Marlena Evans

The show pretends like everyone's broke, so no one can afford...

No one can afford to live in those Culver City apartments that Marlena and...

And Patch and Kayla live in, apparently.

Those

He's trying to do what's best, I think.

There's some loyalty to EJ there that he's still grappling with, but

Yeah, well, everybody's starting to find out his tea because now you got Marlena that's looking at him like, baby, you avoided me.

Mm hmm.

Monday Days spoilers have Belle and Chad searching Dominic Marino's home in Italy, and apparently they're not alone.

By Friday, EJ's pressing Rita for info about Dominic Marino, and in the promo, Marlena says, "Marino means of the sea," and so does DiMera.

So Rita's talking to Stefano's portrait in the promo and says, "It's playing out as you planned, sir." So Dominic is this Italian billionaire who's buying the Kiriakis mansion.

Xander's waiting for the deal to close to try and get them out of the financial mess caused by EJ, who wants to get his hands on Victor's house and, of course, the company as well.

Franco Lopresti makes his debut on Monday, September 14th as Dante.

He's hosting the Monte Carlo poker game, and clearly Dominic has a fixation on Stefano and the DiMeras based on the ring and the portrait at his place and the chess set.

So Marlena, of course, saying that both last names mean of the sea.

So this may be an alias, and with Dominic buying the Kiriakis mansion and sending Chad on a wild goose chase, I think there's a lot more to it.

which is another sign the man in the ring is a secret DiMera, because Rita is ride or die for Stefano and his family.

The most disturbing speculation is that somehow Stefano had a child with Marlena, because the chess set scavenger hunt was meant for John and Marlena, and it might have been intended to lead her... to a son she had with Stefano that she had blocked from her memories.

So leading Belle to find the man who could be her half-brother is almost as good because Marlena would still find out.

It would be insane all this time later to give Stefano and Marlena a son, but I put Nothing past the days of our lives, writers.

As you know, nothing is off limits in that writer's room.

And I hope if Dante is that child that Marlena was maybe just a surrogate when she was captive on the island rather than a bio... parent to a child of stephano all that aside if dante is our mystery man who's pulling the strings he's sure taking a whole lot from ej because dante is engaged to sammy who is ej's ex-wife and he wouldn't mind having sammy back in his life ej and sammy share two kids johnny and sydney and dante's really close to sydney now And in fact, Dante might have specifically gone and romanced Sammy knowing it would hurt EJ.

Plus, Dante could be buying the Kiriakis mansion not only to have a nice big home in Salem, but to stick it to EJ so he can't get the Kiriakis estate for himself.

And the one thing that's even worse than this for EJ is that Dante could have Rita's full loyalty as well.

And if she is faking trying to keep Alex close, it wouldn't be the first time somebody in Salem faked paralysis.

If you remember, it was, I think, early 2008, Marlena injected Stefano with a whole bunch of drugs to fake a cardiac stroke, and that caused indefinite paralysis.

But Stefano regained his ability to speak and move, and he was finally able to escape his hospital room, which made John Black think that Stefano had been faking his paralysis symptoms all along.

And there have been other Salemites who were paralyzed and later regained their ability to walk, if you remember.

Deidre is a three-time Daytime Emmy nominee for who played Dr. Eleanor Chivers in Star Trek Strange New Worlds soap opera episode.

Hall is a living legend, best known as Dr. Marlena Evans on Days of Our Lives, a role she has played for 50 years.

That's the thing with these soap opera actors.

They get into a role.

But E.J. also suggested he might be able to lend a hand trying to figure out the chess set clues.

After all, this quest is not only about Marlena and John Black.

It ties back to the DiMera family as well.

And when EJ called Rita, viewers saw the ring sitting right there on the coffee table.

but he isn't really one of them.

Or maybe his mom is a Vitale and his father is Stefano.

There's also been some hints that maybe Stefano and Marlena had a secret child that she doesn't remember.

Stefano would have loved to have had a kid with his queen of the night and might have held Marlena captive for the whole nine months.