Esther Māreikura Samuels is a fictional character on New Zealand's longest-running soap opera Shortland Street, played by actress Ngahuia Piripi since 2015.

[1] At 25, Ngahuia Piripi was cast as Esther Samuels, a "a young doctor with a forthright attitude"; making her debut on 14 October 2015.

[3] Piripi took inspiration from her stepmother for the role as she was, "an awesome, beautiful, very strong Māori lady ... She’s quite similar to what I imagined Esther being like, a real-life example for me.

[6] Winning a job at Shortland Street hospital in October 2015, Esther surprised her family member TK Samuels (Benjamin Mitchell) upon arriving in Ferndale having recently graduated Medical school.

She quickly fell for criminal turned barman Curtis Hannah (Jayden Daniels) but was devastated when she learned it was an affair as he was dating Lucy Rickman (Grace Palmer).

Eventually reconciling once Curtis' relationship with Lucy ended, the romance was short-lived due to his badboy nature and Esther fell for Chris Warner's (Michael Galvin) son Finn (Lukas Whiting).

The marriage soon faced trouble when an increasingly irate Finn was suspended from work and physically assaulted Esther twice, to the point of broken ribs.

Returning full-time to work duties following a successful transplant, Esther had a brief flirtation with Hawks Logan (Teone Kahu) before having non-consentual sex with colleague Ben King (Jamie Irvine).

Esther soon realised she had been raped but declined to press charges, opting to educate Ben on consent and the harm he had caused.

Eventually beginning to date, the arrival of Rahu Parata (Zak Martin) made her question her cultural compatibility with Marty and they broke up over Matariki as a result.

[2] She was involved in several high-profile "issue-based" storylines that included: being domestically abused by husband Finn Warner (Lukas Whiting), being attacked by drug dealers, and being forced to have sex with colleague Ben King (Jamie Irvine).

However Curtis was killed off in the online spinoff Shortland Street: Retribution, with Daniels acknowledging fan's disappointment, "I think people will be sad but nothing can last forever so I do hope that in the end that they will be satisfied with how everything wraps up."