What Happened to Reed on THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS
Reed Hellstrom isn’t on THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS regularly anymore so when the character pops up for a visit, it’s understandable if some viewers aren’t completely up on his history in Genoa City. After a series of twin babies, the character was played by child star Max Page from 2009-2016. In January of 2017, Y&R aged Reed into a teenager, and Tristan Lake Leabu took over the role until April 2018, earning a Daytime Emmy Award nomination for his work along the way.
Reed was born in 2007 to Victoria Newman, but it wasn’t until after his birth that they confirmed that J.T. Hellstrom was his father. However, a few years later, the couple divorced and J.T. fought for custody because he didn’t want Reed to grow up under the influence of Victoria’s father, Victor. Unfortunately, Victoria was arrested for murder just before the hearing, and she lost custody, even though she was later cleared. When J.T.’s fiancée, Mackenzie Browning, got a job offer in Washington, D.C., they moved away from Genoa City and took Reed with them.
In 2017, Reed returned home now grown into a teenager. He’d run away from home because J.T. wanted to move to Warsaw, Poland. He wanted to live with his mother, but Victoria reminded him his father had custody. In the end, Reed was allowed to remain with his mother, and he attended school and developed a budding relationship with Mattie Ashby. Although that hit a sour note when he drove drunk and Mattie refused to keep his secret, landing him in a whole mess of trouble.
J.T. returned to Genoa City as well, looking to reunite with Victoria and Reed was thrilled at the idea of having his family back together again. Reed and his father also bonded over their shared love of music. But J.T. had his own secret plans, and was also abusive towards Victoria. After J.T. tried to kill Victor, he got violent with Victoria and Nikki accidentally killed him trying to protect her daughter. The women buried the body and covered up the crime, leaving Reed to believe that his father had abandoned him.
Distraught, Reed made the decision to go to boarding school and get away from all the drama in Genoa City. He promised to get his life together and come back one day, and with his father missing and presumed dead, he soon came home to get to the bottom of the mystery. While driving a drunk Charlie home from a party in a snowstorm, Reed accidentally hit Nikki and feared he had killed his grandmother. Thankfully, Nikki recovered, but the young man was stunned to learn at J.T.’s memorial service that his father had been abusing his mother!
Thankfully, J.T. was discovered to be alive and his recent violent behavior caused by a brain tumor, but Reed still struggled with the fact that his mother helped cover up his father’s presumed death and after J.T. went to prison, the young man returned to school. However, with his mother’s stabbing at the Newman anniversary party, Reed once again returned for another visit to support her.
Stay tuned to see if Reed ever comes back again!
