The Young and the Restless spoilers: is Traci really dating Alan or Martin?

It was only months ago on The Young and the Restless when fans discovered that Ashley 's (Eileen Davidson) friend Alan (Christopher Cousins) had a secret. The very doctor who came to Genoa City to help Ashley navigate her mental health crisis and escorted her and Traci (Beth Maitland) back to Paris as he continued to aid the chemist in getting better, had an evil identical twin brother named Martin .

The shock of this revelation, of course, was surpassed as Ashley started to remember the events that triggered her dissociative identity disorder. It turned out Martin was responsible for her trauma. He showed back up at Alan's Parisian home just in time to swap places with Alan and again go after Ashley. Thankfully, Tucker (Trevor St. John) and the real Alan appeared to rescue Ashley in the nick of time. As Alan wrestled with Martin, the two fell off the upstairs balcony, and allegedly Martin died.

After Ashley eventually checked herself into a mental health facility and Alan started coping with the loss of his brother, Traci and Alan inched closer to a romantic relationship. Fast forward to the present, and the duo appears to be in love.

In The Young and the Restless episode airing on August 14, Traci and Alan return to Genoa City, and with their return, we start to have questions. Could Martin be pretending to be Alan? Is Alan the one who actually died in Paris?

During the episode in question, Traci and Alan show up at the Abbott Mansion and Alan walks around, enamored with the home. Finding his behavior peculiar, Traci jokingly asks what he's doing? "Oh, I'm just taking it all in you know," he replies. She giggles at his response, noting he's been in the home before. He then claims he "didn't appreciate it before." This could be true, but it could be said that Alan was walking around the home as if it was his first time seeing it, hence the fascination.

Later in the episode, Traci and Alan sit down for lunch with Jack (Peter Bergman), Diane (Susan Walters) and Billy (Jason Thompson). The new couple recaps their travels and their romantic journey. While their conversation could be innocent, Billy looks at the couple with quite the expression of skepticism. Say what you want about Billy Boy Abbott, but he can usually read people pretty well. While he didn't openly voice any concerns in the episode, his facial expressions were quite telling. It was as if Billy didn't trust Alan.

Combining what happened at the Abbott Mansion with Billy's reaction at lunch, plus our overall takeaway that this version of Alan seems to be freer and a little less buttoned-up, we have to question if Traci is unknowingly dating Martin pretending to be Alan? If we're right, we feel bad for Traci's pending heartbreak as it's been a while since she's had love on the show. We also fear what Martin may do to Ashley when she finally returns to town.

With all that being said, we don't have irrefutable evidence that Martin is portraying Alan. So there's a chance we can be wrong. However, we plan to pay closer attention to Alan and Traci to get to the bottom of this developing mystery.

New episodes of The Young and the Restless air weekdays on CBS. Episodes become available to stream on Paramount Plus the next day.