We’ve been thinking all this time that someone would have to off Gabi after how much she and Stefan have been ticking everyone off on Days of Our Lives. We would have lumped Stefan in there too, but we knew that Camila Banus would be leaving right about now anyway. But now it looks like the show zigged instead of zagged and will instead be sending her off to prison… for killing Li!

But is this really his end? It seems like, one way or another, it has to be.

At the end of the Friday, November 3 episode, Stefan burst into Li’s apartment to find him on the floor with a knife wound in his back and Gabi holding the bloody knife over him. It seems almost impossible to believe, but Soap Opera Digest confirms in their latest issue that Li is gone.

Headwriter Ron Carlivati told the magazine that Gabi insists she’s innocent, but Li dies before he can confirm or deny that. And once Wendy finds out what happens learns how her brother was finally seeking help from Marlena to move on only for Gabi to play him as cruelly as she did, Li’s sister wants Gabi to pay.

“Wendy is really pushing for justice for her brother,” Carlivati shared, “and unfortunately the noose just starts to tighten around Gabi’s neck.”

“Rafe believes his sister,” the headwriter continued, “but the evidence doesn’t look good. So Gabi and Stefan are kind of alone and trying to find out who did it if Gabi didn’t. It’s a race against the clock, though, because, because it looks like Gabi is going down.”

But is he really, truly gone for good? In Salem, things are rarely as they seem. At Day of Days, Remington Hoffman and Dan Feuerriegel hinted to Soaps.com that we’d be seeing EJ and Li teaming up to accomplish their own goals. And as the week developed, we learned what those goals could be. They could get revenge on Gabi for what she did to Li and get his stock back to keep her and Stefan from taking the company from EJ.

But now Li’s dead… unless he isn’t. In order to get the stock back, they’d have to blackmail her and Stefan — something like promising that if they handed it over, he’d reveal he was alive and keep Gabi from heading back to the slammer. But if she’s leaving, it seems inevitable that she’s heading off to prison — plus Li’s revenge isn’t all that great unless he stays “dead” and really makes her pay.

Otherwise, he’s just back to playing their little game of musical stocks, and someday they’ll get the upper hand again and be right back where they were without actually paying for it. This way, Li extracts a price in blood for their greed.

Or… Li is really, truly dead, and there is no hidden agenda or secret plans. It’s just time to let him go.