Jack Deveraux is a fictional character from Days of Our Lives, an American soap opera on the NBC network, most famously played by Matthew Ashford since 1987. He is a member of the Johnson family and first appeared in 1987. Ashford is the third actor to play in the role, and appeared regularly from 1987 through 1993 and from 2001 to 2006, with a few minor breaks in between, in addition to a small guest stint in 2007. In September 2011, after a four-year absence, the character returned to reconnect with his estranged family. His return was short-lived when it was announced that Ashford had been let go, last appearing on August 15, 2012, when the character was killed off in an elevator shaft. From 2016 to 2017, Ashford reprised the role for several guest-appearances; he returned full-time on December 28, 2018. The character has also been portrayed for lesser stints by Mark Valley, Steve Wilder, and Jon Lindstrom.
Many of his storylines have included his relationship with Jennifer Horton, which has made up one of the soap's most popular supercouples. They have two children together, Abigail Deveraux and JJ Deveraux, in addition to a grandson, Thomas DiMera and a granddaughter Charlotte DiMera, through Abigail. He recently discovered to have another daughter, Gwen Rizczech. One of the character's well known plots have been his fake deaths which occurred between 2003 and 2012, where he was presumed dead four times.
Casting
Mark Valley portrayed the role of Jack from 1994 to 1997.
At the character's inception in 1987, the role was played by Joseph Adams from April 10 to July 17, by James Acheson from July 21 to October 26, and by Matthew Ashford from October 30 onward.[1] Ashford went on to play the role through October 29, 1993,[2] reappearing from February 5, 2001, to October 27, 2003, and June 22, 2004, until September 21, 2006, with a guest appearance on April 2–4, 2007, and again from September 23, 2011, until August 15, 2012. Ashford later took a brief absence from the series from October 2003 to June 2004 where he would appear as a special guest star on One Life to Live.
Ashford was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in 2012. During Ashford's absence, the role of Jack was played by Mark Valley from October 28, 1994,[3] until September 26, 1997, and by Steve Wilder from September 26, 1997, through June 5, 1998.
On November 30, 2015, it was announced that Ashford would briefly return to the soap; he appeared on May 24, 2016.[4][5][6] Ashford also briefly appeared on June 20, 2016, August 5, 2016, and August 23, 2016. He made another on-off appearance on December 21, 2017.[7][8] Ashford returned full-time at the conclusion of the December 28, 2018, episode.[9]
In December 2020, it was announced Jon Lindstrom—the real-life spouse of Cady McClain—would step-in as Ashford's body double for scenes between Jack and McClain's Jennifer.[10] He aired on December 30 of that year.
Characterization
Charming, manipulative, heroic, clever, selfish, arrogant and self-loathing all at the same time, antihero Jack Deveraux is one half of Jack and Jennifer, one of Days of our Lives' most popular supercouples. Although he entered the story as an outright villain wedging himself violently in between another popular supercouple, Steve Johnson and Kayla Brady, Jack eventually grew to establish himself as a core main character in the Days mythos through his passion, outrageous sense of humor, redemption, and undying love for heroine Jennifer Horton.
The character has been a frequent winner of Soap Opera Digest Awards, including Outstanding Villain, multiple wins for Best Love Story (with Jennifer), Best Wedding (also with Jennifer) and Outstanding Comic Performance. Ashford was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in 2012.
When Jack came to Salem, he was hoping to reconnect with Kayla Brady, the woman he'd met a couple of years prior in Hawaii and couldn't get out of his mind. He had Hodgkin's disease, but he was in denial about its severity, and tried to hide the symptoms plaguing him. However, that couldn't last long. Once he was hospitalized because he was no longer in remission, his father, wealthy Senator Harper Deveraux, hired Kayla to be Jack's nurse. Jack let Kayla know he loved her, and he told her that her love gave him the will to live. Unbeknownst to Jack, he was adopted; his real name was Billy Johnson, his mother was the family's former maid Jo, and his birth brother was Kayla's boyfriend, Steve "Patch" Johnson. When Steve found out that his brother might live if he had Kayla's love, he rejected Kayla and pushed her towards Jack. Unaware of Steve's motives and believing that Steve didn't love her, Kayla agreed to marry Jack; she felt affection for Jack, and she pitied him. Sure enough, Jack went into remission and recuperated fully.
