Days of our Lives Comings and Goings: Charles Shaughnessy Returns as Shane Donovan

It'll feel like old home week on Days of our Lives on Monday, March 17 when Charles Shaughnessy marks his return to the Salem screen — except Shane won't be in Salem.

Days of our Lives Brings Back Shane

On the Thursday, March 13 episode, Steve (Stephen Nichols) and Marlena (Deidre Hall) took off to Washington DC to basically ambush Shane. The ISA director had been dodging Marlena's calls ever since he learned that John Black (the late Drake Hogestyn) was officially missing in action. He had been on a special mission for the agency and had practically vanished.

An alarmed Marlena is determined to find and save her husband, so she enlisted Steve Johnson to accompany her to the nation's capitol to see Shane and get some answers. She hopes that seeing her and Steve in person will encourage Shane to be more forthcoming with information about John — if he even has any. According to Soap Opera Digest, Shane will be with Marlena on Monday.

Shaughnessy began playing Shane in 1984 when the character worked undercover as a butler for a young Hope Williams (Kristian Alonso) and her first husband Larry Welch. He was eventually revealed to be an ISA agent and became an integral part of the DAYS canvas.

A Soap Resurgence for Charles Shaughnessy

Shaughnessy has been bringing Shane back to Salem off and on for years, even appearing on the Peacock mini-series spin-off Days of our Lives: Beyond Salem, in 2021. He last appeared as Shane in 2023 when his daughter Theresa (Emily O'Brien) got mixed up with Konstantin and ended up letting Alex believe that he was Victor's son.

Shaughnessy also made a name for himself on General Hospital in recent years as Victor Cassadine, Valentin's (James Patrick Stuart) father and the madman who likened himself to Marvel's Thanos and wanted to save the world by killing half the population.

"My agent called and said, 'You know, I’ve been working on something for a while and it looks like it’s going to pay off. This is the deal: It’s General Hospital. This character is going to be a limited contract role for at least six months. What do you think?'" Shaughnessy told Soap Opera Digest at the time. "I said, 'Well, sure! Okay!' It just sort of happened to coincide with this whole Beyond Salem thing, so I suddenly found myself appearing on two different shows at the same time, one network, one streaming."

Catch all-new episodes of Days of our Lives weekdays on Peacock.