On Days of Our Lives, the DiMeras keep waking up in the family crypt like fate got bored and hit repeat. First Tony. Then Kristen. Then Chad. Then Theo. Four people, same stone box, same stale air, same bad luck. Salem’s above them, living life as usual, but down in that crypt, something else is happening — something the show almost dares you to recognize if you’ve ever fallen down a black-and-white rabbit hole late at night.
The pattern and vibe aren’t random
The setup started simple: Chad’s voice echoing off concrete, Theo insisting logic still works, Kristen treating misery like it owes her money. Tony was asleep before the next wave hit. They argued every angle — EJ did it, EJ didn’t do it, someone else wants the inheritance messier — but the rhythm under all that bickering had a strange hum to it. Escape room pressure. The kind of space where nobody remembers how they got in, and nobody believes the exit is real.
You could feel it sharpen once they tried stacking themselves into a human ladder. One wrong shift, one wobble, and Kristen hit the ground hard. The whole thing fell apart fast, not because the plan was ridiculous, but because the show wanted you to look at the structure. Three people, scrambling upward, falling right back into the same place. Something about the repetition felt familiar in a way the characters couldn’t name.
And then Theo picked up the candle holders and said exactly what the moment needed: use the tools in front of you. It pushed everything into a different gear — less panic, more purpose — and that’s when the episode quietly tipped its hand. DAYS wasn’t just doing another DiMera meltdown. It was staging a modern riff on a decades-old television puzzle that also trapped five strangers in a sealed cylinder and made them fight to understand why.
The homage was subtle but obvious
Look at the beats. A cramped chamber. A group of personalities that shouldn’t work together but have no choice. No real sense of time. A ladder attempt that fails because the ceiling is just barely out of reach. A blunt, almost disappointing thud when the plan collapses. DAYS reproduced it with soap-opera texture, but the bones of the moment — no pun intended — came straight from The Twilight Zone episode, “Five Characters in Search of an Exit.”
(SPOILER ALERT) The parallels land harder once Theo digs into the floor and hits something human. That’s when the room stops being a holding cell and starts being a question mark. In the TZ episode, the characters didn’t know they weren’t human but dolls in a trash bin, trying to find their way out of an impossibly circular place. They even tried doing the whole human ladder thing to get out, but were simply not high enough to reach the edge…and freedom.
Here, the DiMeras know too much. They know the history in the walls. They know how many secrets were built under their feet long before any of them were born. The bone is the tilt. The break in the loop. The reveal that this isn’t just captivity — it’s legacy gnawing back.
Kristen’s ankle, Chad’s frustration, Theo’s quiet focus — they’re playing the energy of the dolls trying to climb out of the can, except DAYS flips it. No snowy orphanage. No bell ringing overhead. Just a family grappling with their own mythology and realizing the room they think they understand might not actually be theirs.
And that’s the point the show leaves you with. A trapped group. A rigged space. A missed exit. A wink to the audience that knows its television history. DAYS buried the Easter egg right in the middle of an escape attempt, and if you blinked, you might’ve missed the most fun nod the show has slipped in all fall.
Days of our Lives can be seen weekdays on Peacock.
Edited by Michael Maloney