Days of our Lives: Could Dominic Marino Be Marlena’s Child With Stefano DiMera?

Days of Our Lives has spent weeks building a mystery around Dominic Marino, the wealthy Italian businessman who has suddenly become entangled in Salem’s DiMera and Kiriakis families. While plenty of details about Dominic’s background are still missing, there are new, intriguing pieces to the puzzle as to who, exactly, this man really is.

This week, Marlena notes that Marino and DiMera both mean “of the sea.” It could simply be an interesting linguistic coincidence, but as we all know, there are no coincidences when it comes to Stefano DiMera.

On Monday’s episode of Days of our Lives, a new clue was found: a photo of Stefano holding a young boy. “Is that Dominic Marino?” EJ asks. We think it might be, and that opens the door to a whole other range of possibilities — including the possibility that Marlena could be Dominic’s mother.

Dominic Marino Is Connected to Stefano’s Unfinished Business

All anyone knows so far about Dominic Marino is that he’s an Italian billionaire with a hedge fund, purchasing the Kiriakis estate. His sudden appearance in Salem and willingness to spend a fortune on the property immediately attracted attention, particularly from EJ DiMera (Dan Feuerriegel).

On Monday, Chad DiMera (Conner Floyd) and Belle Black (Martha Madison) investigated Dominic’s home in Italy. EJ joined them, and while looking around the living room, they found several items that took them aback. From cigars to music preferences, Dominic left behind clues suggesting he had a great deal in common with Stefano.

But the most interesting clue was hidden alongside an identical chess set. The trio found a photograph of Stefano holding a young boy, with “1992” written on the back. EJ immediately wondered if the child was Dominic Marino.

If that is Dominic in the photograph, it gives us our first visual clue that his connection to Stefano goes back decades. It also puts a potentially important date on that connection.

Marlena Spent More Than Four Years Under Stefano’s Control

Meanwhile, back in Salem, Marlena told Julie (Susan Seaforth Hayes) she was having flashes of memories of being on Stefano’s island — a place where she spent years but doesn’t remember everything that happened. On Monday, Marlena admitted that she doesn’t necessarily want to remember what happened there, either.

Marlena was presumed dead after a plane crash on April 23, 1987. In reality, Stefano had arranged for her to be taken, eventually keeping her hidden on his island, later identified as San Cristobal. She remained away from Salem until 1991, when she finally returned.

That leaves more than four years in which Marlena’s life was largely controlled by Stefano, with significant portions of her captivity spent unconscious or otherwise under his influence. She has already acknowledged that she doesn’t remember everything from that period.

A conventional pregnancy might be hard to reconcile with what viewers saw at the time. But this is Stefano we’re talking about, and his schemes have never been limited by conventional science.

Stefano had Dr. Rolf (Richard Wharton), his trusted mad scientist, available to conduct medical experiments, manipulate people’s bodies, and carry out schemes that would have been impossible under normal circumstances. If the writers wanted to reveal that something happened to Marlena during those missing years that she never knew about, Rolf provides an established way to explain it.

Dr. Rolf Could Provide a Missing Link

If Dominic is eventually revealed to be Marlena and Stefano’s son, the most obvious explanation would involve one of Rolf’s experiments.

The show has already established that Rolf could use medical technology and genetic material to create or manipulate lives. Fans may remember that in 2002, he conducted bizarre reproductive experiments involving Rex and Cassie Brady, who were created using the biological material of Kate Roberts and Roman Brady, with Marlena serving as their surrogate.

That history gives Days a ready-made explanation for how Stefano could have fathered a child with Marlena without her knowing.

If Rolf was involved when Marlena was held captive, she wouldn’t have needed to know that she had a child. Stefano could have used her to create an embryo, had Rolf carry out the experiment, and then arranged for the resulting child to be raised somewhere far from Salem — like elsewhere on the island.

Rita May Know More Than She Is Saying

Rita (Maggie Carney) clearly knows more about what is happening than she’s willing to tell EJ. Her loyalty to Stefano didn’t end with his death, and she appears to be carrying out plans set in motion long before Dominic arrived in Salem.

Rita also obviously knows about Dominic. We haven’t seen her explicitly explain their relationship, but we do know that she lied to EJ about the whereabouts of Stefano’s ring. She picked it up after EJ left it on the coffee table, pocketed it, and the ring eventually wound up in Dominic’s possession — and he is now wearing it.

But why the loyalty to Dominic? We also know very little about Rita’s own history before she arrived in Salem a few years ago. 

Well, if this theory has merit, then it’s likely that she was the one who raised Dominic, considers him a son, and is protecting his rightful place in the DiMera family tree while carrying out Stefano’s final request.

Dominic Could Change the DiMera Family Tree

A reveal that Dominic is Marlena and Stefano’s child would have consequences far beyond Marlena. It would make Dominic a previously unknown heir whose very existence could challenge what they thought they knew about Stefano. 

More importantly, it would give Marlena a child she never knew she had. That would make the reveal particularly devastating for her. 

Marlena spent years trying to recover from what Stefano did to her, and she has now admitted that there are parts of her captivity she doesn’t remember and may not even want to remember. Learning that Stefano secretly took something from those years and turned it into a living person would be an especially cruel final piece of his legacy. And that would be very much in character for Stefano.