Vicki is back in Walford after two decades, ahead of the funeral of her uncle Martin Fowler (James Bye), and she comes flanked by her partner Ross Marshall (Alex Walkinshaw) and his son Joel (Max Murray).
So, just who is Vicki Fowler and what is her history in EastEnders? Here’s everything you need to know about the character.
Vicki Fowler is the daughter of Michelle Fowler (Susan Tully, Jenna Russell) and Den Watts (Leslie Grantham).
As a result, Vicki is Sharon Watts’s adopted half-sister and the biological half-sister of both Mark Fowler Jr (Ned Porteous) on her mother’s side and the late Dennis Rickman (Nigel Harman) on her father’s side.
This means that Vicki is related to the Beale-Fowler family by blood, being the niece of the late Martin Fowler (James Bye) and the cousin-once-removed of Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt).
What happened to Vicki Fowler in EastEnders?
Vicki was the result of a major teen pregnancy storyline in 1985 when Michelle became pregnant by a mystery man, revealed in a whodunnit-style storyline to be Den Watts, the philandering married and much older father of Michelle’s best friend Sharon.
Raised by Michelle – and also her first husband, Lofty Holloway (Tom Watt), for a time – Vicki had a mostly happy childhood with the Fowlers and Sharon.
Sharon did not find out the truth about Vicki’s paternity until a two-hander episode in 1989 following Den’s apparent death, but soon accepted this truth and remained close with Michelle and Vicki.
It was Sharon who would later reveal her blood relation to Vicki when the latter was a child.
A young Vicki left Walford with her mother in 1995 when Michelle decided to move to the US following the departure of Sharon earlier in the year and some other big changes in her life.
Off-screen in the US, Vicki would grow up alongside a younger half-brother, Mark, and also get a step-dad named Tim.
Vicki would become a major character in her own right – and at least initially with an American accent – when she returned to Walford in 2003 as a teenage tearaway, having argued with her mother Michelle and initially coming to stay with her strict grandmother Pauline Fowler (Wendy Richard).