Unfortunately, Kayla could not bring herself to be a wife to Jack in more than name. At first, he was too sick for intimacy; then, she became sick due to a poisoning attempt by Harper. Harper believed she was aware of Jack's true birth. (Ironically, it was not Kayla, but Jack's assistant Melissa Horton who knew of his truth birth.) Once he realized what was happening, Steve rescued Kayla from the Deveraux household. He hid her away and nursed her back to health, but unsurprisingly, this led to a resumption of their relationship. Jack eventually found Kayla and took her back home, but by then, it was too late. From that point on, Kayla and Steve took every opportunity to see each other behind Jack's back.
Jack wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and become a politician, so he ran for assemblyman. Kayla wanted to divorce Jack so she could be with Steve openly, but Steve convinced her to wait until after Jack's election to approach him about it. As a result, Kayla spent the months leading up to the election seeing Steve on the sly during the day, then making excuses to stay out of Jack's bed every night. Jack and Kayla still had not consummated their marriage despite being man and wife for the better part of a year, and Kayla had no intention of doing so before she filed for divorce. Jack, on the other hand, accepted her refusals and acted like everything was fine, even though it obviously wasn't. On the night of Jack's election, a reporter handed Jack compromising photos of Steve and Kayla, hoping to blackmail him. Finally, Jack was forced to face the truth. He returned to the loft with Kayla, confronted her about the affair, and raped her. Then, he hired people to beat up Steve.
Steve was enraged, and he came for Jack. A fight between Jack and Steve on the roof of Kayla's loft resulted in Jack falling multiple stories. Jack's near-fatal injuries caused him to need a new kidney. Ironically, the best viable donor was his brother Steve. His mother Jo asked Steve to donate in order to save "Billy's" life, but Steve was conflicted. He finally came to the decision to donate after visiting Jack in the hospital and remembering the promise he'd made as a child to protect his little brother. After Jack recovered, Kayla pressed charges, but in the end, Jack pled guilty to the lesser charge of assault. She then filed for divorce.
Melissa Horton remained loyal to Jack; she'd always had a crush on him, and he turned to her when his marriage ended. Jack had no idea that Harper had tried to frame Melissa for poisoning Kayla when Steve had discovered that Kayla's sickness was due to poison-laced pills. During Jack's marriage to Kayla, Melissa had found Jack's adoption papers at the Deveraux mansion. Now that he was in a relationship with her, Melissa felt obliged to tell Jack he was adopted. Jack was furious at Harper; after all those years talking about the importance of "Deveraux blood," Harper had actually been sterile. To add insult to injury, he discovered that his birth family was the Johnsons: Jo, whom he'd known as the kindly maid; Adrienne; and Steve, Jack's greatest enemy (in his mind). He initially rejected his birth identity as "William Earl Johnson" whole-heartedly, and told Jo and the Johnsons he wanted nothing to do with his birth family. It was a long, slow, painful process for him to accept his new family, but he eventually did.
Meanwhile, his adopted father Harper was revealed to be the serial killer known as The Riverfront Knifer. After Harper was arrested, his Senate seat was vacant. Jack ran against Mickey Horton to fill it. Jack's romance with Mickey's daughter Melissa had progressed physically, but he didn't really love her; he just felt affection for her as a loyal friend. Still, at his stepmother Anjelica's urging, he proposed to Melissa because marrying her would be politically useful. Once Melissa realized the motives behind Jack's proposal, she left him at the altar the day before the election to disgrace him publicly and ensure his loss.
With only a few people left willing to give Jack the time of day (essentially Jo, Adrienne, and Anjelica), Jack reconciled with Harper. Harper manipulated Jack into helping him break out of prison by pretending he was being beaten by fellow inmates. Jack enlisted Victor Kiriakis' help because he had no experience what that kind of operation. Kiriakis hired some goons who turned out to be less than effective. Harper was shot during the escape, and Victor's goons kidnapped Kayla to tend to Harper's wounds while they attempted to get him out of the country. Steve saved Kayla just in time, and Jack's father went back to jail.
1989-1991
Adrift and depressed, Jack bought 51% of the newspaper The Spectator in order to stop them from running a humiliating expose about his failed campaign against Mickey Horton. While initially the purchase was a move borne out of desperation, he threw himself into running it, much to the chagrin of his partner and the original owner Diana Colville. She was constantly pushing back. He eventually attempted to blackmail her into selling him her 49% of the paper, but she gave it to editor Vern Scofield instead. In time, Jack earned ownership of the paper honestly.
