general hospital austin jimmy lee holt son quartermaine
Credit: ABC screenshot, ABC/Courtesy of the Everett Collection (2), ABC

UPDATE: On the episode airing July 13, 2021, Roger Howarth’s new character introduced himself as Austin Gatlin Holt. This article, originally run a month previous, explains exactly who that is and why he’s significant. 

From the moment that General Hospital revealed that Austin was from Pautauk — aka the town to which Jimmy Lee Holt relocated when he married older woman Charity Gatlin — we’d had a hunch that Roger Howarth’s new character would turn out to be the son of the erstwhile Eric Quartermaine. And now? Forget it. We’re even surer than ever.

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The show didn’t have Austin read about the emergency CEO vote at ELQ on his phone as casually as you or we might scroll through our Facebook feed. That [bleep] was meaningful — and, we’d wager, not coincidental. So if we’re right, and Austin is Edward’s heretofore-unknown grandson, what does that do to the company — and the canvas as a whole?

It blows ’em both up, that’s what. When the Quartermaines gather to decide whether to replace Valentin with Ned or Michael, Austin could come knocking and reveal that he’s owed a vote as well as a piece of the pie. Moreover, given his sorta hippy-dippy personality, he might just want to get to know his Port Charles kinfolk.

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gh maxie austin abc

As he comes to realize that he may have gotten in his newfound family more than he bargained for, by his side to lend moral support would be, of course, Maxie, to whose rescue he rode when she was in both labor and dire straits. He’d be confused; he’d thought that he wanted to know from whence he sprang, but after sitting through a couple of Quartermaine shouting matches, he’d be, to put it mildly, less certain. And she, obviously, would be a bundle of nerves in need of soothing, what with her keen wish to be reunited with newborn Louise and her fear that babydaddy Peter isn’t just still out there, still out there alive.

More: Roger Howarth, from Todd to Austin [PHOTOS]

If Austin and Maxie were to begin spending time together, and she started making excuses to see Brook Lynn’s newborn, Bailey, it would probably take him all of a day to deduce that they’d pulled a switcheroo. Heck, having delivered Louise, he might even notice that duh — Bailey is her.

What do you think, General Hospital fans? Would you like to see a branch of the Quartermaine family tree added for Austin? Could you imagine him and Maxie as a couple? On your way to the comments, stop off at the below photo gallery, which serves as a kind of Quartermaine family abum, revealing how they’re all related and who’s done what to whom.