Days of Our Lives’ Stephen Nichols revealed the original direction Steve was supposed to go in, which was not widely known.

Steve “Patch” Johnson is a fan-favorite character on Days of Our Lives. The hero who recently mourned the loss of his best friend John Black wasn’t always the do-gooder that he is now. In fact, his origins are far more sinister than most fans remember. At the time, he worked for Victor Kiriakis, but eventually turned things around and became a beloved good guy. However, Stephen Nichols recently revealed that there’s an unknown, darker depth to Steve’s origins.

They Asked for a Backstory

Starting on DAYS in 1985, Nichols is currently celebrating 40 years as Steve. He spoke to Soaps.com about it, discussing the evolution of Steve from a bad guy to a beloved family man. The character had originally been in the merchant marines, where he met Bo (Peter Reckell). As the story goes, he and Bo fought over a woman, and that’s how Steve lost his eye.

But Nichols revealed a different path his character was supposed to take. “At one point, Peter [Reckell, Bo] and I had gone to the writers, producers, somebody, and asked to get some kind of backstory because they were playing this deal that Bo had put my eye out, and we had no idea how that happened.” He shockingly revealed that they received one page that laid out the characters’ hitherto unknown backstory.

An 11th-Hour Reprieve

Nichols further revealed the contents of the page, which explained, “I was supposed to die, and I had actually been dealing drugs in the Merchant Marine.” A friend of Steve’s took some of the drugs and died, causing him to get into a fight with Bo, Nichols said. “And I lost my eye,” he noted, further explaining that the story was a much darker version of what ultimately played out onscreen.

So the character of Steve was only meant to last for a few months, and then exit. But a storyline that involved Victor (John Aniston), Bo, Hope (Kristian Alfonso), Savannah Wilder (Shannon Tweed), and Shane (Charles Shaughnessy) turned things around. Nichols further explained that after a chase sequence, then-producer, Shelley Curtis, ran up to him, “And she said, ‘I just want you to know, you’re not going to die.’ So, she told me right then and there that I had a future on the show.”