General Hospital Character Recap: Ava Jerome

Ava Jerome – an unapologetic villainess who’s self-aware enough to never be hypocritical. She’s bad and she owns it.

Who Is Ava Jerome?

Ava is the youngest child of mafioso Victor Jerome – the product of his affair with Delia Ryan Coleridge Reid nee Reid. As such, she is the baby sister of Olivia, Evan, and Julian via her father and the older sister of Johnno Ryan and Dino Antoinelli.

In her youth, Ava was muse and mistress to art virtuoso – and budding psychopath – Franco as well as the woman with whom Dr. Silas Clay engaged in an extramarital affair.  Her liaison with the latter resulted in the birth of Lauren Katherine, AKA Kiki, a secret she never shared with either father or child.

In fact, upon being contacted by Luke Spencer, Ava attempted to use her past relationship with Franco as leverage to obtain either a large sum of cash or voting stock in ELQ, since the Quartermaines believed Franco to be a family member and his offspring would be treated as such.

When the truth was outed, Ava found herself ostracized by most of the town, save for Morgan Corinthos – Kiki’s former lover and the son of her and Julian’s mortal enemy, Sonny. Desperate for affection, Ava slept with the young man!

Rap Sheet
Among the myriad of misdeeds committed by Ava, perhaps the most egregious was her murder of Connie Falconeri – a consequence of the nosy fashionista discovering Ava and Julian’s familial connection and Julian’s true identity as a Jerome.

When public enemy number one, AJ Quartermaine, cottoned on to Ava’s complicity, she goaded a responding Sonny into shooting and killing him. Following the sordid truth’s emergence, Ava played her trump card: she was pregnant and either Morgan or Sonny (whom she slept with inside the Quartermaine crypt) himself was the father.

Other acts of criminality include her hit and run of who was assumed to be Jason Morgan (Drew), her tampering with Morgan’s bipolar medication, and her agreement to keep mum about Valentin’s purposeful shooting of Nikolas.

Medical Maladies

Ava has proven herself quite capable at surviving even the most harrowing of experiences, including taking a bullet to the chest (courtesy of Carlos Rivera), falling from a suspension bridge (thanks to Sonny’s indifference), being diagnosed with terminal leukemia (her health apparently restored thanks to a bone marrow transplant), and accidental self-immolation.

(Lack of) Mothering Skills
But the two events that Ava barely survived were the kidnapping of her newborn babe,  Avery (who was spirited away by an unraveling Nina Reeves, Silas Clay’s ex-wife) and Kiki’s murder – a homicide accidentally inspired by Ava’s own words.

Turns out, the psychiatrist that Ava was seeing, and sleeping with, was not in fact Kevin Collins but rather his murder-inclined twin Ryan Chamberlin. When Ava wished that she could see Kiki punished (for sleeping with Ava’s latest beau, Griffin Monro), Ryan took it upon himself to stab the young woman to death!

In her grief, Ava attempted to murder Ryan and to make contact with the presumably restless spirit of her dearly departed daughter.

Moving Forward 
Yet another near-death experience (at the hands of Valentin Cassadine, who shoved her from a parapet at Wyndemere) and a spot of perfectly timed blackmail has resulted in Ava living the high life as one Mrs. Nikolas Mikhil Stavrosovich Cassadine – a position that she does not intend to relinquish.

No matter how hard her newly minted husband pushes… General Hospital airs weekdays on ABC. Check your local listings for airtimes.