1976–1987 Marlena Evans makes her debut in 1976 as one of
Mickey Horton's psychiatrists at the University Hospital in Salem. Samantha impersonates Marlena, and has her institutionalized. Marlena makes a quick attempt to escape and contact Don, but Samantha catches on. Don, noticing an extreme personality difference in Marlena, starts suspecting that something is up. With the help of
Laura Horton, he releases Marlena, and has Samantha arrested. He proposes to Marlena, and the two are married later that year. During this time, Marlena and Samantha make peace, and share a heartfelt reconciliation. She gives birth to a premature son, and she and Don name the child DJ. The baby dies of
SIDS, which causes a rift between the couple. Don has an affair and the couple divorce soon after. She and Roman are reunited until another man with Roman's original face returns to Salem. The man everyone believed was Roman, from 1986 to 1991, is in fact a brainwashed victim of Stefano. The real Roman has been held captive, but he makes his way back to Salem and Marlena. She is conflicted about her feelings for Roman and his substitute, who goes back to using his self-given name, John Black. Marlena and Roman reunited. In 1992, a jealous, crazed Stella Lombard is convinced that Marlena wants to steal her husband, Roger, and holds Marlena captive in an abandoned warehouse. John saves Marlena before the warehouse is demolished, bringing the two closer and finding it hard to deny their attraction. They eventually start having an affair, which leads to the birth of their daughter,
Belle. When Belle's paternity becomes known, Roman divorces Marlena and leaves town. In 1994 as Stefano tries to make Marlena his queen of the night she becomes possessed by a demon and John being a priest at the time calls on God and Marlena is freed. By then, however, John is involved with
Kristen DiMera. In 1996, Marlena is kidnapped by Stefano, who lusts over her, and is held prisoner in Paris. She would be eventually rescued, with Stefano being briefly presumed dead after being supposedly killed by his ex-lover Rachel Blake. Kristen resorts to desperate measures to keep John and Marlena apart, but her schemes are eventually exposed. John and Marlena reunite, and get engaged. They are set to marry in the summer of 1997, but before they are married, Kristen returns to Salem with Roman, who is dying from an illness. Marlena tends to him when she learns he believes she and John are not together. Once he's cured, Roman discovers the truth, and despite his efforts, Marlena and John reunite. Marlena finally marries John on July 5, 1999. When John's teenage son
Brady returns home from college, he immediately clashed with Marlena. Marlena believed that Brady was endangering Belle's life, causing a rift between her and John. Eventually, she and Brady made amends, and she and John reconciled. As is often the case in Salem, characters rarely die. On January 8, 2008, EJ discovers John in the basement of the DiMera mansion, being programmed by Stefano to become a super soldier. After he is discovered by the police, John wakes up with amnesia, and Marlena struggles to help John remember. It is discovered that John is the child of
Shawn Brady's sister
Colleen, and Stefano's father,
Santo DiMera. Their affair and its disastrous ending was the beginning of the feud. John's obesession with his DiMera heritage and his changed personality both start to take a toll on Marlena, and she finds it hard to stay with John. Stefano wakes up from a coma (after Marlena purposely sends him into a comatose state in January 2008), and intends on getting revenge on Marlena and taking the DiMera empire back from John. He causes Marlena to fall into a coma the exact way she did to him. However, Marlena wakes up after receiving a ghostly visit from her late sister, Samantha. John relinquishes his control of the empire to Stefano, but Marlena, by then, decides to move on with her life and files for divorce. John begins seeing Dr. Charlotte Taylor to regain his memories. Charlotte is the daughter of Marlena's mentor, but it doesn't take long for Marlena to see that something was off about Charlotte. When Brady returns to town, he helps Marlena discover that John is remembering, but Charlotte is actually keeping him in the dark. Charlotte comes to Marlena's apartment and tries to kill her, and explains that she is jealous of her because of how her father seemed to favor Marlena over Charlotte. However, John bursts in at the last minute, and ends up getting attacked by Charlotte. Charlotte is arrested while John is rushed to the hospital. He wakes up with his memory restored. Marlena finds out that John is paralyzed, but he can be treated at a clinic in Switzerland. John and Marlena reunite, get remarried, and head off to Switzerland to treat John's paralysis on January 23, 2009.
2011–present In September 2011, John and Marlena return to Salem as special guests for the opening of the Horton Town Square. John surprised his friends and family by revealing that he is able to walk again. Moments later, John is arrested for embezzling millions of dollars in retirement money and pensions from his company Basic Black. John and Marlena hire Carrie to be John's defense lawyer, and she and
Rafe Hernandez work together to prove John's innocence. They succeed in finding the evidence that proves John was framed, and get him released. However, soon after, Marlena and John discover their marriage is invalid, because John is married to Hope, as a result of Stefano's brainwashing. They plan to travel abroad to divorce, but Marlena is forced to stay back. John is able to get the divorce, and return home to Marlena. They soon have a new problem to deal with when Kristen returns to town, claiming she is now reformed after therapy. Marlena is suspicious, especially after she starts dating Brady. John and Marlena's marriage becomes strained, as a result, as John tries to protect his son. Marlena succeeds in breaking up Kristen and Brady's engagement, enraging Kristen. However, she finds out that John intentionally tried to seduce Kristen in an attempt to get Brady to break up with her, and the two file for divorce. Brady gives Kristen a second chance when he finds out she stopped John's attempt to seduce her, but when Marlena overhears Kristen say she slept with another man while separated from Brady, she aims to find out what Kristen is up to. With the help of
Nicole Walker, Marlena is able to find a flash drive in Kristen's possession that could reveal her crimes. Kristen finds out, though, and has thugs beat Marlena up to get the drive back. She's unsuccessful, and Marlena is later able to recover it. The drive is encrypted, though, and she asks for the help of
Victor Kiriakis to decode it. He's able to open the drive, and tells her that it's proof Kristen slept with another man. He convinces Marlena to play it at Brady and Kristen's wedding ceremony. Marlena discovers, though, along with the rest of the congregation, that the man in the video is her son Eric, who was drugged and raped by Kristen as revenge against Marlena. Marlena had to try to repair her relationship with both Brady and Eric. Marlena got caught up in the drama surrounding her children's lives, as Eric decided to leave his priesthood and pursue a relationship with Nicole, and Sami was accused of murder. Marlena reconciled with John after he was hit over the head and left in a coma. At the same time, Kristen was arrested for what she did to Eric. She told Marlena that she could give John a cure if the charges against her were dropped. Making a deal with the devil, Marlena convinced Eric to drop his testimony against Kristen, and get her released. John received the cure, and woke up from his coma. Marlena soon started counseling baseball player
Paul Narita, who was struggling with being gay. She later was caught in the middle when Paul admitted to sleeping with Marlena's grandson
Will Horton, even though he was married to
Sonny Kiriakis. To make matters worse, John found out that Paul was his son. Marlena was at odds with John, in an attempt to protect her grandson. Will enlisted Marlena's help, wanting Paul to leave him and Sonny alone. In an attempt to help Will, Marlena ended up heading to Italy by accident, and found Kristen. The two ended up in a struggle, and Kristen fell out of a window; she was presumed dead. Marlena returned home, but was soon captured by Stefano, who wanted revenge for Kristen's death. He planned to kill Marlena in Italy, but she was saved at the last second by Stefano's son,
Chad. Marlena returned home to John and her family. In 2021, Marlena is repossessed by Satan, intent on getting deadly revenge on Salem. == Reception ==