Young & Restless’ Nick and Sharon Newman thought they were well rid of Matt Clark decades ago. But the villain has returned in 2025,

alive and well and rocking his third face. What havoc will he wreak? A look at his past gives a chilling hint of what his future holds in store.

The soap introduced Matt in 1994 with Eddie Cibrian in the role of Nick’s high-school rival. When Sharon chose the Newman heir over her current boyfriend, Matt snapped, raped her and revealed to her new sweetheart that she’d given up a baby when she was 16. (Twins, we’d learn later.)

After Matt was gunned down, he set up Nick to take the fall for his attempted murder. In fact, Victor and Nikki’s son moved from the mansion to the big house until Matt’s subsequent girlfriend Amy Wilson came forward and confessed that she’d been the one to pull the trigger after the walking nightmare had sexually assaulted her, too.

Matt spent four years on the run from the law before returning to Genoa City with a new face, that of Rick Hearst (who’s now General Hospital pot-stirrer Ric Lansing). Unfortunately, the fresh look didn’t come with an adjusted attitude. He got himself a job at Nick and Sharon’s coffeehouse Crimson Lights and set about plotting to rape the object of his obsession again.

While scheming in the background, Matt cemented his reputation as the most horrible character ever to set foot in Genoa City by drugging and raping Tricia McNeil, whose grasp on reality had been tenuous to begin with. When she caught Matt trying to do the same thing to Sharon, Tricia drove the two of them off a cliff with the intention of ending both of their lives.

Matt survived the perilous plunge but barely. With what little strength he had left, he attempted once again to frame Nick for his murder by pulling out his own breathing tube. It took some finagling for Nick to be exonerated, but of course, he did. And ironically he and Sharon could breathe easier knowing thinking that at last Matt was out of their lives for good.

Twenty-five years after Matt’s “demise,” he gave Sharon the shock of her life. As she sought to question Mitch Bacall about son Noah’s accident in L.A., she discovered that Shadow Room club queen Sienna’s husband was none other than a back-from-the-dead Matt, now played by Roger Howarth. Not that the scoundrel would admit he was really Matt!

Sharon and Nick already suspected that Noah’s accident wasn’t an accident. And upon finding out that their son was secretly involved with Sienna, they had to wonder whether the affair had inspired Matt to try to eliminate the competition — permanently.

If there was a chance that Matt had learned his lesson in the years that he’d spent building his new life, it was the same size as the chance of finding a snowball in hell. “If anything, I think his maliciousness has gotten louder and deeper” since faking his death, Howarth tells Soap Opera Digest. “This is a true bad guy.” Yikes.