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Today’s a big day on Days of Our Lives as Lexie and Abe exchange vows and rings once more. It’s a reaffirmation of their love and commitment as Lexie secretly plans to run off and die alone. Fortunately, we don’t see that actually happening (not the least because we saw her in the hospital yelling at EJ with Abe and Theo by her side in the summer preview), and that means there’s still time to rip our hearts out with the tragedy of it all.

But the closer we get to Lexie’s death once again, the more we worry that it won’t have the emotional pay off that it could and should. As ghostofcowkitty wrote in Tuesday’s recap comments, “Lexie, if done correctly, could have been something great.” And we agree. The elements were all there. Nikki Crawford has done an incredible job as Abe’s beloved, long-dead wife, but it just hasn’t quite worked for a lot of fans.

And that, we think, may be because we never really got a chance to love Lexie again. At least, not this version of Lexie. Even before the big Lexie reveal, when we were pretty sure she was coming back, none of us thought that Renee Jones would be stepping back into the role. She retired from acting when Lexie was killed and she has not once, as far we’ve seen, wavered in that decision.

So if Lexie were to return, we knew she’d have to be recast. We knew that would be a tough sell. Jones she wasn’t the only actress in the role, she did play it for nearly 20 years, and she delivered one incredible farewell. But we were still so excited about the dramatic possibilities of Lexie coming back after well over a decade.

For one thing, this is the type of story that only a show like Days of Our Lives can really do with a bit more wiggle room with “miracle drugs” and resurrections. For another, recasting can and often does work — just take a look at how much fans have taken to Dan Feuerriegel as EJ — but we need time to get to know the new take.

It can’t be easy to find the right balance between keeping stories moving and keeping viewers from getting bored and letting them breathe to hit the emotional beats. But it’s felt like we’ve been speed running through those beats.

Maybe if Lexie had returned for something closer to a year, if we’d gotten to know and love her again, and had been, for lack of a better word, tricked into thinking she was sticking around, we could feel more emotional about her looming death.

Instead, she was barely home before we learned she wasn’t long for this world again. We got two months of Lexie unconscious before she even woke up, when we could have seen her reconnecting with her loved ones. And when she did wake, she was, well, kind of mean. Ultimately, that may serve to show that Paulina’s better for Abe now, but it kind of came at Abe’s cost since he just ignored everything and pushed Paulina to the side.

And while Lexie softened towards Paulina, Chanel and just about everyone, and has been genuinely heartbreaking as she’s coming to terms with losing the loved ones she just got back once more, it feels a bit like it’s too little, too late.

Before you go, how about taking a peek at our photo gallery of daytime’s Best and Worst of the year… so far!