I've decided to make this a two-fold profile since the character of Victoria Winters, the original leading-lady character of the show, just wasn't everything she was cracked up to be.
It wasn't her fault. And it probably wasn't even the writers' fault at first. She was the main character based on Jane Eyre. An orphan who goes to a rich mansion to be a governess. The narration at the front of each episode always began with, "My name is Victoria Winters..." because her character would be the observational point of the show. So everything is summed up through how Vicki sees it. She comes to Collinsport to find out about her past but never finds out where she came from or if she's anyone important. Instead she gets caught up in the drama of Collinwood and as the heroine she's the one who gets to save the day for the characters in distress. She's also at the heart of their first attempts at supernatural stories. The story of Josette actually begins with Vicki, not Maggie, as she has a fascination with the portrait of Josette. This portrait along with Vicki helps to protect David from his phoenix mother Laura. And as the show progresses the stories began to wane into the standard soap stories... she falls in love with an innocent man accused of murder and ends up exonerating him. But there's less and less focus on who Victoria Winters is.
She's working on exonerating another shady murder mystery surrounding Elizabeth's husband and Jason McGuire when Barnabas is introduced and turns the show upside down. The writers dropped all interest in who Victoria Winters is even though her narration continued for most of her time on the show. When they tell Barnabas' back story, she's transported to the past to observe as the only character who is still herself while the others have assumed the identities of the 1795 Collins family and friends. They try to keep her the center of attention as she's wrongfully accused of witchcraft and subsequently imprisoned and hanged while falling in love with her lawyer, but by the time she returned to the present the audience only has eyes for Barnabas. I think think Alexandra Moltke (Isles) was offended at being shifted sideways to make way for the new star of the show and left. They replaced her with another actress just long enough to bring her jailer to the present and spirit them away to live happily ever after.
It's not just that she was bumped aside to make room for Barnabas, she was overshadowed by Maggie Evans. Overshadowed and outclassed. Maggie was just more likeable.
Their characters had interacted but Maggie didn't get her "push" until Barnabas chose her to be Josette. So, Josette started with Vicki and was brought to life with Maggie, effectively ending anything having to do with Vicki's personal story. She stole everyone's heart as Josette and overtook the spot of leading lady when paired with Barnabas. When Vicki left the show, she then moved in as David's governess.
Since she wasn't hinged on an observational viewpoint, her character was much more versatile. She could be moved fluidly through other time periods as various characters and her sweet, good-girl personality was much more useful to a leading-lady character of a simple show like this. The good needed to be all the way good like the bad needed to be all the way bad. And they didn't need a heroine anymore since Barnabas was now the hero. Whatever cerebral influence Vicki had was usurped by Dr. Julia Hoffman during the Barnabas transition as well. So, one can't really blame her for leaving. However, one also can't deny that Maggie is the better lead female character of the show.
And that's how Dark Shadows transitioned the leading lady from Victoria Winters to Maggie Evans.
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