The final adventures of the Rauch-era feature political intrigue in the fictional country of Mendorra, which has been wreaking havoc on Llanview citizens for years.
Meanwhile, Gabrielle's mother Julia Medina (Linda Thorson), who is every bit the schemer her daughter is, sets her sights on snaring Clint.
Making things even more complicated is Viki’s opponent, Herb Callison, whose campaign is managed by newly returned Dorian (now played by Elaine Princi).
So Sarah, Bo, Megan, Cord, Spring Skye and company travel to Badderly, but the situation turns dangerous as the gang realize that the island is infested by mobsters.
Meanwhile, Carlo’s son Johnny Dee Hesser is stalking Tina (now played by Karen Witter) and insists that the baby she is carrying is his, not Cord’s.
Reverend Andrew Carpenter (Robert Krimmer) harbors a crush on Megan, and risks his life going to Jaba to rescue Jake just in time for husband and wife to have one last moment together.
Max is so smitten with Blair that he barely notices his business partner Luna Moody (Susan Batten), who co-owns the Serenity Springs Spa with him.
Kevin Buchanan (Kirk Geiger) has a son Duke by LeeAnn Demerest (Yasmine Bleeth) and falls under Asa’s corrupting influence.
Kevin turns over a new leaf though, thanks in large part to the influence of a new love interest—Rachel Gannon (Ellen Bethea), and allows LeeAnn to leave town with Duke.
Joey’s new best friend Billy Douglas (Ryan Phillippe) comes out of the closet and is at the center of a major town scandal:[1] wild child Marty Saybrooke (Susan Haskell) spreads rumors that Rev.
For a time, she mistakenly believes that she herself was the hit-and-run driver who ran Bo’s car off the road (she had blacked out that night due to stress from the tumor.)
Bo and Nora fall in love, and the two "rockin' oldies" fans are eventually married by none other than Little Richard (who is an ordained minister in real life).
After getting drunk at a college fraternity party, she is gang-raped by Todd Manning (Roger Howarth) and his two fellow frat brothers, Zach Rosen (Josh Philip Weinstein) and Powell Lord III (Sean Moynihan), Kevin Buchanan's cousin.
Todd is eventually sentenced to prison, but fools a naïve Christian missionary girl, Rebecca Lewis (Reiko Aylesworth), into thinking he's changed.
Dorian's lawyer, Nora, finds conflicting evidence from a Lord family butler who says he saw Tina's mother, Irene Clayton, fleeing from Victor’s room just after he died.
Yet, she is saved by a handsome young man named David Vickers (Tuc Watkins) who claimed to witness Irene murder Victor.
Dorian, free from jail, seeks revenge in an unusual way—she seduces Viki’s son Joey (SORAS-ed yet again and played by Nathan Fillion).
David’s fraud (and Tina's complicity) is the latest in a string of stressful incidents for Viki—divorcing Clint, Dorian’s seduction of Joey, Sloane’s death—that finally take a toll on her psyche.
Angel Square is overrun by gangland drug war violence, and mayor Alex Buchanan wants to raze the whole place to put up an arts center (named in her honor).
Cristian’s older brother Antonio Vega (Kamar De Los Reyes) is in jail, although Bo arranges to have him pardoned in exchange for his help ending the gang wars.
An extremely controversial character, Todd is, however, allowed to mend fences with Marty, form a sibling bond with Viki, and even reconcile and remarry Blair (who is again pregnant by him) before being presumed dead and written out.
She marries Luna Moody's brother Dylan (Christopher Douglas), but her heart truly belongs to Irish poet Patrick Thornhart (Thorsten Kaye).
Also, Drew’s mother Becky Lee Abbott (Mary Gordon Murray) returns to town, but acts remarkably different than the character had in the past.
Days of Our Lives star Crystal Chappell was brought in amid much fanfare to play Maggie Carpenter, Max’s new love interest.
While Blair's new pregnancy was written because actress Kassie DePavia (née Wessley) was pregnant in real life, it left a sticky situation for the characters to resolve.
Desperate to keep custody of their other child Starr, Todd marries Tea Delgado (Florencia Lozano), his lawyer, but a woman he barely knows, to make a fake family life.
Phelps hired many actors she had previously worked with to play Llanview characters—Mark Derwin, Kale Browne, John Bolger, Timothy Gibbs.
Moments like Todd punching Tea in the face and Nora sleeping with her former lover Sam to give her sterile husband a child provided some powerful drama, but to many viewers, came at the expense of character integrity.
Meanwhile, beloved teen heroine Jessica (Erin Torpey), who had worried about whether or not she wanted to sleep with boyfriend Cristian, loses her virginity during a drunken night with stepbrother Will Rappaport.
Eventually Megan McTavish took over writing chores and created a series of dark storylines involving mobsters, the search for Asa's real son, and tortured love triangles (Kevin/Kelly/Joey; Blair/Max/Skye).