It was at The Spectator that Jack met Jennifer Horton, a college student majoring in journalism. She soon became his protege, but her compassionate perspective would often temper his cynicism when they were working together. In one of her first big stories, she tried to help a homeless girl named Sally get custody of her baby in prison. Despite Jennifer's persuasive prose piece on that matter and even Jack's impassioned op-ed, the baby was not allowed to be with Sally in jail. Jack and Jennifer decided they would pretend to be a couple in order to foster the baby. While that sham marriage was uncovered quickly, their fantasy love still sparked the real thing. Jennifer was one of the only people who believed that Jack wanted to change and who was willing to not only give him a chance, but to help him. As they worked together at The Spectator, the connection between them became more and more intense. Jennifer wanted to become involved with Jack, but Jack was resistant. While he was irresistibly drawn to Jennifer and fell in love with her despite himself, he viewed himself as unworthy of her.
As Jack pushed Jennifer away, her ex-boyfriend Emilio returned to town and was more than happy to pick up the slack. An ex-gang member who prided himself on being "macho," Emilio was Jack's opposite in many ways. He was determined to win back Jennifer and Jack seemed to have surrendered the field to him. Another complication in Jack and Jennifer's relationship was the return of Melissa Horton, who'd left town for a while after she'd dumped Jack at the altar. She still loathed Jack and didn't believe he had changed his ways, so she did her best to sabotage any chance Jack and Jennifer had and push Jennifer towards Emilio.
All the while, Jack was not fighting for Jennifer. Instead, Jack was telling Jennifer he didn't love her and she should be with someone else. The problem was that while he said this, his actions said something completely different. He would tell her he wanted her to date other men, but then he would get snippy about her kissing Emilio in the office. He would tell her that he didn't want her, but then he would respond desperately when she kissed him. In his biggest display, he told her he wasn't going to stand in the way of her marriage to Emilio, but then he showed up to stop the wedding in a fire engine. Jack took her to a cabin outside of town; there, she expected him to declare his love. Instead, he told her he'd simply brought her out there so she could rethink her decision. Jennifer was infuriated, but Jack wasn't ready to be honest about his feelings yet.
Another major plotline involved the Toscanos. Steve's ex-wife Marina Toscano was driving a wedge between Steve and Kayla by blackmailing Steve into helping her search for a key which would lead her to her family's mysterious treasure. When Victor kidnapped Kayla to motivate Steve to give him the key, matters escalated. Jack was desperate to help Steve and Kayla in any way he could because now that he was interested in changing, he knew that he had to do something to make amends for his biggest sin: raping Kayla. Jack discovered that Marina had a sister in Bayview Asylum named Isabella. Jack visited her, realized she was sane, figured out what was going on, and helped her escape. After finding the key to the treasure with Jennifer and quietly figuring out the treasure's location himself, he discovered that the "treasure" was the diary of Isabella's mother. What seemed a let down at first was actually massive: it contained the secret to Isabella's paternity. Her father was not Ernesto Toscano, whom she believed to be dead, but Victor Kiriakis, a man she was raised to hate. Jack gave the key to Steve so that he could trade it for Kayla, and Jack gave the diary to Isabella so that Victor would find nothing but an empty safe when he arrived. However, before Jack gave Isabella the diary, he removed the pages detailing the secret.
Meanwhile, the actually very much alive Ernesto Toscano was in hiding, planning a "cruise of deception" to get revenge on his enemies. He wanted the incriminating pages of that diary badly, and he discovered they were in Jack's possession. He invited both Jack and Jennifer on the cruise. Still, Jack refused to reveal the secret, remembering how traumatic it had been when he'd been told Harper wasn't his father. As a result, when Ernesto revealed himself to Isabella on the cruise, she still thought he was her father. He kidnapped her and blew up the ship with Jack, Jennifer, and several other Salemites on board. After the shipwrecked passengers found their way to the nearby island where Ernesto had taken Isabella, she finally learned the truth. It was also on that island that Jack and Jennifer made love for the first time. Sadly, only days later, Jennifer was devastated when Ernesto blew up a cage holding himself and her cousin Hope over a vat of acid. Although her body wasn't found, of course everyone believed Hope was dead.
Less than a month after Jack returned from the cruise, Harper Deveraux escaped from jail, determined to kill Steve. In his sick mind, Steve was to blame for destroying the Deveraux family, even for the fact that Jack couldn't call Harper "father" anymore. Harper took up a sniper position in the bell tower of the church were Steve and Kayla were getting married (again). Jack ran up into the tower to stop him. However, as he wrestled with Harper for his gun, Harper fell to his death. This caused a huge rift in Jack's relationship with Jennifer as Jack now considered himself a "violent killer" and unworthy of her once again. He broke up with her.
