Days of our Lives: DiMeras Who Won’t STAY DEAD – Insane Wicked Resurrections & One Shocking Return Coming!

Days of Our Lives resurrect the deceased in Salem and it’s a town of the Walking Dead at this point. So many characters have come back from the dead. And there’s another big one teased for the new year.

Many of these that go from cradle to grave and then back to life again are DiMeras. We’re going to talk about the most infamous back-from-the-dead DiMera stories on days and who should have stayed buried.

Megan Hathaway DiMera’s Shocking Hot Tub Death and Resurrection on Days of Our Lives

All right, let’s start with the name we just heard echoing around the DiMera crypt. And that is Megan Hathaway (Miranda Wilson). We’ve mostly seen Miranda Wilson in the role, but she has been presumed dead once and resurrected once. So, back in 1985, Megan  planned to kill Hope Brady (Kristian Alfonso) via hot tub electrocution. But Larry Welch (Andrew Clarke) caught Megan eavesdropping and cracked her in the head, killed her. And then dumped her into the same hot tub. So, she was presumed electrocuted just as she had planned for Hope.

So, she was most definitely dead. Megan was dead, dead, dead. But then they undid it on Days of Our Lives: Beyond Salem season two and did a retcon to say Stefano DiMera (Joseph Mascolo) had Megan frozen and then revived her using those three prisms and some Dr. Wilhelm Rolf (Richard Wharton) scientific magic while she was trying to get her hands back on the prisms. So she had also used those for a resurrection she carried off. We’re going to talk about that in a minute.

Megan cooked up a wild plan involving Kate Roberts (Lauren Koslow), Marlena Evans (Deidre Hall), and Kayla Brady (Mary Beth Evans) and this rare life-saving orchid that also served as a youth serum. And then Megan also revived Bo Brady (Peter Reckell). That’s the other resurrection that stunned, that those prisms were used to make happen. Last we saw Megan, she had been shot, but somehow found the strength to overpower Gabi Hernandez (Cherie Jimenez), hide her in her hospital bed. And she took off in Dr. Rolf’s (Richard Wharton) submarine with him. Megan has not been seen since. Now, I do think she’s wicked fun, but also a very dastardly DiMera back from the dead.

The Many Lives of Andre DiMera on DOOL: Master of Fake Deaths

All right, number two on our list of not-so-dead DiMeras that came back is Andre DiMera (Thaao Penghlis). He is known for faked deaths, impersonating his twin,  Tony DiMera (Thaao Penghlis). And dramatic returns orchestrated by family schemes. Thaao Penghlis’s character was presumed dead five times and resurrected over and over. Now, some of Andre’s deaths were actually elaborate ruses that were quickly exposed that he had cooked up himself.

While other deaths of Tony’s doppelganger involved years off-screen and seemed more permanent, unlike Stefano’s tech-heavy approach, Andre is an expert at survival twists and disguises. So, Andre was presumed well and truly dead after Abigail Deveraux (Marci Miller) clonked him over the head in 2018. However, Andre returned to the Days canvas in 2022 as part of the second devil possession storyline when he was summoned back from hell by the devil, as happens, right? Everybody knows somebody who’s been summoned back from the dead, right?

So not-so-dead Andre terrorized Johnny DiMera (Carson Boatman) and Ben Weston (Robert Scott Wilson) and then he masqueraded as Tony. But then Susan Banks (Stacy Haiduk) stabbed him. And then he basically poof, his little zombie demonic self was nothing but a pile of ashes and that seemed the end of Andre. But is it? Is it ever the end of any DiMera? Fans wondered if that might be him we have now instead of Tony in the crypt because his sudden interest in DiMera Enterprises seems much more of an Andre thing than a Tony thing.

Stefan DiMera’s Miraculous Return on Days of Our Lives: A Tale of Two Hearts

All right, number three on our list. Let’s talk about Stefan DiMera (Brandon Barash). The role was created for Tyler Christopher back in 2017 and then recast with Brandon Barash in 2019. And Stefano’s namesake son was presumed dead once and resurrected once. Stefan’s sole resurrection is a modern DiMera twist involving his twin, Jake DiMera, who was a retcon creation with some help from Dr. Rolf’s mad science.

Stefan was shot in the neck by Lani Price (Sal Stowers) when he jumped in front of his mom Vivian Alamain (Louise Sorel) to protect her. Took a bullet for her. He was declared brain-dead by doctors at University Hospital and Stefan’s heart was donated to Julie Williams (Susan Seaforth Hayes). And Gabi was desperate to get Dr. Rolf to resurrect him. But he told her it was too late. That was 2019 and Stefan was dead and buried supposedly. But then we found out Dr. Rolf kept Stefan’s heartless body alive in a twisted and sick science experiment. Li Shin (Remington Hoffman) was part of that.

