Willow & Nina Part 2 (2020 - 2023)

Before Nina Reeves and Willow Tait were mother and daughter, they were something harder to name. Not quite enemies. Not quite allies. Two people who kept ending up in the same room during the worst moments, saying things to each other they would not say to anyone else, and then going right back to fighting. Part 2 of our Nina and Willow series picks up in early 2020 and covers three years of that. If you have not listened to Part 1 yet, start there.

By the time 2020 started, the baby swap had been exposed. Willow found out that the boy she had loved and fought for was not her biological son. Her actual son had died the night Brad Cooper brought him home from the hospital. Nelle Benson had suggested the switch on the side of a road, Brad had gone along with it, and Willow had spent a year and a half loving a child who belonged to someone else. She was told all of this in a hospital bed. She got out of bed, sank to the floor, and screamed. Then she got up and kept going.

Nelle filed for full custody of Wiley immediately. Willow volunteered on the spot to testify against her. She went directly to Nina's office at Crimson and asked Nina to run an article exposing Nelle as a criminal. Nina told her it could be considered libel and reminded her gently that Wiley was no longer her concern, no matter how much it hurt. It was one of the few times the two of them had a conversation that did not turn into a fight.

Nina hired Nelle at Crimson on purpose, intending to monitor her and testify against her when the time came. She also kept sitting with the necklace. Willow walked in unannounced one day and found Nina holding the broken half-heart. Nina explained it was supposed to be half of something, meant for a biological daughter she had never found. She caught herself mid-sentence and apologized for going off topic. Willow redirected her to Wiley's surgery and the consent form Nelle was refusing to sign. Before Nina could respond, Nelle walked in carrying coffee. She told Willow she meant absolutely nothing to Wiley. Nina closed the door behind her and told Nelle she understood what it was to love a child one thought was their own and then lose it.

Diane had told Michael his chances at full custody were slightly better than fifty percent unless he married Willow, and the idea had been floating around the group ever since. Chase was the one who finally put it plainly. Willow could marry Michael and help protect Wiley or she could step back and let it be Michael's problem. She told him she could not step back. She said she was more afraid of Nelle having custody of Wiley than she was of Wiley's heart defect. Chase and Sasha then made a decision of their own. They staged an affair to push Michael and Willow together, and neither of them did it easily. Willow came home and found them on the sofa. She ended up at the Metro Court bar and ran into Nina, who apologized for previously telling Willow she was too close to a custody fight over a child that was not hers. Willow told her she had been right. Nelle walked in just in time to hear Willow tell Nina that Chase and Sasha had been having an affair.

Michael asked Willow to marry him, and she said yes. The night before the hearing, they married at the Quartermaine mansion. Lucy Coe officiated. Carly showed up with Wiley in his pajamas. Michael put his great-grandmother Lila's ring on Willow's finger, a sapphire surrounded by diamonds. Across town, Chase and Sasha sat on the pier and toasted to Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities, the character who sacrifices himself for the woman he loves.

Nelle showed up to the hearing in a white dress with a bouquet and announced she had also gotten married that morning to Julian Jerome, who she had blackmailed into it. Inside the courtroom, Nina was called to the stand as Nelle's character witness. She told the court instead that Nelle was a compulsive liar who used and manipulated people and had blackmailed Julian into marriage to improve her case. Nelle screamed at her from across the room. Then she began gasping for air.

General Hospital aired its last original episode on May 21, 2020, and did not return until August 3. When the show came back the hearing resumed. The judge awarded sole custody of Wiley to Michael and Willow with no visitation rights for Nelle and called Nelle's arrival in a wedding dress a stunt.

Nelle disappeared from a cliff in the woods outside the Corinthos cabin. Her broken-heart necklace lay in the dirt at the base of that cliff. Her envelope, addressed to be opened in the event of her death, sat in Martin's briefcase. Carly was having nightmares she could not shake.

Nina arranged a burial at Woodlawn Cemetery. She said she was doing it partly for Wiley, who might want to visit his biological mother's grave someday. Carly was furious. She pointed out that Morgan, Mike, and Willow's baby were all buried there. At the graveside, Chase told Nina that Nelle had had plenty of people willing to support her and had simply never been able to accept it. After he left, Nina stood at the grave alone and apologized. She said Nelle had not deserved the life she had been given. Carly showed up. They went back and forth until Nina asked why Nelle's death was not enough. Carly knelt by the grave alone afterward and asked herself the same question.

Meanwhile, Evelyn traced the clasp on the necklace to a retired jeweler named Abraham, who found a receipt from September 1991 with the name Phyllis Caulfield on it. Nina recognized it immediately. Phyllis had been the nurse who cared for her after she came out of her coma at Crichton-Clark.

What Phyllis confirmed and what Carly figured out the same night changed everything. Phyllis told Nina her baby had survived and had been taken to Florida. That same evening, Avery Jerome-Corinthos showed up at Carly's house wearing a half-heart necklace she had found in the woods near the cabin. Carly called Jax. When he arrived, she told him she believed Nelle had been Nina's daughter. He confirmed everything lined up. Then Carly told him Nina was not going to find out. Jax said he did not want to lie the way Valentin had. Carly told him to let the truth be buried with Nelle. He did not push back.