While Jack was working through his trauma with a psychiatrist, Jennifer discovered that her old friend from boarding school Katerina Von Leuschner was in town. She was now calling herself Dr. Carly Manning. Her family had arranged a marriage with a man named Lawrence Alamain and Carly had no intention of going through with it, but she was concerned about the trouble this might cause. Helpful Jennifer decided to step in and pretend to be Katerina for the brief engagement period so that the Alamains would leave Carly alone. This involved her traveling to New York and undergoing an elaborate charade. She told no one about this, but when Jack realized what she was doing, he chased her down to convince her to give up the pretense. By now, however, she was enmeshed in something much deeper and darker than she'd imagined. Lawrence Alamain was a truly evil man, and the little deception she'd engaged in to help a friend was going to cost her a great deal. As Jack was attempting to extricate her from this situation, he was notified that his brother Steve had been seriously injured in an explosion. He returned to Salem only to witness his brother die, killed by Lawrence (unbeknownst to Jack).
While Jack was in Salem, Lawrence took Jennifer to his home country of Alamania. There she discovered, to her horror, that Lawrence was holding her childhood sweetheart and the Brady's adoptive son Frankie Brady prisoner. He revealed to her that his true identity was François von Leuschner, and he was Katerina's brother. By threatening to hurt Frankie, Lawrence forced Jennifer to agree to marry him in the guise of Katerina; through marriage, he'd be able to take control of the von Leuschner fortune.
As soon as Steve's funeral ended, Jack was making arrangements to get back to Jennifer. He followed her to Alamania and was shocked to find her adamantly set on marrying Lawrence. While he had no idea she was protecting Frankie, he knew something was very wrong. It all clicked into place for Jack; the man who had been so reluctant to express his feelings was now relentlessly determined to get Jennifer to confess her feelings for him. When he attempted to physically interrupt her wedding to Lawrence, Lawrence's goons knocked him out and put him put in a cell next to Frankie. Sadly, while Jack was trapped in a cell and unable to help, Lawrence raped Jennifer on their wedding night. Jack eventually escaped and convinced Jennifer to repudiate Lawrence with the help of several other Salemites who had come to rescue them. Furious, Lawrence blew up his villa with them inside. They were able to escape with the help of Lawrence's father Leopold, who died saving them.
Once back in Salem, Jack hoped for a bright future ahead now that he had sorted out his feelings for Jennifer. He proposed to Jennifer, and she accepted. However, she was pulling away from him. She was uncomfortable with physical affection from him. She told him she was just under a lot of stress. He decided to take her for a romantic getaway weekend to help her unwind. When he surprised her with an aggressive kiss, she had a flashback to Lawrence. "Don't touch me, you rapist!" She cried, slapping him. Appalled and convinced that Jennifer had never really believed in her heart all the pretty things she'd been saying to him for so long, he immediately broke up with her.
His emotional wounds weren't his only problem. Lawrence had put Jack at the top of his "Enemies List" and was trying to do a hostile takeover of The Spectator in order to ruin him. Diana Colville had given Vern Scofield Power of Attorney over her 49% of the paper, but she still owned it, and she was no friend of Jack's. She told Jack she would sell to Lawrence if he didn't come up with a better offer. Jack needed to hand her a check for 5 million dollars. While he had a great deal of personal wealth in property, stocks, and bonds, coming up with that much cold, hard cash was not something he could readily do. Loans also require time. He did not have a lot of options.
Hearing of his dilemma, Eve Donovan approached him. Nick Corelli had recently been murdered, and he had left $10 million to Eve with a very strange condition: she had to marry in order to get it. It was supposed to be a love match, but Eve did not have time for that. She told Jack that if he married her, she would split the money with him. Jack was at first reluctant, but then he saw Jennifer with Frankie and decided that he didn't have much reason to hold out for love anymore. They tied the knot and did their best to pretend to be in love, despite the fact that they felt nothing but contempt for each other.
