General Hospital didn’t simply recast Scout Cain. The show deliberately aged Sam McCall and Drew Cain’s daughter up, instantly changing where Scout fits within Port Charles’ younger generation. On the surface, the move gives GH another teenager who can interact with Rocco, Danny, Charlotte and the rest of that age group. But there is one strange comparison that makes Scout’s sudden transformation much more interesting: Avery Corinthos. Avery was originally born years before Scout, yet GH has now effectively pushed the two girls into the same general age range. What if that inconsistency is exactly where the next mystery begins?
The original timeline is impossible to ignore. Avery entered the story in 2014, while Scout wasn’t born until 2017. Avery should therefore be roughly two to three years older. Fans have already noticed the problem, especially after Scout’s dramatic SORAS. Some viewers are now wondering when Avery will receive the same treatment. But perhaps the better question isn’t when GH will age Avery. Why was Scout the character writers chose to move first?
There is already a hidden connection between these girls that makes a DNA storyline surprisingly easy to construct. Avery is Ava Jerome’s daughter. Sam was Julian Jerome’s daughter, making Scout part of that same Jerome bloodline. Avery and Scout aren’t simply two unrelated Port Charles kids who happen to be close in age. They belong to different branches of one notoriously complicated family, and GH has even placed the girls together on screen before. That connection becomes much more important if a future medical crisis requires family DNA testing.
Then there is Avery’s extraordinary birth history. Ava didn’t peacefully deliver Avery at General Hospital and take her home. Nina Reeves kidnapped a pregnant Ava, forced her into premature labor, took the newborn and fled with her. For a period of time, Avery was literally separated from her mother immediately after birth. Even her identity became part of Nina’s fantasy before the baby was eventually recovered. If writers ever wanted to reopen a decades-old birth mystery, Avery’s chaotic arrival gives them plenty of history to revisit.
Avery’s paternity was complicated too. Because Ava had been involved with both Sonny Corinthos and Morgan Corinthos, the question of Avery’s father required DNA evidence. Sonny was ultimately established as Avery’s biological father, and that has remained canon. A new storyline wouldn’t necessarily need to claim that the old science was wrong. The much soapier question would be whether every sample and every identity attached to those old records represented exactly who everyone believed it did.
Scout’s birth was hardly straightforward either. Sam was targeted by Olivia Jerome and fell from a bridge while pregnant. She eventually went into labor under dangerous circumstances, with the man everyone then believed was Jason Morgan helping deliver the baby. That “Jason,” of course, was eventually revealed to be Drew Cain. Scout’s history therefore already survived one enormous identity rewrite. The child originally believed to have been conceived with Jason became Drew’s daughter when the Jason/Drew truth exploded.
Put Avery and Scout side by side and the parallels become difficult to dismiss. Two girls carrying Jerome blood. Two highly unusual births. Kidnappings surrounding both pregnancies. Identity confusion surrounding both families. Paternity and DNA questions embedded in their histories. Now, years later, GH suddenly accelerates Scout’s age until the visible gap between the girls becomes much easier to erase.
That opens the door to a fascinating scenario. Imagine Scout undergoing routine genetic testing because of a medical issue. Doctors discover something unusual and need another sample from the Jerome side of her family. Avery becomes the obvious comparison. The test confirms the girls are related — but the degree of that relationship doesn’t fit the family tree everyone has trusted for years.
At first, Drew’s paternity would become the obvious suspect. Another test could seemingly eliminate that explanation. Attention would then shift toward Avery and those old records surrounding her birth and paternity investigation. Suddenly, two completely separate pieces of GH history would collide.
And that is where the real bombshell could hide.
The twist doesn’t have to mean Avery and Scout were literally exchanged as newborns; their original 2014 and 2017 birth dates make a conventional hospital baby switch impossible without a major retcon. Instead, GH could reveal that an identity, birth record or DNA sample connected to one of these girls was manipulated, forcing everyone to reconsider exactly whose history they have been following.
There is even precedent inside Sam’s own family. Sam already endured a devastating baby-switch storyline involving Danny. Repeating that history through Scout would turn an old McCall nightmare into a new generation’s crisis — except Sam would no longer be there to uncover the truth herself.
Scout’s age-up can easily be explained as ordinary soap SORAS, and there is currently no confirmed spoiler connecting it to Avery or a DNA reveal. But GH has now created something writers can exploit: Scout and Avery occupy the same younger generation while sharing a Jerome blood connection and two remarkably complicated birth histories.
So perhaps everyone asking when GH will finally age Avery is asking the wrong question.
Maybe the real question is why GH suddenly needed Scout and Avery to line up now — and what happens when one DNA test proves that something Port Charles has believed about these two girls for years was never the whole truth.
