

It was suggested in the show that her age is such that she even predates written history itself. The only way to defeat her was to make her believe that Dionysus was ravaging her. By believing in her god and becoming a maenad, Maryann was immortal. Maryann's powers and age were directly tied to her beliefs.

She was mistakenly summoned by a ritual of one of the protagonists and her ultimate agenda was to summon her lord in corporeal form by sacrificing someone she deemed worthy of. As suggested in the show, Maryann was not a typical maenad but an exceptionally powerful and ancient one with rare powers and abilities, a devout worshipper of the Hellenic Pagan deity Dionysus, the god of festivities, drunkenness, limitless sexuality, wine, animalistic expression, the wild, and of course, physical and spiritual ecstasy. It was later revealed that Maryann was not your average out-of-towner but in fact a supernatural creature, a maenad.

First appearing in the last few episodes of season one, little was known about outsider Maryann she appeared kind, generous, loving and ultimately obsessed with pleasure and ecstasy. She seemed to be a nomadic mystery woman who shows up in a small Louisiana town, Bon Temps and begins to make her presence felt to the people there.
