General Hospital says goodbye to Luke Spencer

Variety

On Friday, the ABC daytime soap memorialized the iconic character, played on and off for decades by Anthony Geary -- who hasn't been on the show since 2017. "Geary’s Luke was a truly significant character in the history of soap operas, and all of television," says Kate Aurthur. "He joined General Hospital in 1978 as a villain, who would soon rape Laura — an assault that turned into a romance, which was a hideously common trope in daytime dramas at the time. (The show and the characters reckoned with the rape in a mid-2000s plot.) Luke and Laura would prove to be a game-changing couple both for General Hospital, and all of pop culture, with their banter and modern sensibilities that attracted a young audience. Their two-part November 1981 wedding brought in Elizabeth Taylor as the evil Helena Cassadine — along with an audience of 30 million viewers."