General Hospital's Best of the Week, January 19-23, 2026: Willow crosses a line while old ghosts start knocking

Okay, we had another unintentionally short week on General Hospital, thanks to the lack of a Wednesday episode due to a news event. I’m sure that didn’t just inconvenience viewers, but also completely kneecapped what was probably meant to be a strong Friday cliffhanger. Instead, that payoff has now been punted to next Monday, which is… fine, I guess. But it definitely steals the momentum—nothing like waiting all weekend for a cliffhanger that already had its legs cut out from under it.

Still, the biggest takeaway of the week was Willow calmly stabbing Drew with a syringe and very likely shoving him toward a fate that’s somehow worse than death: locked-in syndrome. And no, this doesn’t feel like a Ryan situation where he’s secretly faking and playing chess while everyone else panics. If this goes where it looks like it’s headed, Drew will be fully aware, able to hear and see everything around him, but completely unable to communicate. That kind of helplessness incites anger and bitterness. Especially if Willow keeps visiting him, not out of guilt, but to twist the knife and remind him that she’s done being used. You can practically see where this ends: Drew eventually breaking free of it, and whatever revenge comes next being so extreme it makes Victor Cassadine look like Snidely Whiplash.

And then there’s Anna. Poor, trapped, isolated Anna. Sitting in Wyndemere with no idea how close she actually is to home. Someone is clearly messing with her, but the bigger question is why. The only person who would want to intentionally taunt her would be Faison. That’s what makes the possibility of his still being alive feel disturbingly plausible, whether that means his mind is preserved somewhere, embedded in a computer, or waiting to be transferred into another body entirely. They even dropped a casual mention that Anna was ready for “phase two,” which is never something you want to hear when you’re already being psychologically tortured. Whatever this is building toward, it’s getting darker by the day, and the show seems very comfortable letting the dread play the long game.

General Hospital spotlight scenes

Chase and Michael’s fight had the exact energy of two men who’ve been holding in their feelings for several fiscal quarters and finally decided the most productive way forward was violence. There was no choreography, no elegance, no grand soap flourish. Just flailing, poorly aimed punches, and the unmistakable vibe of a bar fight that starts over nothing but ends over everything. Michael throws a punch like someone who’s watched boxing once and disagreed with it intellectually, while Chase fights like a man who’s been demoted, emotionally sandblasted, and handed one last nerve to play with. The real chef’s kiss, though, was Jason stepping in with his arms up like an exhausted substitute teacher breaking up a playground brawl, silently asking how his life ended up here. It wasn’t heroic. It wasn’t pretty. It was two adult men having a full emotional meltdown with fists, and honestly, that’s when General Hospital is operating at peak efficiency.

Verbal knockouts

Did anyone catch the callback? When Willow injected Drew, she said, “Everything's going to work out, Drew. You'll see.” That was what he said to her photo on his mantle, just before she plugged him from behind. As Tracy said last week, “Karma’s a bitch.”

In another disturbing note, Willow was at the hospital, pretending to be worried about Drew, and said to Nina, “I just want to make sure my husband gets the treatment he deserves.” That was delightfully ominous.

Brook Lynn told Chase that he didn’t have to make any career decisions any time soon. “Whether you accept your demotion and work your way back up to being a detective, or you decide to be a personal chef, a singer, or to busk outside of Bobbie’s.” Chase hilariously responded, “Hold on. You would let me walk around dressed as a giant BLT sandwich and hand out flyers?”

And agent Cullum delivered the week’s most chilling line when he was explaining to Britt that he would have Rocco locked up in Steinmauer if she didn’t cooperate. While she pleaded that she would do what he said, he calmly explained, “Actions speak louder than words. Consequences will no longer be possibilities. They are certainties that you can count on.” Very ominous.

Wardrobe MVPs

Ava’s Wardrobe MVP this week came from how natural the whole look felt on her. The red-and-black top sat right in that space where it was noticeable without being distracting, the kind of thing you register immediately and then forget to question because it already makes sense. The leather pants grounded it, giving the outfit that Ava edge where she looks perfectly put together but not remotely soft. Nothing about it felt styled for a moment or designed to draw focus, which is exactly why it worked. She looked comfortable, confident, and completely in her lane, and the clothes didn’t try to do more than keep up.

Pop culture shoutouts

Since the week was light on actual pop culture name-checks, the wardrobe stepped in and did the job instead. Emma’s pink coat had real Jackie Kennedy energy, that polished, mid-century look that makes you feel like she should be boarding Air Force One instead of standing at a counter, gloves on, trying to process chaos. It had that very old-school, buttoned-up feel, the kind of look that assumes competence without advertising it. Josslyn’s jacket came from the opposite direction entirely, more late ’70s or early ’80s, like something you grab on the way out the door because you don’t plan on apologizing for anything today. The leather and fur trim felt worn-in and natural on her, not styled to death, just right. Put together, the contrast did all the work, polished restraint next to casual rebellion, and neither one felt like it was trying to be clever about it.