Stefan DiMera Revived

When Stefan’s identical twin brother, Jake DiMera was shot and died, Dr. Rolf yanked out Jake’s heart, put it into Stefan, and revived him. And then there was a whole brainwashing component to that resurrection that upset Gabi because Stefan was pursuing Chloe Lane (Nadia Bjorlin). And again, that was back to Li plotting because he was hot for Gabi. But true love prevailed in the end and Stefan remarried Gabi.

But that blew up again when he cheated with Ava Vitali (Tamara Braun). This was while Gabi was in prison. And then Vivian and her manservant Ivan Marais (Ivan GVera), kidnapped Stefan, forged divorce papers, and hauled him off to Alamainia. But now Peter Blake (Jason Brooks) has claimed that Stefan is well and truly dead, and he heard it from Vivian himself. So, we’ll see because Peter is a big fat liar.

EJ DiMera’s Long Road Back from the Grave on DOOL

Fourth on our list of DiMeras back from the dead is EJ DiMera (Dan Feuerriegel). At first, it was James Scott in the role. And he was only dead once, which is a pretty low average for a DiMera, especially compared to his dad, Stefano’s double-digit returns from the dead. So, EJ was shot in 2014 by Clyde Weston’s (James Read) henchmen as part of a drug dealer spat gone wrong. And then he died in Sami Brady’s (Alison Sweeney) arms.

Four years later, Days of our Lives dragged him back from the grave. But we only saw him wrapped up in bandages. And that was when Kristen DiMera (Stacy Haiduk) had him in her warehouse of resurrected horrors where she and Xander Cook (Paul Telfer) were taking care of people that were maybe not so dead. We had Ava Vitali (Tamara Braun) in there. Remember, everybody had those little brass plate initials on the doors.

So, when the warehouse went boom, Sami (Alison Sweeney) found EJ (Dan Feuerriegel) in the rubble. But we never saw his face. And she took him to Italy in 2018. And he remained unseen until 2021 when they cast Dan Feuerriegel, a hunk from Spartacus with no soap opera experience. But dimples and sex appeal coming out his ears. They’re still doing some retcons on EJ’s return from the dead, recently adding an after-the-fact interaction with Cat Greene (AnnaLynne McCord) at the rehab facility in Italy where she was also recovering from plastic surgery. So EJ was shot again recently but came out of his coma nicely and remains alive.

Stefano DiMera: The Phoenix’s 13 Resurrections and Final Farewell on Days of Our Lives

All right, last but not least on the list of DiMeras with too many resurrected lives to count, we’ve got the Phoenix himself, Stefano DiMera, the father of EJ, Chad DiMera (Billy Flynn). And many others was presumed dead a whopping 13 times. Stefano holds the record for the most fake deaths in Salem history and the most real resurrections. Many of his brushes with death and resurrection were facilitated, of course, by his pet mad scientist, Dr. Rolf.

If you’ve been watching for a good long time, you know Stefano’s resurrections often involve elaborate schemes cooked up by Dr. Rolf, sometimes using body doubles, sometimes twists relying on technology. Stefano was presumed dead and brought back in 1983, 1984, and 1985. His phoenix-like resurrections continued in 1991, twice in 1994, and twice more in 1996. But that’s not all, folks. Stefano was also killed off and brought back in 2002, 2004, 2007, and 2012.

The Phoenix’s Grand Finale on DOOL

The Phoenix’s grand finale took place from 2012 to 2019 when he was shot multiple times by Hope Brady (Kristian Alfonso). The ISA staged Stefano’s final death scene and his body was never found. And this was done as a tribute to Stefano’s portrayer, the late Joseph Mascolo, who died on December 8th, 2016, because they wanted to leave his character a legend like the actor himself.

So they didn’t want to show Stefano as dead once and for all. He was beloved by Days of Our Lives fans. And then in 2019, of course, Dr. Rolf (Richard Wharton) implanted a microchip containing Stefano’s consciousness into Steve Johnson’s (Stephen Nichols) brain and he became known as Stevano, the new Stefano. Dr. Rolf was devastated when the microchip was destroyed to save Patch and the Phoenix was gone again.

And of course, now we know there’s one more DiMera resurrection coming up. Somebody in the family is in that big old test tube in Dr. Rolf’s lab. Will it be Stefano’s daughter Lexi Carver (Renee Jones) who rises from the grave this time or another more dastardly DiMera? We’ll find out soon.