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Teenage Dream… Shattered
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Elizabeth Webber had no sooner arrived on grandma Audrey Hardy’s doorstep in 1997 than she’d become enamored of verbal sparring partner, Lucky Spencer (then Jonathan Jackson). Unfortunately, he only had eyes for her big sister, Sarah, who in turn only had eyes for his half brother, Nikolas Cassadine. (Everyone just needed glasses, we’d have said if you’d asked us!) Only after Liz was raped did everything change. In the aftermath, Lucky first felt protective of her, then… well, so much more.
Wanted… ‘Dead’ or Alive
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Only months after Liz and Lucky secretly exchanged vows in an abandoned church, he was believed to have been killed in a fire. Operative words: “believed to have been.” Of course he came back from the dead (with Jacob Young in the role). The trouble was, thanks to his nefarious abductor, Helena Cassadine, he didn’t remember ever having fallen for Liz. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she eventually caught him in bed with sibling rival Sarah (whom no amount of recasts ever got right!).
It’s… Well, *Beyond* Complicated
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In her grief, Liz found herself drawn to Mafia muscle Jason Morgan. But when he got involved with BFF Sonny Corinthos’ half sister, Courtney Matthews, Liz settled for the godfather’s half brother, Ric Lansing. We say “settled,” but the dude was willing to keep Carly Corinthos prisoner in a panic room in order to give his own wife her baby (to replace the one that his mistress had killed). So, ya know, not exactly a fine, upstanding guy, but in his twisted way… devoted?
The Whole Wide Whirl
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By the time Liz made the dubious decision to reunite with Ric, she was pregnant by Mob flunky Zander Smith. And though her babydaddy conveniently died, she still couldn’t make it work with Ric, owing to his vendetta against Sonny. (That’s a deal-breaker in Port Charles, anyone could tell ya!) Eventually, Liz and Lucky (then Greg Vaughan) tied the knot just in time for an injury to leave him addicted to both painkillers and their supplier, Maxie Jones, who back then was quite the vixen.
‘But I Even Changed Out of My Black T-Shirt for You’
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Sent careening back into Jason’s arms by Lucky’s betrayal, Liz found herself pregnant thanks to defective condoms. When Lucky assumed that the baby-to-be was his and vowed to straighten up and fly right, Jason gravitated toward Sam once more. Disastrous! As soon as she realized that Jason was more into Liz at that point, Sam seduced Lucky, which ironically freed up her rival to marry the man to whom they were both drawn. Until, that is, Liz remembered that he was still a freaking hitman, at which point she called the whole thing off.
Dance Fever
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Oh, if only Liz’s affair with Nikolas (then Tyler Christopher) had been as much fun as this photo taken backstage at the 36th Annual Daytime Emmys! Rather, it was entirely angst-filled as, at the time, she had decided to get back together with Lucky and wound up uncertain of the identity of Aiden’s father. (Calls to Maury Povich were not returned.) In the end, Lucky was revealed to be the proud (?) pop, but the fork was soon stuck all the way into his marriage to Liz by the “demise” of Jake, her son with Jason.
Desperate Times, Desperate Measures
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Eager to keep Jason from reuniting with Sam, Liz conspired to prevent him from learning that he, not then-demented and rape-y Franco Baldwin, was Danny’s father. But that was easier said than done — Liz does have a conscience, after all. And no poker face whatsoever. (Just look at that picture. Liz, were you even trying?) Soon enough, guilt drove our heroine to come clean… just in time for Jason to be shot and “killed.”
The Unreal McCoy
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Liz had just fallen back on her bad habit of giving Ric another chance when she became inexplicably drawn to a heavily bandaged patient nicknamed Jake. Only her attraction wasn’t so inexplicable after all: Jake turned out to be the “late” Jason (then Billy Miller). Until suddenly, he wasn’t again, because Jason himself came back from the dead to reclaim the life that he hadn’t meant to leave behind, and Jake was revealed to be his heretofore-unknown twin brother, Drew Cain. All together now: Mmkaaay.
Just What She Needed — Another Sister!
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We hadn’t seen Sarah in years when Liz discovered that Hayden Barnes, the conniver who’d been introduced as Jake’s (cough) wife, was their half sister, owing to pop Jeff’s affair with Naomi Dreyfus. Clearly, the himbo had learned zilch from his romps with the likes of Franco’s bat-guano-crazy mother, Heather Grant. Also clear from this photo, Liz was thrilled, just thrilled.
‘Till Death Do Us Part’
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Against all odds, Liz found true love with Franco, who wasn’t nearly as creepy once he had his homicidal brain tumor removed. He proved to be an all-around swell guy and super father figure to Liz’s boys. So obviously, he had to meet a horrible fate: Just as he began to fear that he was again being turned into a psycho killer, he wound up being murdered at (what we hoped was) the peak of Peter August’s reign of terror.
Two Can Keep a Secret If One of Them Is…
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Dead was how Peter was left after an altercation with Hamilton Finn, who was either the brother or father of the villain’s poisoning victim, depending upon at what point you joined the story. Either way, Finn wasn’t cool with poor Chase being escorted to death’s door for no good reason. So he and Liz teamed up to keep it from the world that they might have hastened the baddie’s demise and then hidden the body. Which doesn’t sound sexy, we know. But considering that he’d just dumped Anna Devane and Liz was a new widow… Well, we could all kinda guess where their team-up was headed, right?
America’s Most Haunted
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Just as Elizabeth and Finn were getting couple-y, weird things began happening. For starters, her art studio was burned down, and her wedding dress was cut up. Was she in a way being “ghosted” by her late husband? No, it turned out that she was sleep-wreaking havoc. So she sensibly agreed to check into a mental hospital for some R&R (ruminating and resetting).
The Truth Hurts
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An exceptionally fraught reunion with Mom and Dad brought to light Elizabeth’s long-repressed memory of accidentally killing Finn’s wife. (What?) He was able to more or less shrug off the fact that his girlfriend had made him a widower before they’d even met. (What?!?) But there was no sort of shimmy to get him past what happened next.
‘Now Before You Go Getting All Mad… ’
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Too late for that. Liz might as well have pulled the plug on her relationship with Finn when she let Nikolas (then Marcus Coloma) rope her into his scheme to keep prisoner his expectant babymama — his son Spencer’s conniving girlfriend, Esme Prince. When the nurse went so far as to pretend that she was pregnant by Nikolas, Finn called time-of-death on their romance.
