General Hospital casting news sees Eva LaRue is done as Natalia Rogers-Ramirez this week and she may be dead from an overdose. We’re going to talk about Natalia’s grim exit and some other sizzling casting updates. Let’s dive into some hot Comings and Goings news.

General Hospital Character Exit: Why Natalia’s Departure is Shaking Up Soap Fans

All right, so it’s no secret that the character of Natalia is wildly unpopular and she has been since the beginning when Eva LaRue came on the canvas as Blaze’s (Jacqueline Grace Lopez) mom.

Fans were initially excited because she’s a legend from All My Children, CSI Miami, and more. She’s a great talent. But the character they created for her, Natalia was awful. Just out of the gate, a controlling stage mom with rabid homophobia, which was especially toxic considering that both her son and her daughter, Blaze and Marco Rios (Adrian Anchondo) are gay.

That drew a ton of criticism, especially when they dragged Perez Hilton in as part of General Hospital trying to redeem Natalia. And that actually, I think, made it worse. that wasn’t well-received. People who knew who he was didn’t like it and a lot of people just didn’t know who he was.

General Hospital: Natalia’s Redemption?

So, they made Natalia marginally better by having her protect Kristina Corinthos-Davis (Kate Mansi) when they got into that accident while Kristina was grieving. But, you know, a ton of fans are not fans of Kristina either. So, that wasn’t exactly a genius redemption plan for Natalia.

Then they tried again by pairing her with Sonny Corinthos (Maurice Benard) and her being his support during his secret heart problems, but fans didn’t want Natalia with Sonny either.

You know, many of the viewers had already kind of made up their minds about Natalia if you looked back at soap social media comments and she just left a bad taste in their mouths they couldn’t get past. And that’s likely why Sonny and Natalia never got into a full-blown romance and abruptly he shoved her out of his life. So, you know, clearly they were changing things.

General Hospital Writers Change Direction: Natalia’s Exit Strategy and Eva LaRue’s Perspective

So, General Hospital has now gone in a different direction and decided to write out Natalia. They started staging her exit a little while ago with her lying about Jenz Sidwell (Carlo Rota) being her ex-husband. And of course, that ended Sonny as her friend and got her out of his whole heart surgery storyline. Eva LaRue said when she got that script, she knew where her character was headed.

Also, she recently talked about her exit from GH and said it was kind of strange because she’s never played a character who was villainized like this. She said that fans usually like her characters and they root for her as they did when she played Dr. Maria Santos Grey on All My Children on and off for almost 20 years. She was well-liked on CSI Miami. So this was a change for her and you know soap fans can be kind of harsh. I mean we all know right?

Eva LaRue also said that Natalia was meant to be a short-term thing and then they stretched it out. To me, I think it’s poor decision-making by the powers that be at GH. Just in my opinion, because why make a character so terribly unlikable and then try and keep them around when they conceived her as being basically irredeemable. It just the math didn’t math on that from the start.

General Hospital Spoilers: Unpacking Natalia’s Possible Grim Exit Scenarios

So now Natalia is on her way out, going, going, gone this week, her final episodes. But the question is how will she exit? After Sonny wrote her a reality check that she was going to be alone, he told her leave the christening. So Natalia packed, but then she started binging on pills and booze and she passed out in her hotel room after texting random nonsense to her son Marco.

So Natalia kind of conked out on the couch right before Marco answered saying he was on his way. But let’s be real, Natalia might overdose and be dead before Marco even finds her. Or, you know, they race her to GH and she’s declared DOA there. Then again, the booze and drug buffet could send Natalia into a coma and they could ship her off to long-term terminal care like they did with Lulu Spencer (Alexa Havins Bruening) when they wrote out Emme Rylan. That would get rid of her but leave her alive, which seems pointless for me. Natalia is better dead.

General Hospital Spoilers: Natalia Gone?

