallmark of Drew Tyler Bell’s run. (Remember Thomas blowing up stepnemesis Rick’s car?)

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Atkinson rose to the challenge and then some. He even managed to make sense of Thomas’ misdeeds, which have run the gamut from gaslighting his own son to framing stepmother Brooke for calling CPS on him. “I don’t think this guy is a bad guy,” he told Michael Fairman. “He is doing a lot of bad things, but a lot of people can relate to him and the struggles that he is dealing with: being a single father and having a rough childhood with his family being broken up.

“[Thomas] wants his father to approve of him and respect him, and he has never really felt that way,” he added. “Everybody knows what it is like to think that they are making the right decision and end up making the wrong decision… and the kind of shame that you feel from doing something like that. This makes Thomas an interesting character where viewers could say, ‘Well, I don’t agree with anything that he is doing, but I can relate to him, and I want him to be better.'”

More: All of Bold & Beautiful’s comings and goings

A New Beginning

Despite his litany of sins, Thomas was given (yet) another chance to start over by Hope. She not only let him resume designing for Hope For the Future, she surrendered to temptation and embarked on a red-hot love affair with him. In fact, the two of them would still be going strong today were it not for her refusal to accept any of his many proposals of marriage. But that old flame could be relit in a heartbeat upon Atkinson’s return after being dropped to recurring status.

Though when Thomas left L.A., he was intent on tying the knot with Paris, he still hasn’t. Strange, isn’t it, considering how eager he was to jump on the marry-go-round with Hope. We suspect that his feelings for his ex are altogether unresolved, meaning that if he came back to town just as Hope’s rebound relationship with Carter Walton was going bust — and it’s about to — he wouldn’t be able to resist reuniting with her, whether she agreed to exchange vows or not. That twist would lead to another, one that would leave Thomas at odds with his whole family, who despises Hope since she encouraged Carter to steal Forrester Creations out from under them in the first place.