However, before they could collect, Eve was accused of Nick's murder. In an effort to clear her name, Jack and Eve searched for the murder weapon. They believed the gun was on a theme train, so they booked tickets. Frankie and Jennifer did as well. Frankie and Eve had started to develop feelings for each other at this point, and they decided to share a cabin. Jack and Jennifer were forced to share the remaining cabin on the train, and they became closer and closer both physically and emotionally. Finally, Jennifer admitted to Jack that she'd pushed him away because she had been raped by Lawrence. Jack had a hard time dealing with it at first, but before the train left the station the next day, he had gotten her a jade plant to symbolize their growing love. When the train derailed and they were forced to fight for their lives together, he told her once again that he loved her. When they got back to Salem, Jack supported Jennifer in her efforts to press charges against Lawrence. They were finally able to prove his guilt when they produced a recording of him talking about the rape, uncovered with the help of Kimberly Brady. Lawrence was convicted and sent to prison.
Immediately after the trial, Jack proposed again to Jennifer and invited the whole town, not realizing he was being recorded by news cameras at the time. To accommodate the crowd, Jack and Jennifer were married in a stadium. While Jack dreamed that they were married in a wild west show, their actual wedding was traditional. They honeymooned at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, California. There, they met a con man named Hawk. Along with his partner in crime Desiree, a fake psychic, Hawk won Jennifer's trust and insinuated himself into their lives, hoping to take them for every cent they had. He faked a back injury at their penthouse and moved in with them, then worked to convince Jack that he could make millions through insider trading. Jack, still smarting over having to marry Eve for funds to buy The Spectator, was tempted. Hawk eventually convinced Jack to "sell" all of his stocks and assets to "investment brokers" who were really Hawk's fellow con men. In the final culmination of the con, Hawk set up fake FBI agents to "raid" the place where Jack and the "brokers" were doing business and demand all of the cash Hawk had convinced Jack to bring. Supposedly, the agents were going to arrest him for illegal trading. Jack fled, and Hawk now had Jack's entire fortune.
Instead of leaving with the money, Hawk decided he wanted to go back to Salem and try to get Jack's wife, too. Jennifer was frantic at first, but after it became obvious that not only was Jack gone but also all of his money, people started to become suspicious. Soon everyone but Jack's mother was convinced that Jack had abandoned Jennifer. Hawk moved in on her while Jack stayed away, positive he was being hunted by the FBI. Hawk destroyed the note Jack had left for Jennifer, of course. Jack eventually returned to Salem at Christmas, unable to endure any more time anyway from his wife, only to discover her with Hawk! Hawk was eventually exposed as a con man, but Jack and Jennifer were unable to recover any of the money. The entire Deveraux family fortune... gone. They were broke.
1992-1993
Struggling with his new impoverished status and suffering setback after setback in his attempts to earn money, Jack was miserable. Now working as a low-level reporter, he tried to take comfort in Jennifer's announcement that she was pregnant. However, after experiencing severe nausea and increasing bouts of pain, he believed that his Hodgkin's Disease had returned and he was dying. He pushed Jennifer towards an acquaintance, Brian Scofield, and sold the last of his shares of The Spectator to Julie Williams so that Jennifer would have something to live on after he died. On his 30th birthday, however, he discovered that it was all a big misunderstanding and other than having crippling anxiety about everything going wrong in his life, he was perfectly healthy. Jennifer went on to have a daughter, Abigail Johanna Deveraux, delivered by Jack himself in a cabin after their car broke down on the way to the hospital during a storm.
Jack despised taking charity from Jennifer's family, but when the couple found themselves homeless after they were unable to make rent, he accepted the gift of a house from Jennifer's father Bill Horton. It was one Bill had rented out in the past, but was currently vacant. In the attic, Jack found the journal of a woman detailing her affair with a married man and her struggles with abuse. Jack turned the journal into a novel, but was unable to get a publisher interested. When it got into the hands of Titan Publishing's Kate Roberts, she recognized it as the story of her own life taken from her personal journal (she'd once lived in that house; Bill was the married man with whom she'd had the affair). She refused to return the manuscript, and one more potential revenue stream for Jack got choked off at the fount.
Jack temporarily thought his money problems were over when he came across a suitcase of cash in an abandoned barn. There was no name on it, it was in the middle of nowhere, nobody was around... he decided it was an answer to prayer and took the money home. He used it to buy The Spectator back. Unfortunately, it was no answer to prayer - far from it. That money belonged to Billie Reed, who had been holding it for a crime boss. Once Billie realized Jack was the one who'd found the money and that he no longer had it, she guilted him into helping her attempt to win the money back gambling. That backfired horribly when the police busted Billie's high-stakes game.