If she recovers from the overdose, Sonny might have one of his minions sneak Natalia out of General Hospital and ship her off to Belize as Sonny planned. So that way hopefully Natalia would sober up and start a new life. I can’t see her getting sober in a foreign country. But anyway, if Natalia wasn’t bad enough already, you know, GH made her a repeat DUI offender, which makes my skin absolutely crawl. There is nothing worthwhile about this character.

Eva LaRue is a delight and she was done a disservice by them writing the character this way. Even a good villain needs redeeming qualities that makes them intriguing or at least somewhat sympathetic, you know. So Sidwell might get his hands on Natalia, stash her somewhere, smother her while she’s passed out on drugs because he hates Natalia almost as much as fans do. He could frame Sonny for Natalia’s murder. Get them both out of his way. Two birds, one stone. We’ll see.

This week, Detective Harrison Chase (Josh Swickard) is at Natalia’s hotel room door with a beat cop to arrest her since DA Justine Turner (Nazneen Contractor) demanded Anna Devane (Finola Hughes) put out an APB on Natalia. So, Chase might find Natalia dead or near dead.

Maybe they revive her and arrest her after they get her some medical attention. and then DA Turner can, you know, put Natalia into witness protection after she testifies against Sonny so he can’t have her whacked. So, it’s going to be interesting to see if Natalia leaves General Hospital in handcuffs or in a body bag or witness protection. We’ll see this week if she exits dead alive, barely alive, and in a coma. You know, a soap classic.

General Hospital Casting Shake-Up: Contract Changes, Return Rumors, and New Faces

In other casting news, if you’ve not heard, Josh Kelly is no longer on contract. He’s now back to recurring. So, Cody Bell (Josh Kelly) may seduce Ava Jerome (Maura West) like Kristina wants him to, like she’s paying him to, and then he’ll slink into semi obscurity now that he is not on contract. Another actor who’s good, the character’s not great, and you know, rarely seen. And that means there’s likely not going to be a romance for Cody and Molly Lansing-Davis (Kristen Vaganos) unless it’s offscreen.

You know, Cody being pushed back. Doesn’t bode well for Molly’s character unless General Hospital plans to pair her with somebody else. So, I just wonder if she’s going to slide back to recurring as well. If they were going to slide one of the Davis girls back to recurring, Molly wouldn’t be my choice.

Also, we’ve got Kelly Thiebaud‘s character back soon, and it seems likely she’s going to be back, possibly as her old character, Britt Westbourne, or maybe someone who’s Britt adjacent, like an even more evil twin. I really liked Britt Westbourne. She was a fun villain, so I wouldn’t be too upset if Dr. Liesl Obrecht (Kathleen Gati) found a way to save her life and got her a miracle cure.

General Hospital: Nelle Returns?

Plus, there are Nelle Benson (Chloe Lanier) return rumors. I did a video on it here talking about it. And part of the reason the rumors have been picking up velocity is Drew Cain Quartermaine (Cameron Mathison), he engaged on soap social media by clicking like on a post about Nelle’s possible return. I mean, if Drew marries Willow Tait (Katelyn MacMullen), then Nelle would be his twin sister-in-law. So, fans do wonder if Nelle’s the one stalking baby Daisy. However, Sidwell seems likelier with the war heating up between him and Sonny this week.

Then we have soap legend Erika Slezak from One Life to Live joining General Hospital this fall. She might be coming as her OLTL character Viki Lord Buchanan or she might be a Monica Quartermaine (Leslie Charleson) recast. So the legacy character gets a proper exit storyline seeing as Leslie Charleson has sadly passed away. She passed away earlier this year.

So and they still need to wrap that up. They keep just saying Monica is sick. So obviously they have to do something. Lots of changes coming to General Hospital, starting with Natalia’s exit this week. We will see what GH has planned for her. Don’t miss these episodes. And remember, Friday, July 4th is a rerun of an old episode because it is Independence Day.