What Was the Point of Cole’s Death on Young and the Restless?

Why bring the character back to kill him?

Cole died with Victoria by his side.

Cole Howard died on the Thursday, July 3 episode of The Young and the Restless. J. Eddie Peck had played the character on and off since 1993. But the character had been on the canvas even earlier, back in 1980, when the boy played by N.P. Schoch was known as Charles… and he was thought to be the son of Victor Newman.

Luckily, that turned out to be untrue, and paved the way for Cole and Victoria’s romance… and the eventual discovery of their previously believed to be dead daughter, Claire.

Back Together

The revelation that Claire (Hayley Erin) was the long-lost Eve Nicole also brought Cole back to Genoa City, where he and Victoria (Amelia Heinle) kind of rekindled their romance… albeit off-screen.

But, at long last, Claire had the parents she’d always wanted, Victoria and Cole had their daughter, and they were the happy family they’d always wanted to be. (Victoria’s other kids, Reed, Johnny [Paxton Mishkind], and Katie [Sienna Marino], could either love it… or get shipped back off to boarding school.)

So everything was great, if not particularly exciting. And then Cole died. Um… what?

Set Up

What was the point of bringing Cole back to Genoa City and the reunion with Victoria if he was just going to be written off again, this time for good? If the writers didn’t want to include Cole in the fun, why not just ship him back to England, keep him in reserve in case they finally thought of something to do with him?

Cole’s death wasn’t even particularly romantic. It, too, happened primarily off-screen.

Rebound

Maybe Cole’s death is supposed to drive Victoria back to Nate (Sean Dominic) — they did have a sweet scene earlier in the week — and drive Claire away from Kyle (Michael Mealor) and into Holden’s (Nate Owens) arms — the latter two also connected over her random, out of the blue anxiety attack (so Jordan [Colleen Zenk] didn’t drive her to palpitations, but this did?).

But was Cole’s death necessary? Both of those things could have happened without the blink and you missed it demise. So what was the point of any of it?