Now that John’s funeral has wrapped, we’re getting back to the rest of Days of Our Lives drama. And there is plenty of it to go around in the Kiriakis household! Sarah’s ready to start talking to Xander about Victoria, but, as she made clear on today’s episode, it’s under her terms.
The problem is, no matter how indignant she is, she still finds it tough not to get pulled back into Xander’s charm and his… unique way of looking at things. She even admitted to Maggie that a part of her agrees with Xander blaming her for what hypothetically happened to Philip.
When we spoke with Paul Telfer and Linsey Godfrey a little while back, we asked if Sarah did actually feel at all responsible for what happened to Philip and her marriage.
“Yes,” Godfrey admitted carefully, “there’s a part of Sarah that’s very much like, yes, she had a hand in the ending of this relationship. But I think there’s also this other part of Sarah that’s like, ‘I was scared to tell you what Phillip did because I was scared you were gonna hurt Phillip because you almost murdered Brady and here you are almost murdering Philip!’
Sarah’s sure she was right in her fears. “She was scared Xander was gonna do something,” Godfrey exclaimed, “and just because Xander thinks that he wouldn’t have hurt Philip, Sarah’s like, ‘Well, that’s ridiculous! You had no attachment to him, of course you would have! I think you didn’t kill him because you were attached!'”
Of course, whether that attachment is enough to save Philip a second time is up in the air, seeing as how Xander ended Friday’s episode standing over him with a pillow…
“There’s this element of Sarah where she’s like, ‘Yeah, I technically did something wrong,'” shared Godfrey. “And that, I think, is hard for her. But also, you have to remember that her moral compass, which is her mama, also didn’t think that she really did anything wrong and was going along with it!”
But that doesn’t mean Xander’s way of looking at things doesn’t get to her. That takes us right back to Sarah admitting to her mom that she’s worried about her estranged husband’s pull. “I think for Sarah,” Godfrey teased, “you’ll definitely down the line see her say to Xander, ‘You’re gaslighting me! You are gaslighting!'”
He simply refuses to acknowledge he’s done anything to Philip, which lets him stay on his high horse with Sarah and light into her about lying to him, while playing the victim. Everyone knows he did it, but he will not admit a thing. As Telfer put it, “She’s fallen off the pedestal with her lies and now he’s seeing her anew.” And he will not let her forget it.
“It’s funny watching the fans react to things and their morality play out,” Telfer added. “Like what they expect for the characters. The vast majority of fans are correctly very angry at Xander for letting himself down and Sarah down, Victoria down – all of that. But there are still a cohort of fans who are like, ‘Well, she did lie to him!’ As if that’s somehow worse!”
Xander’s lied, beaten, kidnapped, stolen, let Sarah get attached to a baby that wasn’t hers only to have it ripped away… Somehow, he always gets a pass, while Sarah’s being savaged for not telling him about Philip.
“It’s so funny for how mad everyone is at Sarah, but not for Xander for all of the countless lies,” Godfrey laughed. We suppose that’s part of Xander’s staying power. But if he keeps going too far down this dark path (watch out, Philip!), that may eventually change. Hopefully, though, there’s a path back to redemption for both characters – at least in the fans’ eyes, even if they’ll never look at each other the same again.
