If you imagined the holiday season in Salem to be gentle with lights and Christmas trees, the new episode proves otherwise.

Sophia Choi – the newly arrived young woman – turned Christmas into a nightmare for Rachel Black, Kristen’s daughter.

Rachel, who was recovering psychologically at Bayview, thought she had found solace when Sophia entered her life as a new friend.

But it was all an illusion. Sophia didn’t come to help – she came to manipulate.

In a breathtaking scene, Sophia gently tells Rachel, “Christmas isn’t a time for forgiveness – it’s a time for repayment.”

From then on, Rachel begins to fall into crisis, as Sophia constantly pressures her to confront “the truth about her mother” – the sins Kristen had concealed. The plot intensifies when Sophia reveals a sinister psychological plot: she wants Rachel to become a tool in her revenge against the DiMera family.

Fans of Days of Our Lives are calling this the “Dark Christmas arc”—the darkest Christmas arc ever. In it, Sophia is portrayed as a “new generation Kristen,” with a sweet exterior but a terrifyingly cold mind. Rachel—a victim of her past and a distorted love—stands on the boundary between good and evil.

The episode ends with Rachel looking straight into the mirror, asking herself: “If my mother’s blood flows in me, can I be any different from her?” A heartbreaking, suffocating moment, bringing to a close a week of darkness in Salem.