Carly also tried to have the physical necklace swapped with a replica at Wyndemere so the two halves would never fit together if Nina saw them side by side. That fell apart when Nikolas walked in on her in Avery's bedroom. She left not knowing which necklace Ava now had.

The secret lasted until a live television interview about Sasha's drug overdose accidentally put Nelle's half-heart necklace on camera around Sasha's neck. Wardrobe had grabbed it without knowing what it was. Nina recognized it immediately. The two halves were eventually placed together in a Metro Court restaurant with Carly, Jax, Valentin, and Michael watching. They fit. Jax told Nina she needed to know the full truth. He was done lying. Nina went to Crimson and sat on the floor with the box of Nelle's personal belongings she had kept after the funeral. She found a childhood photo of Nelle wearing the half-heart pendant necklace. She stared at it. "My poor baby girl. You were right here, and I never knew," she said.

Nina discovered Sonny Corinthos alive in a small Pennsylvania town where he had been living with amnesia under the name Mike. She kept his survival secret for months while his family mourned him. When the truth came out in September 2021, Michael cut her off from Wiley entirely. Willow was the more measured voice throughout. She reminded Michael that they were supposed to be a team. At a fall fair, she saw Wiley run to Nina and, rather than drag him away, invited her to stay for hot cocoa. She told Nina she did not know if she could forgive her, but that she was not going to use Wiley as a weapon.

That goodwill ran out in Pennsylvania. Willow had overheard Nina and Sonny in a hospital chapel talking about the love they had shared in Nixon Falls. Nina asked her to stay quiet. When Scott Baldwin called Willow to the stand at Nina's criminal hearing and pushed her under threat of perjury, she told the truth. She said she had heard Sonny describe what he and Nina had as love. The courtroom went still. After the hearing, Willow confronted Nina. She said she had given her the benefit of the doubt, and Nina had repaid her by using her to hurt the people Willow loved. The charges against Nina were dismissed. Carly was furious at Willow. Carly stormed out.

In 2022, Willow could not find her birth certificate. Harmony had already told Alexis the truth. She was not Willow's biological mother. She and her husband, Douglas, had lived on a commune in Colorado. A pregnant woman named Joan had joined and vanished a week after giving birth. Josiah had given the baby to Harmony and Douglas. Douglas had forged a birth certificate. They had never looked back.

A man named Brendan Byrne found notes in his brother Neil's therapy files that documented all of it and tried to blackmail Harmony. She killed him. She then tried to kill both Carly and Alexis. She was stopped, found, and taken to the hospital. She died. Her last words to Carly were a name. Nina. She told Carly that Willow had had a twin sister. Nelle. She begged Carly to protect Willow from Nina's smothering love. Then she flatlined.

Carly ran a DNA test. It came back a 99.9% match. She put the results in her purse and said nothing.

The visitation hearing over Wiley went forward, and Nina lost. The judge ruled her presence would be detrimental to Wiley. In the courthouse hallway afterward, Willow was visibly out of breath. Michael noticed. Willow fainted at an outdoor event shortly after. Terry Randolph confirmed Stage 4 leukemia. Willow had delayed treatment to protect her unborn baby, and the cancer had spread. She told the doctors that, to the best of her knowledge, she had no living relatives. Carly was standing right there, holding the envelope, and saying nothing.

Nina found out about the leukemia from a memo in a box of Britt Westbourne's belongings. When Willow eventually collapsed on her staircase, Nina called Carly. Carly finally told Nina the truth in a hospital chapel. She had given birth to twins while in a coma. Madeline had given one twin to the Bensons and the other to Harmony. Nelle was not her only daughter. Willow was too. Nina went to Willow's room and told her that her life might depend on her. She apologized for everything and then told Willow she was her mother. Willow asked Michael to confirm it. He did. Alone with Nina, Willow told her that sharing a blood type changed nothing between them. Nina said she was going to save Willow's life whether Willow wanted that or not.

Willow learns that Nina is her mother

Nina was not a match. She followed Sonny to the parking lot and screamed. Liesl Obrecht stepped forward and asked to be tested. She was a confirmed match. The transplant went forward. Willow went into isolation. Nina camped outside the room around the clock. A nurse named Clara told Willow her mom had been out there nonstop. Willow said Nina was her biological mother, and she wanted nothing to do with her. Clara asked how she would feel if Nina died in an accident tomorrow. Willow said it was complicated.

The transplant was a success. Willow could go home. She told Michael she wanted to add one person to her recovery bubble. He said she had his full support. She said she thought her bubble should include Nina.

The rebuild was slow. Coffee at Kelly's. Small moments that added up. Willow helped Nina get ready for her wedding to Sonny and lent her Harmony's turquoise necklace as something old and blue. She told Nina that Harmony had given it to her on her sixteenth birthday and that turquoise was supposed to bring peace, luck, and protection. Nina held it and looked upward and whispered thank you.

At the wedding reception, Michael received a phone call confirming it had been Nina who tipped off the SEC about Drew Cain and Carly's insider trading. He turned and stared at her across the room. What he did with that information, what Nina chose to do about it, and what Willow eventually learned is where Part 2 ends and Part 3 begins.

Part 2 of our Nina and Willow series is out now on all major podcast platforms or at GeneralHospitalPodcast.com. Part 3 drops next week.

We will meet you at the pier.