Chase and Willow

May 2

7 min read

If you have been watching General Hospital lately, you already know something is brewing between Chase and Willow. Before it goes any further, it is worth remembering just how sweet their love story was the first time around. This week on Port Charles 411, Shannon and Amanda go back to the beginning of three years of history, from a hospital parking lot to a pair of wedding rings left on a table. Listen to the full episode to hear it all.

A Parking Lot, a Career Day, and a Cop Who Couldn't Help Himself

Willow and Chase first crossed paths in late 2018, when Chase spotted an unfamiliar woman sleeping in her car in a hospital parking lot. Suspecting she might be intoxicated, he asked her to step out. She refused to believe he was actually a cop and called the station to verify his identity before complying. He ran the sobriety tests anyway. She insisted she had simply needed a moment. He told her to move the car. It would not start.

Lulu Spencer happened to be walking by, recognized the woman as Charlotte's teacher, and quietly fixed the car under the hood while letting Chase take the credit. She also whispered to him that Willow was a wonderful person and single. Chase noticed a bereavement support group pamphlet in the car and told Willow she had nothing to be ashamed of.

He ran into her again outside Kelly's, where she was grading papers at one of the outdoor tables. He gave her his card. Then came career day at her school, where Chase showed up prepared with a canine unit and a sense of humor. At the end of the presentations, he asked Willow if he could get her number to pass along to his brother Finn, who had run out of time to finish his presentation. Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked if maybe he could use it too. She told him he could just ask while he was standing right there. He did. She said yes.

"She came out of that cult and was a determined woman to be on her own two feet. And handle her stuff, and she had no problem giving it to anybody. It was beautiful."

Amanda, Pier 54 Host

2019: Shrimp Scampi, Shiloh, and a Liar

Their first date got off to a rocky start when Chase surprised Willow by bringing her to his apartment rather than a restaurant. She stormed out, certain she had misjudged him. He followed her, and when he caught up with her, he came clean: he had wanted to cook dinner for her, not lure her anywhere. He had candles lit and shrimp scampi planned. She was not entirely convinced, but she did not leave. They ended up at the Metro Court first, where a run-in with a dismissive Nina Reeves over classroom issues with Charlotte complicated the evening. Willow returned to Chase's apartment anyway, and they ate the shrimp scampi he had originally planned.

The relationship deepened gradually through 2019. Chase taught a self-defense class that Willow attended alongside Elizabeth and Nina, which turned into an exercise in peacekeeping for Maxie, who spent the entire session trying to keep the two women from going after each other. The tension between them was rooted in Willow's classroom: Charlotte had been bullying Aiden, and Nina refused to hear it. Every time Chase called on someone to demonstrate a move, Maxie was steering one of them toward the front of the room just to get them separated.

Over drinks after the class, and later back at his apartment, Willow opened up about her past. She told Chase she had given a baby up for adoption. It was not the full story, but it was as much as she could give him at the time, and he responded with care rather than alarm. He told her nothing she shared would make him want to stop seeing her, and that trust was everything to him.

Eventually, she told him the rest: that she had been a member of the Dawn of Day cult, that its leader, Shiloh, had sent her away to earn a teaching degree specifically to recruit children into the organization from the ground up, and that she had used the opportunity to quietly leave. She had changed her name from Kelly to Willow and carried a DOD tattoo on her back. When Chase noticed it, he told her it bothered him because it felt like she had been branded. When Shiloh came to Port Charles and found her at her school, Chase pushed her to stay rather than run and promised to protect her. She stayed.

Through the Shiloh arc, Chase helped build the legal case against him, eventually arresting him and securing restraining orders for Willow, Brad, Lucas, and Wiley. At the Nurses' Ball, he performed "Something Just Like This" by the Chainsmokers and Coldplay for the audience, making no secret of who he was singing to, and then brought Willow up on stage with him. It was one of those moments.

Shiloh was eventually killed by a flare gun while trying to escape on the Haunted Star, and Chase and Willow finally exhaled. By the end of 2019, they had moved in together, rang in the new year with Michael and Sasha, and settled into something that looked like real life. They even had a shared obsession with a wine recommendation app, checking in on whatever the wine guy had to say at least a couple of times a month. It had started as Chase's thing, but one day Willow claimed the wine guy as her own, and Chase caught it and called her out. It became a running bit between them.

