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List of Desperate Housewives characters

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 14, 2026
Entity authorityQ4489250
Source-derived summary

Desperate Housewives is an American comedy-drama series that aired on ABC for eight seasons from October 3, 2004, to May 13, 2012. The focus is on the secret, and often shocking, lives of the residents living on fictional Wisteria Lane, specifically the four living protagonists Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher), Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman), Bree Van de Kamp (Marcia Cross), Gabrielle Solis (Eva Longoria) and the late Mary Alice Young (Brenda Strong), who recently committed suicide. Each episode is narrated by Mary Alice, and from her now unique perspective, she often gives biting commentary. The ensemble cast includes the women's husbands, children, love interests, neighbors, and other acquaintances.

Main characters

The following are characters whose portrayer received "Starring" billing at any point of the series. They are sorted in the order in which they were introduced to the main cast, and not by episode count, screen time, or popularity.

Susan Mayer

Lynette Scavo

Bree Van de Kamp

Gabrielle Solis

Edie Britt

Mike Delfino

Rex Van de Kamp

Carlos Solis

Paul Young

Mary Alice Young

Julie Mayer

John Rowland

Zach Young

Zachary "Zach" Young (Cody Kasch) is the son (non-legal) of Paul and Mary Alice. Zach's birth parents are Deirdre Taylor and Mike Delfino; however, this, along with his original name of Dana Taylor, is not revealed until "One Wonderful Day".

Zach is put in a mental institution by his father after his mother's suicide. Zach later runs away and is found hiding in Julie's room, and after they start dating.

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This entry incorporates text from List of Desperate Housewives characters” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.