Out of options, Jack sold The Spectator to a mystery buyer. It turned out the buyer was Kate. She was happy to keep Jack on as an editor. She liked Jack... a lot. In fact, she tried very hard to seduce him, but he wasn't interested. Then, Kate married Victor Kiriakis and The Spectator became his property, making Jack sick. He thought about quitting, but he needed the job for the insurance because Abby had recently been diagnosed with aplastic anemia.
Jack heard that Victor was keeping a secret about a place called Lot 5, and he became obsessed with finding out what it was. His efforts got him fired. He lost his job and his insurance, but he lost a great deal more than that when Victor unveiled the truth about Lot 5. Victor revealed that he and Harper had once owned a plant that dumped toxic waste on Lot 5. However, when Victor had discovered Harper was dumping illegally, he'd pulled out of the deal. At that point, Harper had replaced him with Jack. Jack had only served as a nominal president, someone to sign the papers Harper put in front of him. (Victor gave the date as 1975, which would make Jack 13.) Jack had blithely signed everything he was given without question.... including the papers approving the toxic dumping on Lot 5. While that was bad enough, what was truly terrible for Jack personally was that the doctors believed Abby's condition was a result of that toxic waste. Jack was aghast at this revelation, absolutely shattered. His guilt, shame, and self-loathing became so intense that he decided his family would be better off without him. He left Salem.
2000-2006
Jack and Jennifer did not live "happily ever after" in Africa. They did not even get married while there. Jack never lost his desire to reestablish himself financially, and he often sought business opportunities that took him away from Jennifer and Abby for long periods. Jennifer resented his long absences and started to have feelings for a charming Irishman named Colin Murphy who was doing volunteer work with her father Bill in Africa. When Colin left for home, Jennifer decided to take Abby and follow him to Ireland. However, her reception was not warm. Colin was engaged to someone else. When Bo came across Jennifer while on a mission, he found her tending bar at a pub. He brought her back to Salem. Once there, Jennifer told everyone that she'd left Jack, but she didn't want to talk about it.
Jack had no idea where Jennifer had gone until he got a phone call from Alice. Alice believed Jack deserved to know where his wife and daughter were. She told Jack that Jennifer was going to Europe for Princess Greta von Amberg's coronation, and he could catch up with her there. Jack met Jennifer at the palace. Even though she received him with hostility, he followed her back to Salem and pursued her doggedly. He was determined to win back his family. He convinced Jennifer that he and she should live together to raise Abby. Despite their cohabitation, Jennifer hardly fell into his arms. Instead, she dated other men like Brandon and a now-willing Colin right in front of him. On the other hand, Jack could not even think of other women. While he made friends with Princess Greta and she fell in love with him, he had nothing but platonic feelings for her. His "dates" with Billie were also just two friends hanging out, and they both knew it. He only had eyes for Jennifer. After Jack rescued Jennifer from a car accident and worked with her again at The Spectator, Jack and Jennifer slowly came back together. By February of 2003, Jennifer was proposing to Jack.
They made plans to remarry. Jennifer's father had given them a talk show called In the House filmed, as the title suggests, from their home. When they remarried, much to Abby's delight, it was televised for the benefit of their loyal viewers. Once more, Jack and Jennifer got married in front of a crowd.
Just when it appeared they were about to settle down, Jack was apparently violently struck down with a brick and killed by a serial killer known as the Salem Stalker. Jennifer mourned him terribly, although she drew some comfort from the fact that she was pregnant with his son. She also drew comfort from a handsome man named Patrick who was eager to make the beautiful widow smile. However, Jack and all of the other Stalker's victims were actually alive and well on a remote island called Melaswen. The Stalker was actually Tony (later discovered to be Andre) DiMera, and he had faked Jack's death.
Jennifer eventually was alerted to the fact that Jack was alive and took a plane to find him. Jack had been desperately trying to find his way off the island for months, thrashing futilely through the tropical jungle. He was on the verge of complete collapse when Jennifer's plane crashed on the island. He rescued her and they were finally reunited, just in time for the birth of Jack Jr. Unfortunately, they were not destined to be together long. As they attempted to escape the island with the other Salemites trapped there, a tsunami wave claimed Jack along with about half a dozen other unlucky people.
