Gabrielle Solis

Gabrielle Solis is one of the main and titular characters of Desperate Housewives. Formerly a top model turned into a trophy wife, Gabrielle soon got bored with life in the suburbs and indulged in a torrid affair with her underaged gardener. However, as the years went on, Gaby became more and more humble and responsible, and eventually started a family with the love of her life, and went on to find happiness in the things money can't buy.

Early life
Gabrielle Marquez was born in Las Colinas, Texas, to Lucia and Ernesto Marquez. Her family was very poor and her father died from cancer when she was five. From a very young age, Gabrielle had developed a desire to escape from her wretched pauper life. When her mother remarried an awful drunk named Alejandro, Gabrielle was molested by him at the tender age of 15, and left town the following day. In New York she pursued her dream of becoming a model, and after a few years of success she traded her career to move to the suburbs with her new husband, Carlos Solis. Soon enough, however, she became bored with her life and began an affair with her underaged gardener.

Season 1
Gabrielle Solis is introduced to the audience as a trophy wife bored with her pacific life in the suburbs, who is having an affair with her teenage gardener, John. Her husband Carlos is presented as a rough businessman, with a tendency to be angry, possessive and controlling. Following the suicide of Mary Alice Young, Gaby and her remaining best friends, Susan, Bree and Lynette, try to make sense of the tragedy. A desperate Gaby also does her best to keep up her romantic liaison with the gardener, for it is the only thing keeping her going, even though she also claims to love Carlos. When the latter becomes suspicious that his wife is cheating on him - following an incident that involved him wrongly accusing and beating up a homosexual cable guy-, he calls his mother, Mama Solis, over to investigate. Mama eventually finds out that Gaby is indeed cheating on Carlos, but is accidentally run over by an inebriated Andrew Van de Kamp before she gets the chance to tell anyone anything. Gaby and John end their relationship out of guilt, and shortly afterwards Carlos is arrested on slave labor charges, having been set up by a business acquaintance. During this time, Gabrielle goes back to modelling at inferior gigs, and John, longing to get back what they had, proposes to her, an offer she turns down. The Solises struggle financially after Carlos comes back home on prison arrest, and when Mama Solis dies at the hospital under bizarre circumstances, Gaby is offered a fine monetary settlement, one she keeps from Carlos. However, he finds and forces her to sign a pre-nup, which leads her back to the arms of her teenage lover... unbeknownst to the fact that Carlos had also been tampering with her birth control pills. Gabrielle becomes pregnant, something she'd never wanted, without knowing who the baby's father is. When Gabrielle learns that Carlos is responsible for this, she threatens to leave him, and goes to find John, only to find his friend Justin in place. Carlos sees them together and assumes Gaby and Justin are lovers, and beats up the young gardener, then realizing he is also gay. Carlos is arrested on gay bashing charges, and asks Gabrielle to help him out. She refuses at first, but testifies in court that she was pretending to be having an affair to make her husband jealous. Everything is going well, until John shows up and tells Carlos the truth. Carlos snaps out and threatens to kill him in court, and is subsequently put behind bars again, much to his wife's dismay.

Season 2
After being arrested, Carlos demands that his wife get a paternity test to prove that he is the baby's father, and Gabrielle forges up one. Later, marital issues keep facing them as they go about their lives with one spouse behind bars. Gabrielle ends her relationship with John Rowland for good, and apologizes to her husband for cheating on him. She gets a new lawyer, David Bradley, to get conjugal visits and an early release for Carlos, but the latter doesn't like David at first, worrying his wife might stray with him. David falls for Gaby, and she plays him to get what she wants for her and her husband. When Caleb Applewhite breaks into the Solis home, Gaby falls down the stairs when trying to flee from him and loses her unborn baby. Carlos is devastated, and Gaby learns to cope with a pain she didn't think she had. Her husband is ultimately released from prison thanks to the help of a young, attractive nun, Sister Mary Bernard, one Gaby is jealous of. She eventually becomes responsible for the nun being shipped off to Alaska, and a fight between the two of them breaks out, after which Gaby decides to have Carlos' baby. They eventually learn the complications from her previous miscarriage led to her becoming unable to bear more children, and so the Solis couple start exploring other options, including letting Gaby's mother be a surrogate mother, and adopting a child. They become the care providers for the daughter of a stripper, but the birth mother takes the child back. The Solises then turn to their in-house maid, Xiao-Mei, who needs to be granted American citizenship or else she's deported. Xiao-Mei becomes their surrogate mother, and Carlos is drawn to her, which leads to them having an affair. When Gaby finds out, she becomes irate and throws Carlos out, all the while holding Xiao-Mei captive in her house until she gives birth to their child.

