Salem has seen it all. Murders in the manor. Manipulations in the boardroom. Takeovers that begin with a signature and end with a body. But this time, the devil isn’t hiding in the details — he’s hiding in the question mark.

In what feels like the show’s deepest descent into Gothic family noir, Kristen DiMera — played with chilling precision by Stacy Haiduk — is reportedly laying the foundation for her most dangerous move yet. And the target board, according to whispers from inside the Kiriakis mansion and our own speculative dissection of the drama, has exactly two names on it: EJ DiMera and Johnny DiMera.

The question that’s keeping Salem on edge is this: which one will she ask Xander Cook Kiriakis to take out?

Let’s break down the psychology, examine the alibis, and wade into the glorious chaos of both possibilities. Because in Salem, murder is never just murder. It’s a statement. A final punctuation mark on a chapter someone has decided is ready to close.

The Setup: A Mother’s Wrath Reimagined

Kristen’s current state of mind isn’t simply revenge — it’s a masterclass in narcissistic injury dressed up as maternal heroism. She has convinced herself, deep down in the marrow of her bones, that EJ destroyed her daughter’s future. Never mind the glaring truth that Rachel Black — her own daughter — literally pulled the trigger. Never mind that Rachel pointed a gun at her uncle and fired.

In Kristen’s reconstruction of reality, EJ’s survival is the crime. Let that sink in for a moment.

Rewind the tape. Rachel, already exhibiting troubling behavior, already walking a path littered with red flags, helped kidnap Ava Vitali at a mansion called “Remed” — an eerie detail the show loves to drop because it spells “DiMera” backward, a breadcrumb trailing straight into the family’s dark heart. And then Rachel shot her uncle. EJ, in a move that stunned even his harshest critics, stood up in court and vouched for her. He told the judge it was an accident. He protected her. He shielded her from the consequences of her own actions.

Kristen’s response? She blames him for everything that led up to the shooting.

Specifically, in Kristen’s fractured ledger, the real crime was EJ making Rachel’s grandmother — Rachel Blake — disappear. That erasure, she believes, is what triggered her daughter’s spiral. Not the kidnapping. Not the weapon in her daughter’s hands. Not her own years of parenting in the shadows. No. EJ’s scheming. EJ’s machinations. That’s the root of all evil.

Brady in the Crossfire

And where does Brady Black fit into all this? Right in the middle, as always. Caught between his daughter’s trauma and his ex’s bloodthirsty vendetta, Brady is watching helplessly as Kristen crosses every line she can find. But he doesn’t know the worst of it yet. Because Kristen has decided that the only solution to this problem is a permanent one.

Enter Xander Cook Kiriakis. Fresh off his reformation arc. Riding high as a newly minted Kiriakis with a bank account to match and a grudge against EJ that never fully cauterized. He’s the perfect weapon — a man with a conscience that flickers but hasn’t fully caught flame, and enough history with the DiMeras to make the ask believable.

Option One: Kill EJ — The Poetic Shot

EJ is the obvious choice. The clean emotional shot. He’s the brother who outmaneuvered her at every turn. The district attorney who once prosecuted her nanny. The living, breathing face of DiMera Enterprises — the empire she believes stole Rachel’s stability by erasing her grandmother from the picture

Killing EJ would be classic soap opera symmetry. Fratricide wrapped in a sibling war decades in the making, ending in a body bag on a marble floor. Why would Kristen choose this path? Symbolic justice. EJ made Rachel Blake vanish. In her mind, his blood is the only currency that settles that debt.

Option Two: Kill Johnny — The Gut Punch

But what if she chooses Johnny instead? That’s not revenge — that’s a message written in a language only a DiMera could read. Johnny is EJ’s son. Killing him wouldn’t just wound EJ — it would hollow him out. It would be the kind of loss that doesn’t heal, the kind that rewrites a man from the inside out.

If EJ is the head of the house, Johnny is the future. And Kristen, cornered and calculating, might decide that destroying the future is the only way to make the