A pregnancy scare came and went. Then Harmony, Willow's mother, showed up at their apartment after being granted an early release from prison. Harmony had been deep inside Dawn of Day herself, devoted enough to Shiloh that she had taken the fall for him during the legal proceedings and served his time. Her relationship with Willow was fractured and complicated, and Chase and Willow were cautiously welcoming when she appeared at their door.

2020: The Baby, the Lie, and the Door Closing Between Them

The night Brad and Lucas were set to leave Port Charles, Chase and Willow looked after a sick Wiley together, making dinner, giving him a bath, and reading him a bedtime story. When Chase was called away, Nelle Benson showed up, beat Willow unconscious, and attempted to flee with the child using fake passports Julian Jerome had provided. Chase and Michael arrived in time. Brad, cornered, finally told the truth about the baby swap.

Chase was the one who told Willow the truth: Wiley was not her son. Her biological child had died shortly after birth, and Brad had swapped him with Michael and Nelle's baby. Willow fell to pieces. She went alone to her son's grave, where Elizabeth found her and stayed. When she came home, she told Chase she just wanted to be held.

As Nelle filed for custody of Wiley, the question of whether Willow should marry Michael came up. Chase initially rejected the idea outright. Then, privately, he changed course, telling Willow it was the simplest solution and that if she wasn't willing to do it, she needed to step back entirely. Behind the scenes, he met with Sasha and agreed to stage a fake affair. They were the only ones positioned to force Willow and Michael together, and both knew it.

Willow came home to find Sasha on top of Chase, her blouse disheveled. Chase was brutal in the way only someone who has to sell a lie completely can be. Willow left with two suitcases. Both of them cried when the door closed between them.

"The best way he could love Willow was to lie and let her go."

Chase, as discussed on Port Charles 411

The deception held through the custody hearing. Willow and Michael won full custody of Wiley and eventually fell in love in the process, exactly as Chase and Sasha had predicted and feared. Estranged from April through November 2020, Chase and Willow reconnected at a polar bear charity plunge where they jumped into the water holding hands and shared his extra towel because she had forgotten hers. His father, Gregory, was introduced to Willow that day, having heard everything about her from Chase over the years. He spent several minutes gushing, completely unaware that they were no longer together, and Chase could not find a way to stop him.

2021: The Proposal, the Walk Across the Room, and the Rings on the Table

Chase collapsed in early 2021 with a mysterious illness, causing neuropathy, seizures, and paralysis in his legs. Willow stayed by his side almost continuously, bringing tea, sitting through the pain waves, refusing to leave when he told her she could go. From his hospital bed, Chase recreated an imaginary trip to Nantucket they had once planned together, complete with beach sounds, decorations, and an admiral's hat for Willow. He proposed from that same hospital bed, apologizing that he had no ring and that the circumstances were not what he had imagined. He said he wanted whatever days he had left filled with her as his wife.

In the hospital chapel before the ceremony, Willow privately told Sasha she knew her heart belonged to someone else, but that she loved Chase too, and that the wedding was the last gift she could give him. During the ceremony, Chase was unable to hold the ring. Michael, who was there at Chase's request, slipped it onto Willow's finger instead. Chase flatlined shortly after returning to his room and was revived with a modified antidote that also revealed Gregory as his biological father.

Chase survived but was left unable to walk. He had secretly begun walking again in private when Willow finally sat him down with Michael present to ask for an annulment. Chase stood up from his wheelchair and walked across the room. He was furious, asking why she hadn't been honest, why she hadn't turned down his proposal, why she had let things go on so long. She said she would always love Chase. She was in love with Michael.

Willow followed him to his apartment, and they talked through all of it. Chase said his lie with Sasha had turned out to be the thing that broke them apart forever. Willow agreed. He placed both wedding rings on the table and said he had to get on with the rest of his life.

We Really Hope They Don't Do This

Going back through three years of Chase and Willow is a good reminder of who both of these characters were before everything else happened to them. The care they had for each other and the sacrifices they made deserved better than where things landed. Whatever General Hospital is building toward right now, Shannon and Amanda hope it is not what it seems.

Listen to the full Port Charles 411 episode wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in every Monday as Shannon and Amanda recap the week's episodes and keep you up to date on everything happening in Port Charles right now. Find us at GeneralHospitalPodcast.com.