General Hospital’s Drew Cain (Cameron Mathison) has undergone quite a transformation over the last two years. The once affable guy who was everyone’s best friend turned into the man on everyone’s proverbial hit list. By the end of 2025, he had made so many enemies that someone shot him in the back twice. That someone turned out to be Drew’s own wife, who had finally woken up to how much he had ruined her life. But what made the ABC soap choose to take this character down such a dark path?
Drew’s Descent to Scoundrel
Drew seemed somewhat different after he was released from prison at the end of 2023, after becoming the victim of a near-deadly beating. He was only in prison because he’d taken the complete fall for Carly’s (Laura Wright) accidental insider trading crime, but when he learned that Nina (Cynthia Watros) was the one who ratted Carly (and Drew) out, he was furious and took his troubles out on her. Drew even seemed to go mad, ditching Carly as soon as he learned Jason was alive because he was sure he would be dumped, before having hate sex with Nina.
Since then, Drew has become unrecognizable. As a crooked congressman, he abused his power to hurt his enemies, and even went as far as sleeping with his nephew’s wife and making her his own wife a year later.
Willow (Katelyn MacMullen) later blamed Drew for losing custody of her kids and was outraged when she learned he had slept with her mother. That led to Willow shooting Drew, playing innocent until she was acquitted, and then injecting him with a paralytic drug.
So, how did Drew fall so far and how? Cameron Mathison thinks he has the answer: Nina. Those early fight scenes between Drew and Nina when Drew learned what she had done showed the GH producers a new side to the character.
“We really laid into each other,” Mathison said on The Becoming Club podcast. “I think that they saw those scenes and they’re like, he could be a really good jerk…He just changed on a dime, became like a total jerk. He’s not a good human. He’s very selfish. He’s manipulative. He’ll do anything to get ahead.”
Even from a wheelchair unable to speak, Drew proved his portrayer’s point. After fans have wondered if Drew would come out of his paralytic state a better man, they got their answer. Drew used his blinking skills to implicate Willow in Jordan Ashford’s (Tanisha Harper) car crash, knowing he was lying. But he’d get revenge on Willow, and that is exactly what he wants.