Best camera moment

The Willow-and-Drew injection scene earns Best Camera Moment purely on how calmly it lets something unhinged unfold. The framing stays close enough that you can’t escape Drew’s panic or Willow’s unsettling focus, and that’s the point. She’s calm, composed, and almost gentle, while Congressman Cutthroat is realizing far too late that this is not a conversation about going on vacation anymore. The camera lingers just long enough on her face to make the moment uncomfortable, then cuts in a way that turns the syringe into a punchline you absolutely shouldn’t be laughing at, but kind of are. It’s intimate, tense, and faintly horrifying, the sort of shot that makes you lean back on the couch and mutter, “Well, that went sideways fast,” while also appreciating how perfectly the show knew when to hold, when to cut, and when to let the actions speak for themselves.

Observations, complaints & unhinged theories

There are still some unanswered questions swirling around Faison’s “still alive” situation that don’t quite add up yet. Either his mind is in a computer, he’s not really dead, or they’re using some kind of tech to simulate his voice. But the one detail that stood out to me was this: Anna was in her prison/apartment and heard Faison talking through a wall speaker near the two-way glass. There were moments when the camera switched to the other side of the glass, and we could hear, clear as a bell, Faison’s voice in the room. Not through a speaker. Not “the man behind the curtain’s” voice. Faison. That little touch felt very intentional and very unsettling.

On the emotional chessboard, Britt may not be wrong about Carly’s relationship with Jason. The question isn’t whether Carly loves him, that’s a given, but whether that bond supercedes everyone else in his orbit in ways no one is really allowed to say out loud. Jason himself seems to sense something’s off, concluding that Britt picked the fight for a reason, so he decided to figure out why.

And then there’s the truly chilling stuff. Peter’s reappearance was deeply creepy and genuinely unexpected, especially given how carefully the show kept Wes Ramsey’s return under wraps. His explanation to Anna that death “isn’t the handicap it used to be” was bad enough, but the idea that Faison has been waiting to reveal himself in person pushes it into full psychological horror territory.

That same menace carried over to the WSB storyline, where Cullum casually floated the idea of making Rocco disappear, only to counter Britt’s defiance by telling her the boy could be charged with vandalism, implying fake evidence could still hurt him. It was a reminder that in Port Charles, the scariest villains don’t always raise their voices. They just explain the rules and let the fear do the rest.

Things I yelled at the TV

When Peter popped up on my screen, very much alive and very much smirking, I didn’t so much yell as loudly question reality itself. Something along the lines of, “Oh COME ON, he’s DEAD… oh wait, of course he’s not,” followed immediately by resigned laughter. It was shocking for exactly three seconds, and then instantly classic General Hospital, where death is less an ending and more a temporary inconvenience. Still, credit where it’s due, the reveal landed just unsettling enough to make me sit up, rewind, and mutter, “Well, this is about to get worse,” which is really the show’s love language.

When Michael asked Chase how long it would take before he ended up in Willow’s bed, I absolutely reacted like a kid who’d just witnessed a verbal drive-by. “Whoa. Burn!” Honestly, that one line was enough to light the fuse on what had clearly been a pressure cooker situation waiting to blow. The fisticuffs that followed were messy, inevitable, and wildly entertaining, which means the writers understood the assignment.

Then there was Chase admitting he was bummed about no longer being a detective, paired with his continued belief that the department was wrong and he was right all along. That’s when I fully yelled, “Oh, man, you are in for a rude awakening!” His self-righteousness is getting worse by the episode, which only makes it more fun knowing the moment is coming when that balloon deflates, and he finally realizes Willow isn’t the pillar of morality that he thinks she is.

EPILOGUE

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So yes, enjoy the smiles while they last, because this week made it very clear that half of Port Charles is lying to themselves and the other half is being actively lied to. Willow is playing the long game with a disturbingly steady hand, Drew is trapped in a nightmare that hasn’t even finished introducing itself yet, and Anna is one wrong “phase” away from learning just how personal this whole mess is meant to be. Meanwhile, fists were thrown, lines were crossed, and several characters are cruising toward revelations they are wildly unprepared to handle. The show isn’t rushing any of it, which should probably worry everyone. Next week doesn’t feel like a reset. It feels like the moment the consequences stop hovering and start arriving.

General Hospital can be seen weekdays on ABC and Hulu.

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