Ben and Ciara Are Leaving DAYS OF OUR LIVES

The latest DAYS OF OUR LIVES cast members to exit the NBC soap are Robert Scott Wilson and Victoria Konefal, who play popular couple Ben and Ciara. In their newest issue, Soap Opera Digest is reporting that the pair will make their final appearance in Salem on Friday, July 8, when Ben and Ciara leave town.

The reason behind the exit, according to DAYS headwriter Ron Carlivati, was largely due in part to scheduling issues with Konefal, who was on recurring status with the soap. “She really just was not available on a regular basis, and in the way our show works and how you have to schedule people, it just became less and less feasible to keep her in that status,” he explained. “If you’re going to tell a story with a couple, you need these people to be on contract.”

Since Wilson was on contract, the situation presented a unique challenge in penning story for the popular couple affectionately dubbed Cin by fans. “You want them to have a happy ending, but then that involves writing Rob off the show, who doesn’t necessarily want to leave,” Carlivati shared. “Half the couple leaving oftentimes doesn’t work. Are they not supposed to have any kind of romance, any kind of love story because their spouse or significant other is out there somewhere else? It just ties your hands in an impossible way.”

Thanks to fortuitous timing, Carlivati’s team was able to send Ben and Ciara off into the sunset with the second installment of the soap’s spinoff. “We were writing BEYOND SALEM at the same time, so we decided, ‘Hey, they leave Salem on July 8 and say that they’re going to arrive in Montreal on [the following Monday] July 11 on their sailboat,” the headwriter revealed. “So, you can seamlessly follow their story when they leave town.”

Wilson joined DAYS in 2014, and Konefal took over the role of Bo and Hope’s daughter in 2017. Shortly after the two characters began dating, the unlikely pair — a reformed serial killer and the daughter of two police officers — quickly became a Salem supercouple.

Chapter 2 of BEYOND SALEM will stream Monday, July 11, through Friday, July 15, on Peacock, with the five-episode season spanning the entire globe as beloved characters from the OG soap go on the adventure of a lifetime. And after Ben is done in Montreal, Carlivati teased, he may find his way back home. “Salem hasn’t seen the last of Rob,” the scribe confessed.