Jennifer mourned Jack all over again. However, yet again, he was not actually dead. This time, he was being held prisoner in DiMera's European castle. He spent months imprisoned there, enraging DiMera by making continual escape attempts. He endured DiMera mocking him, psychologically torturing him, beating him, chaining him up, injecting him with mysterious substances, and threatening him with worse. Still, Jack kept trying. After numerous failed attempts, one of which saw him make it all the way back to Salem before his recapture, Jack eventually escaped. He brought home with him fellow prisoners Cassie Brady, Marlena Evans and Roman Brady.
Jack was thrilled to finally be with his family for the first time in over a year. However, it wasn't long before he started to feel unwell. He had fainting spells, and he was in pain. He went to Lexie Carver to see if his Hodgkin's was back, but he was told it was worse: he had a rare blood disease that would kill him in a few months. Staggered, Jack decided to keep his condition a secret so his last days with his family could be happy. As he'd done so many years before, he decided to find a "new husband" for Jennifer to take care of her after he died. It just so happened Frankie Brady was in town. Jack pushed them together, hoping they would rekindle their romance after he passed. It was becoming almost impossible for Jack to hide his worsening illness, so once Jack was satisfied Frankie would take care of his family, he faked his death and left Salem.
While he was in hospice care miles away from Salem, Jack met a nurse who looked just like his brother Steve, "dead" 16 years at that point. The resemblance could not be a coincidence, despite the man's protests that he didn't know Jack. Jack insisted he get a DNA test and sure enough, it was Steve; he'd been suffering from amnesia all these years. Jack begged him to go to Salem and reunite with his family. Steve told Jack that he'd go back to Salem on one condition: Jack would have to go back, too. Jack reluctantly agreed.
When Jack and Steve arrived in Salem, Frankie and Jennifer were literally in the middle of their wedding. Jennifer fainted; Abby cried, "I knew you were alive!" (This marked Jack's third return from the dead.) Jack admitted that he'd faked his death because he'd wanted to spare his family the spectacle of his slow, agonizing deterioration. His friends and family felt simultaneously thrilled that he was alive, furious at his deception, and devastated by his prognosis. When he attempted to leave again, they begged him to stay. Frankie was able to find an experimental cure that Lexie and her team of doctors had missed, and Jack was 100% before long.
Jack and Jennifer were eager to start building a life together again. The Spectator asked Jack and Jennifer to head up its London bureau, and they accepted. They left for the UK together in September 2006, JJ in tow.
2010-2012
When Alice Horton died in 2010, Jennifer came back to Salem for the funeral as well as to help with her estate. Jack was not with her. She told friends and family that he was on a "walkabout" in Australia; supposedly, he was out "finding himself" in the Outback. He had been communicating with her and his children only minimally for months. She was furious at him and was already considering divorce.
Jack finally returned to Salem in 2011, looking ragged and worn. He told Jennifer that the "walkabout" had just been cover story. The reality: Jack had decided to follow a lead on a European drug trafficking ring to Afghanistan. He hadn't told Jennifer and his family what he was doing because he didn't want them to know he was following such a dangerous story. Once he'd gone to Afghanistan, he'd quickly been discovered by the drug traffickers. They'd captured him and kept him prisoner in a cave, brutally torturing him for a year. His contact, realizing Jack had been taken, made up the "walkabout" story to cover up his absence. The contact had been sending the vague, minimal communications in Jack's name. Now that Jack had finally been released, he hoped to be welcomed back and comforted by his family.
However, when Jack came back to Salem, he found his wife in the arms of another man. Jennifer had completed the divorce proceedings without him, and she'd moved on with a Dr. Daniel Jonas. Jennifer and Abby found it hard to get past their anger. They'd thought he'd abandoned them. Even when he told them the truth, they focused on how he'd lied to them about where he was going, and how he was selfish for chasing a story instead of staying with his family. In other words, he should not look to them for comfort and pity. However, once Jennifer saw Jack suffer from an attack of PTSD and realized just how cruelly he'd been treated, she finally felt compassion for him. She encouraged Jack to seek therapy with Marlena. Eventually, Jack started to rebuild trust with his daughter, who also softened after her initial resentment and feelings of betrayal started to fade.
Jennifer grew closer to Jack, but she stopped short of taking him back. Her connection to Jack hadn't gone away, but she was torn as she had come to love Daniel as well. She simply could not make up her mind. The "holding pattern" was becoming unbearable for Jack, and he was considering walking away despite the fact that he loved Jennifer desperately. At that point, Daniel stepped aside instead.
