Victoria "Vicki" Winters is a fictional character from the television Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows and its remakes of the same name.

After Moltke left to raise a family in 1968, actresses Betsy Durkin and Carolyn Groves briefly replaced her for only a handful of episodes, before Victoria was written out completely.

Jaclyn Smith, who was married to Dark Shadows actor Roger Davis at the time, was offered the role when Moltke left the show, but she declined.

Upon her arrival in Collinsport, she met the brooding Burke Devlin (first played by Mitchell Ryan, later portrayed by Anthony George), with whom she would eventually become romantically involved.

When fisherman Bill Malloy threatened to reveal Roger Collins's guilt in the manslaughter trial which led to Burke Devlin's wrongful conviction, he was murdered.

He kidnapped her and planned to kill her, but was frightened to death by the ghosts of Malloy, the Widows (women who had jumped from the cliffs after their husbands died), and Josette Collins.

Shortly after Morgan's death, David's presumed-dead mother, Laura (Diana Millay) arrived, wanting to reunite with her son.

Shortly after the ordeal with Laura Collins had ended, a mysterious man named Jason McGuire (Dennis Patrick) arrived in Collinsport and immediately convinced Elizabeth to let him stay at Collinwood.

Victoria and the family were shocked (especially Carolyn) and put on the defensive when McGuire's off-putting drifter friend Willie Loomis (played originally by James Hall for five episodes before John Karlen assumed, and became more well-known, in the role) joined him.

Elizabeth was furious that she had not only wasted 18 years of both never leaving Collinwood to guard this secret but also that Jason let her live with the guilt of believing that she killed Carolyn’s father.

He plans to make her his bride by thus controlling or hypnotizing her into being Josette, but with the help of the ghost of his little sister Sarah Collins, Maggie escapes.

The men reach an uneasy truce, and Victoria and Burke become engaged before Devlin goes on an ill-fated plane trip to South America in 1967.

A time paradox between the years 1795 and 1967 causes a rift in the timeband; a carriage overturns in 1795, exchanging Victoria with its occupant, Phyllis Wick, a governess hired by Naomi Collins.

Victoria makes the mistake of describing the future to the denizens of the past; she is soon seized by the fanatical Reverend Trask and accused of witchcraft.

Due to Victoria's very near-death experience, and as justice and revenge, a very angry Barnabas personally saw to it that Reverend Trask was sealed away in a very strong brick jail cell forever.

Peter/Jeff helped Lang build a Frankenstein-like creature, named Adam, who tried to kidnap Carolyn Stoddard and make her his monster bride.

Barnabas traveled back in time and rescued both Victoria and Peter from the machinations of the evil witch Angelique Bouchard before returning to the present.

Victoria's inexplicable off-screen death came about when Dennis Patrick was unable to reprise the role of Paul Stoddard whose ghost would return to take revenge on Jeb.

Most Dark Shadows fans tend to ignore this development as it makes little sense that Jeb existed at the same time Victoria and Jeff departed Collinsport.

During the reading of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard's will, the mystery surrounding Victoria Winters (which was never revealed in the TV series) is finally resolved.

When first meeting Vicki it is revealed that her real identity is Maggie Evans, but she changes it to Victoria Winters while on a train ride to Collinwood where, as in the original series, she has been employed as David's governess.

It is presumed that she changed her name because she didn't want anyone to learn of her strange past to find her or send her back to the insane asylum.

In Shadows on the Wall, the series' bible, Victoria was initially called Sheila March until the name was changed to suggest a more regal, older time.

Her search for answers to her mysterious past, which was the driving force behind her accepting the governess position at Collinwood, would have originally led to the revelation that Victoria was the product of an affair between Paul Stoddard and an unknown woman.

Elizabeth was to have discovered Victoria's existence the night she thought she had killed Paul, and her guilt over his death prompted her to send money to the Foundling Home.

[3] As the Adam/Eve storyline of 1968 began to wind down, Ron Sproat was in the stages of slanting the plot to reveal Victoria's lineage when Moltke left the series due to her pregnancy.

In House of Despair, Ed Griffin tells Quentin Collins that the people of Collinsport have not forgotten how "that Winters girl" inexplicably disappeared.

[7] Lara Parker's 2016 Dark Shadows novel centers around the return of Victoria Winters from her time in the past to find Collinwood deserted.

The story continues on from Parker's previous book Wolf Moon Rising, and focuses on Vicki finally learning about her lineage.

In 2011, the alternative rock group Cujo recorded "Victoria Winters", a song about the character and referencing events from Dark Shadows.