Is General Hospital's 'Nathan' really Peter August?

General Hospital's Nathan West has been a complete mystery ever since reappearing on the Port Charles scene last fall. Just like that, a character we watched die seven years prior was back with absolutely no memory as to where he had been and what had happened to him. DNA tests revealed that this man was Nathan, but how extensive were these tests?

Nathan picks up where he left off

Nina was thrilled to see her brother alive | Image: ABC

Despite having no idea what Nathan (Ryan Paevey) was doing for a full seven years, the brain trusts at the PCPD gave him his job back in no time at all. Anna (Finola Hughes) was hesitant at first, but finally relented with nearly no questions asked. Since then, Nathan has gone about attempting to solve crimes while trying to get to know his young son and becoming Lulu's (Alexa Havins) confidante (and perhaps even more).

This man acts like Nathan, talks like Nathan, looks like Nathan, and has Nathan's memories, but is he really Nathan? Britt (Kelly Thiebaud) seemed hesitant when she first saw him, as if she knew something the rest of us didn't, but that was quickly dropped.

A few weeks ago, Dante (Dominic Zamprogna) questioned Nathan about a mistake he made with evidence that went against police procedure. Nathan chalked things up to him still being rusty on the job and Dante bought it. We saw that as the first clue that this man, who has been calling himself Nathan, isn't who everyone thought he was.

A huge General Hospital anvil

Peter recently appeared in Anna's imagination on General Hospital | Image: ABC

Last week, during the snowstorm, it became more apparent than ever that this man was hiding a whopper of a secret. While playing "Two Truths and a Lie," Nathan revealed that he could recite the entire periodic table of the elements by heart. Immediately, that seemed off. Couple this knowledge of chemistry with Britt's task to finish Faison's (Anders Hove) final project — cold fusion — and our suspicions rose.

Then, Nathan slipped and mentioned that his father insisted he learn the periodic table as a child. Lulu found that odd because the father who raised Nathan was a businessman who never cared much about his adoptive son. However, Nathan's real father, Cesar Faison, did raise a son whom he would have forced to memorize the periodic table. That son was none other than Peter August (Wes Ramsey), another presumed-dead character who recently appeared in Anna's hallucination.

Is this man really Peter August in disguise or does he have some of Peter's memories and is confusing them with his own? Memory-mapping is definitely a Port Charles thing, but so are Faison resurrections. Might this be a Faison's son resurrection, but not the son we want? Time will tell...

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