Chloe Lanier: General Hospital Alum Chloe Lanier teases what a Nelle return could look like

Chloe Lanier didn’t just play a villain on General Hospital. She detonated one. When Nelle Benson arrived in Port Charles, no one was prepared for the disasters she would cause. She wore a smile while lying and manipulating her way through town. But ultimately, she met her fate after accidentally falling off a cliff. But on soaps, the lack of a body can lead to a return, and Lanier knows that.

General Hospital's Nelle doesn’t fade easily

Nelle was up to no good on General Hospital | Image: ABC

Lanier told Soaps.com that she was never convinced Nelle’s story reached a clean conclusion. “Nelle’s too tough to be dead,” she said. Nelle was always a survivor first, someone who adapted rather than surrendered. Drugging, blackmailing, and framing people were the tools she kept on hand at all times, ensuring her ability to slip out of trouble easily.

She didn’t describe a literal survival plan so much as a character reality. Nelle existed in extremes. When she was backed into a corner, she often pushed back hard enough to find her way out of a predicament. That kind of person doesn’t just disappear off a cliff.

“She’s probably set up camp at the bottom of that cliff, living her best life until Cody comes and finds her,” Lanier jokingly added. Her half-playful, half-serious tone kept the possibility of a Nelle return suspended without exactly coming right out and saying it. The fact that Lanier and Kelly are an item in real-life often has fans wondering when she’ll follow him back to Port Charles.

A return wouldn’t soften Nelle, and that’s the point

Chloe Lanier as Nelle Benson on General Hospital. | Image Source: ABC

Lanier made it clear she wouldn’t want Nelle to come back as someone reshaped into someone nicer. “If Nelle ever did resurface in some fashion, I wouldn’t want her to be redeemed,” she said, cutting off the usual soap instinct to sand down sharp edges.

She sees Nelle less as evil and more as unfinished, someone who never learned how to process anger in a way that didn’t burn everything down around her. That damage was part of her identity, not something separate from it.

And that’s where the real intrigue lives. A return wouldn’t be about apology or closure. It would be about disruption. Nelle doesn’t restore balance. She exposes whatever balance was already fragile. Port Charles has moved on in her absence, but Lanier’s comments leave open the uncomfortable possibility that, if she’s alive, Nelle never moved on at all. (Find out about one of Lanier’s other roles.)

General Hospital is available on ABC and Hulu.