We’re remembering Nicole Walker now that she’s said goodbye to Salem on the July 29th episode of Days of Our Lives.
She and Eric got a happier ending than expected, which included some flashbacks to when they first reunited in 2013.
It’s a sad day for those of us who have been Nicole fans, especially knowing the behind-the-scenes reason for her departure. Still, she left behind a legacy of great, soapy drama that will be remembered for years to come.
Nicole and Eric left town at the end of a long storyline involving their partners using the couple’s baby to keep them from reuniting.
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Over the past month or so, the couple has quickly learned that baby Jude is Nicole’s, not Sloan’s — and Eric’s, not EJ’s.
After these big reveals, EJ got nasty, refusing to grant Nicole a divorce, “forgetting” to file the paperwork for Eric’s divorce from Sloan, and threatening to tell Holly that Eric had killed Daniel.
Nicole and Eric thus decided to move together to Paris, where Eric had an offer to work as a photographer that he had been planning on turning down until this happened.
Although Nicole has been worried about her daughter ever since Holly’s overdose, she agreed to let Holly stay in Salem with Maggie.
Holly apologized for her rebellious and unloving behavior at Nicole’s going away party.
Everyone else wished Nicole and Eric well before they went off into the sunset, implying that they will finally have their happily ever after.
Nicole and Eric’s happy-for-now ending put a cap on a story that has been going on for over 20 years.
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One of Nicole’s first storylines, when she was 25 years old, involved her relationship with Eric.
We’ve been remembering Nicole Walker was a spitfire back then.
She came to town as a troubled young woman who had recently escaped her abusive father and met Eric (then played by Jensen Ackles) while working as a waitress in the Java Cafe.
Nicole and Eric fell hard for each other, but unfortunately, Kate Roberts had other plans.
Kate’s son Lucas was embroiled in a bitter custody dispute with Sami over custody of his son, Will, and needed to be married to bolster his case.
Thus, Kate, who fit the tired TV trope of the meddling mother to a T back then, paid Nicole $5 million to break up with Eric and instead marry Lucas.
Lucas was not innocent in this scheme. He’d been pursuing Nicole for a long time despite her lack of interest and was working with Nicole’s sister, Taylor, to keep Nicole and Eric apart.
The money was more than Nicole had ever had in her entire life, and she gave into temptation, breaking Eric’s heart.
However, this ended in disaster, with Sami and Nicole working together against Lucas and Lucas ultimately developing a drinking problem after he and Nicole divorced.
After losing both Eric and Lucas, Nicole set her sights on Brady, who was then played by Kyle Lowder. (In real life, Zucker and Lowder were married soon after Zucker left Days of Our Lives.)
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Nicole wanted Victor’s money but had feelings for Brady, so she used Jan Spears to help fake Victor’s death so that she could become a wealthy widow.
She also tried to permanently disfigure Chloe, who Brady did not know was alive, so that he wouldn’t choose Chloe over her.
(When remembering Nicole Walker, it’s important to realize that she was as villainous in her early episodes as the people who wronged her in recent years, if not worse!)
Nicole was supposed to be working with Sami, but Sami exposed her instead and Brady was so angry he cut all ties with Nicole.
Thus, Nicole left town for about two years, though she returned in 2008 with a story about still being legally married to a not-at-all-dead Victor Kiriakis.
This plunged her into EJ’s orbit for the first time.
EJ has always been portrayed as both abusive toward Nicole and one of the great loves of her life, leading to a twisted love triangle that usually involved Sami as well.
Many fans were remembering Nicole Walker switched babies after a miscarriage once, making her condemnation of Sloan and EJ seem hypocritical.
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Nicole and EJ had a one-night stand in an elevator, leading to Nicole getting pregnant.
Unfortunately, she had her first miscarriage soon after EJ moved her into his home, and became fearful that EJ would leave her if she wasn’t carrying his baby.
Nicole not only faked her pregnancy but secretly adopted baby Grace, who was Chad’s, and switched her with Sami’s baby, whom she named Sydney, so that EJ could raise his child.
Sadly, Grace died, and Nicole’s scheme unraveled when Chad wanted custody of his “daughter.”
While Nicole’s scheme was exactly the same as Sloan’s, she wasn’t completely hypocritical in her condemnation of Sloan and EJ because she did prison time when the truth came out.