Season 3
Six months later, Gabrielle is still caring for the increasingly annoying and demanding Xiao-Mei, whilst going through an ugly divorce with Carlos. When Xiao-Mei gives birth to the wrong baby - the embryos having been switched - Gabrielle's chances of becoming a mother grow dimmer yet again. She hooks up momentarily with the engaged John Rowland, and Carlos later moves back into their house, being well within the rights to do so, according to the law. Their divorce is finalized after many squabbles and deceit, and Gaby decides to go back to New York to model, but gives up on that dream when it turns out not to be exactly what she hoped it would be. She then becomes a beauty pageant trainer with her friend Vern, and starts dating Bill Pearce, the father of a student, a relationship cut short by Gaby's lingering relationship with her ex-husband. She starts being showered with gifts by an unknown admirer, who turns out to be none other than the recently wealthy Zach Young. Gaby tries to become Zach's friend, but his obsession with her renders her unable to keep it up. She then meets Victor Lang, a middle-aged contender for the role of Mayor of Fairview, and Lang, who is very confident and determined, sets his eyes on marrying her. He proposes to her soon, and Gaby accepts his proposal before many reporters. This pushes Carlos, who's in a relationship with Edie Britt, to decide to settle down with the latter. Gabrielle starts wising up to Victor's cunning ways but decides to proceed with the marriage nonetheless, only to find that he was using her to get the Latino votes he needed to become Mayor. On their wedding day, Gaby finds a frustrated and rather inebriated Carlos, who's just broken up with Edie, and plants a big kiss on him.

Season 4
Gabrielle and Carlos decide to run away together, but after Edie seemingly attempts suicide, their plans are called off and dragged out. Eventually they settle for a romantic affair, which could bring deadly results should Victor find out. After John Rowland tries to get back together with Gaby, Carlos sees himself in John's previously worn shoes and decides to forgive him. Edie Britt hires a private investigator to find out if Carlos is cheating, and learns that he's been hooking up with Gaby again. Carlos leaves her, getting set up for a new life with Gaby, but Edie comes to Victor with the evidence, and the Mayor takes his wife out on a boating trip to confront her and try and patch things up with her. However, Gaby presumes he plans to murder her and knocks him overboard. When she and Carlos go back to get him, Victor attacks his wife's ex and is knocked overboard again, but this time he's lost at sea. Carlos and Gaby try to hide their connections to his disappearance, but the Mayor is found, and vows to get revenge. When a tornado hits Wisteria Lane, Victor sets out to kill Carlos, but is himself killed when he's impaled by a flying fence post. Carlos is knocked out and rendered blind, and Gabrielle loses all of their money when the wind takes Carlos' bank account documents away. Gabrielle is cheated out of a will, and she and Carlos remarry. Gaby learns that Carlos might be permanently disabled, but agrees to look after him nevertheless. They get a guide dog which Gaby despises, and, in order to make some more money, a new tenant, hip artist Ellie Leonard. Gaby becomes suspicious that Ellie is a prostitute when she starts having men over and getting big wads of cash, but it turns out she is really a drug dealer. Ellie and Gaby become good friends, but the Solises are used by local detectives to try and capture both Ellie and her supplier. Gaby tips Ellie off, and the latter leaves, only to come back after Gaby finds her money and refuses to give it back. After a fight ensues between the two, Gaby gets to keep the money and Ellie leaves, only to be shot and killed by Wayne Davis. Gabrielle then teams up with her best friends to defend Katherine after she kills Wayne herself, to prevent him from harming her ever again.

Time jump
In the five years that followed the events of the fourth season, Gabrielle gave birth to two children, Juanita and Celia, despite having been told prior to that that she could no longer have kids. She continued caring for her blind husband and young daughters, and eventually became a frumpy housewife, losing her glamorous looks and determined attitude.

Season 5
Gabrielle Solis is forced to let go of her old glamorous ways in favor of being a care provider for her blind husband and two overweight young daughters, Juanita and Celia. Frustrated with her current life, after losing her looks and her status in the local social circles, Gabrielle tries to do the best she can to manage. When Carlos, who is now working as a masseur, accidentally gives an orgasm to a wealthy, lonely middle-aged client, Virgina Hildebrand, the latter decides to attach herself to the Solis family, out of a desperate attempt to have people in her life. Following an incident with a fire at a local club, Carlos is told by the doctors that he might be able to regain his sight following a medical procedure, and Gaby starts worrying about getting her old looks back. Carlos' sight is restored, and Gabrielle starts working out and eating better. Gaby then gets Carlos to accept a good job, offered by an old acquaintance, Bradley Scott. Gaby goes back to looking exactly the way she did before, if not better, and when she catches Bradley having an affair, she manipulates him into giving Carlos the Christmas bonus he wasn't given. However, this leads to Bradley playing off the Solises, using them to distract his wife Maria, so Gaby calls things off and Bradley fires Carlos. In a turn of events, Bradley tells Maria the truth about the affair and she kills him, and Carlos, whose firing report hadn't been made yet, is promoted to Bradley's place. He then brings in an old girlfriend to help, and Gaby becomes jealous. After the Solises attend a family gathering hosted by Carlos' aunt Connie, Carlos offers himself to look after his teenage niece Ana, a decision Gaby isn't entirely on board with. She eventually caves in, but Ana turns out to be a manipulative young woman who plays men into doing her will, much like Gaby used to do.