List of Desperate Housewives Characters - Other Characters - Ben Faulkner

Ben Faulkner (Charles Mesure) is an Australian real estate developer who moves to Wisteria Lane in the final season. He attracts Renee's attention, but initially he rejects her. Ben hires Mike as a plumber in his project, so Renee pumps Mike for information about Ben and he reveals that he helps out old people. Renee goes and acts nice to Karen in front of Ben in hopes that he will ask her out, which he does. For their date, he takes her to a homeless shelter and once she figures out that he is mocking her, she is furious, but they bond over the fact that they were both poor as small children. Bree comes to volunteer at Ben's soup kitchen, and helps him get the right to build his houses for the poor in the woods, but she later finds out that it is the same place that she and the girls buried Alejandro. Bree first tries to prevent Ben from building the houses there, but after Ben finds the corpse, Bree decides to reveal the secret to him, and asks Mike to bury it under the concrete foundations at the site. Ben clashes with Chuck when he sees the detective harassing Bree, while Renee gets suspicious of Ben and Bree's friendship. Chuck purposely plants the idea on Renee that Ben is having an affair with Bree, but this soon ends when Renee discovers that Bree is about to commit suicide, and when Chuck is killed.

Ben has a financial crisis and decides to do business with a loan shark, which is discovered by Mike. Mike then reveals that Renee got twelve million dollars in her divorce, so Ben, who had been ignoring Renee, suddenly begins treating her nicer and even plans to propose to her, but refrains from doing so and admits to her that he wanted to marry her for her money. Ben finally takes the money from the loan shark, but later has trouble paying him back and even has a stress-related attack, and ends being taken to hospital. Mike tells Renee about the situation, so she pays off the loan shark behind Ben's back. Ben attends Mike's funeral (he was murdered by the loan shark) as an usher.

Renee waits for another proposal from Ben and when he finally pops the question, he gets arrested as the police found Alejandro's body at his construction site. Renee gets the ring on her finger before he is taken in for questioning. Ben is let go, but when Bree is thanking Ben for covering up the murder for her, the cops are listening in to their phone call. Renee finds out that Ben is on the witness list for Bree’s trial, and that Ben is keeping a secret about the dead body, so she confronts him but Ben tells her he cannot tell her because he does not want to put her at risk. Ben goes to the trial, but refuses to speak. He is thrown to prison until he speaks, and the prosecutor threatens Renee with sending him back to Australia unless she confesses what she saw at the progressive party during which Alejandro was killed. In the end, Bree is exonerated, and Ben finally marries Renee.