So far, neither Sloan nor EJ have faced any consequences for their actions other than Nicole’s wrath.
Although Nicole did dishonest and illegal things, her behavior stemmed from a past that could have easily been an episode of Law & Order: SVU.
When she first came to Salem, an ex-boyfriend tried to blackmail her away from Eric by threatening to expose the fact that she had been a teenage porn star.
However, that was only part of the story. Nicole’s father had drugged her consistently to stop her from being able to resist and made her film porn movies.
She eventually told Eric the truth, and he was supportive (although in recent years, he used her porn history against her when mad at her!).
However, she didn’t get justice until after her father had raped Jan Spears.
Jan tried to kill him and failed, but Nicole finished the job, confronting him in the hospital and then killing him in self-defense when he tried to strangle her.
It was hard to accept Nicole and EJ’s love this time around after remembering Nicole Walker was so scared of EJ Dimera that she tried to hide her second pregnancy from him.
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Both Daniel and Rafe stepped up to pretend to be the father of Nicole’s baby.
She didn’t want EJ to know about it because she knew he was violent and could turn evil at a moment’s notice.
Unfortunately, Nicole lost the baby at eight months.
This storyline was a seriously missed opportunity, as the circumstances of the miscarriage were so suspicious that EJ could have easily hired someone to make Nicole think her baby was dead to get revenge.
Of course, the soap partially made up for this omission by having Sloan steal Nicole’s baby and make her think he was dead.
Still, it would have been a powerful story had it happened with her previous baby, and I spent most of the rest of her run waiting for her to discover her son was alive.
Shortly after the baby’s death, Eric returned to Salem, and Nicole fell hard for him despite his being in the priesthood, leading to a weird love triangle in which Nicole was competing with God.
Nicole tried to fight her feelings while working with Eric at the church.
Then Kristen Dimera drugged and raped Eric — something that came out in the most horrible way when Victor tricked Marlena into displaying a video of the event at Brady and Kristen’s wedding.
Nicole and Daniel worked together to prove Eric had been drugged rather than having betrayed his vow of celibacy so that Eric could return to the priesthood.
However, Eric began a relationship with Nicole in the meantime and she became afraid he’d leave her for the priesthood if he could, so after finding proof he had been drugged, she shredded it.
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Eric and Daniel found out eventually and both rejected her.
Eric seemed to have a hard time remembering Nicole Walker had given up her negative behaviors after falling for him again and berated her about the shreds incident for years.
This set a negative pattern for their relationship throughout the rest of their run.
The shredding storyline ruined Nicole’s friendship with Daniel as well as her relationship with Eric, and for a while she went on an endless apology tour before she and Daniel forgave each other and they became lovers.
This led to a story where Eric, who started drinking because he had lost Nicole to Daniel, caused an accident that left Daniel braindead in a seemingly unnecessary character death.
However, there was a silver lining:
Nicole soon learned that Chloe had agreed to be a surrogate for her and Daniel and was carrying Nicole’s daughter.
Nicole was finally a mother, but that wasn’t the end of the drama.
Chloe wanted to keep baby Holly, leading to a custody battle, and Nicole and Brady ran away to Canada with the baby for a while.
After Daniel’s death, it’s worth remembering Nicole Walker tried to move on past Eric and vice versa.
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At one point, Eric thought Nicole had died in a warehouse fire, only for her to be alive and blackmailed into a relationship with Xander.
He broke up with Jennifer (a pairing that never made much sense!) when he learned Nicole was alive.
But it turned out the real Nicole was being held hostage by Kristen, who was wearing a mask that turned her into a perfect doppelganger. (Yes, really.)
Nicole and Eric eventually married, only for Eric to disappear to Africa for over a year and then berate Nicole for a one-night stand with Xander while he was gone.
Nicole tried to move on with Rafe, which was incredibly heartbreaking because they were my one true pairing but were sacrificed for Nicole to have an affair with Eric — only for him to dump her after five minutes when he blamed her for his ex-girlfriend Jada having an abortion.
That made this all-too-happy ending harder to accept, because remembering Nicole Walker telling Eric that their love was not real and only nostalgia for the past made it seem like this couldn’t last either.
With the relationship being conveniently moved off screen, it’s hard to tell if it was worth the wait for Ericole fans.
What do you think, Nicole fans? Was her ending satisfying or too rushed? What’s your favorite Nicole storyline? Hit the comments and let us know!
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