Finally, Jack and Jennifer reconciled and got engaged. Jack took a job teaching journalism at Salem University and wrote a book about his time in Afghanistan entitled The Forgotten Hostage. It looked like he was ready to settle down in Salem once again with his family intact.
It was not to be. At a gala held in honor of the recently deceased Lexie Carver, Abby became trapped in an elevator when a massive explosion rocked the building. As Jack and Abby's friend Cameron worked to get the elevator doors open, the cables holding the elevator continued to fray and break. They finally were able to pry the doors open far enough for Jack to go in and help his daughter through the opening. However, as he did so, the doors slammed closed behind Abby and the last cable broke. The elevator plummeted down the shaft. A few minutes later, Roman came upstairs and told Jennifer and Abby that "the paramedics said he'd died instantly."
The Deveraux family mourned Jack yet again.
2018-present
Six years after his supposed death, Jack returned to Salem with Eve Donovan at his side at the annual New Year's Eve celebration at Doug's Place. He had amnesia and didn't remember anyone or anything about Salem. Even worse, he was cold and distant to all of his family and friends. Eve had been with him for months before the gala, and she'd ensured that he only felt safe with her before she came to Salem. It seems that Jack had been secretly rescued from the elevator shaft by the DiMeras and had spent the last six years being healed by their physician Dr. Roth in a long, intensive process, using a serum that had the side effect of total memory loss. Eve got a hold of him after the DiMera facility where he was being held burned down.
Eve was able to manipulate Jack readily while he had amnesia. Under her guidance, he became an unscrupulous politician. He won the position of mayor, but at the cost of alienating everyone from his past life, especially his son JJ. Eve was even able to manipulate Jack into marrying her, although he walked out on her when he found her destroying the serum and journal that would bring back his memory. Happily, he was eventually able to regain his memory via a thump on the head he received while rescuing Jennifer from a deranged admirer.
Not long after Jack regained his memory, he and Jennifer were married once more. However, tragedy struck on the night of their wedding. Jennifer was pushed from a balcony by a mind-controlled Hope, and she went into a coma due to her injuries. Jack sat by her bedside for hours every day, waiting for her to return to him. She eventually woke up... one year later.
In 2021, Jack discovered that he had another daughter named Gwendolyn "Gwen" Rizczech from a one night stand with a waitress named Tiffany Rizczech. It had happened years before he came to Salem. Gwen despised Jack because she believed he'd abandoned her as a child. She also despised her younger sister Abigail for getting all the attention that she felt should have been hers. She came to town with an agenda: destroy the Deverauxs. She did a whole lot of damage before discovering Jack didn't even know about her existence prior to her arrival in Salem because Jack's mother in-law, Laura Horton, had been paying Tiffany to stay away in order to preserve her daughter Jennifer's marriage to Jack.
After realizing that Jack had not actually abandoned her, Gwen tried to rebuild a relationship with him. Unfortunately, her anger at Abby and various malicious acts directed at others kept getting in the way. She even "accidentally" killed Laura. Still, Jack forgave his daughter again and again, and they were on good terms when he and Jennifer left for Boston in 2022 to nurture a small newspaper there.
In 2022, Jack experienced the worst horror imaginable for a father when his daughter Abigail was brutally murdered by Clyde Weston. Jennifer also fell apart, relapsing into her prescription drug addiction and accidentally hitting Gwen with her car. At the time, Gwen agreed not to say anything. However, when Jack angered Gwen by threatening to disown her if she didn't testify against Xander on a certain matter, Gwen blackmailed him into giving her The Spectator by saying she would report Jennifer's hit and run to the police if he didn't sign it over. Desperate to protect Jennifer, he gave her the paper despite Jennifer's protests. Before leaving for Boston, he told Gwen he loved her, but he needed to get some distance from her.
For a few months in 2024, Jack was led to believe that Abby might actually be alive when Cat Greene was forced to impersonate her by Clyde Weston; they faked a DNA test that supposedly "proved" her identity. Jack's heart was broken all over again when it was revealed to be a hoax.
Jack and Jennifer currently reside in Boston. They visit Salem on a recurring basis.
Reception
In 2020, Charlie Mason from Soaps She Knows placed Jack 29th on his list of the 35 most memorable characters from Days of Our Lives, writing that "To Matthew Ashford's credit, he managed to turn the villain who raped [Kayla] into not only a beloved comic-relief character but a well-intentioned hero who became so popular, he was allowed to cheat death. Repeatedly."[11] Mason also called Jack a "born sinner" despite being "however repentant".[11]
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