Are General Hospital’s Ric and Ava Over For Good? Here’s Why Rick Hearst Hopes Not! (Exclusive)
After Ric and Ava struck up an attraction when he was serving as her attorney last year, the General Hospital pair became lovers early in 2025 — but the honeymoon period didn’t last long, in large part due to trust issues that lingered between them even after they teamed up to blackmail and extort Alexis, not to mention Ric’s seemingly unshakable tender feelings for Elizabeth. The romantic outlook for the cunning duo has been looking more dire than ever since Ava, Alexis and Kristina impulsively decided to hold Ric hostage in Alexis’s basement (after Ava bashed him over the head and rendered him unconscious, that is). But in the wild world of soap opera courtships, this twist might ultimately only prove to be a minor setback, not the final nail in the “Rava” coffin. And no one is rooting for that more than Rick Hearst, who plays Ric!
Stranger Things Have Happened
“This is going to sound really screwball,” Hearst declares, “but I really hope this isn’t the end for the two of them. I feel like Ava and Ric were just getting started! I will tell you, I was kind of sad at the fact that [the story] went down this road because it does put a pretty definitive rift in between the two of them, and I don’t know if this is going to be a situation where Ava and Ric would ever wind up getting back together even remotely. But this is a soap, right? Anything can happen, anything is possible, and [even if Ric and Ava stay broken up], I would love to be able to be in Maura West’s [Ava] orbit because I adore working with her and I love the dynamic that happens between us — not just as actors, but as the two characters. As one of the directors said to us, ‘I think they’re just delicious together.’ ”
Despite the betrayal, backstabbing and the forced captivity that have torn Ric and Ava apart, Hearst thinks the two GH characters are compatible to their core. “With Ava, he can be who he is,” the actor notes. “They see each other without pretense.”
However, he thinks Ava was right to sense that Ric wasn’t all-in with her, given the pull he continues to feel to Liz. “I do think there’s a part of him that has not taken the relationship seriously in a romantic sense,” Hearst offers. “I think he was seeing it as a partnership, and obviously very much a physical attraction. He is drawn to Ava and feels a familiarity and a camaraderie with her, because they have an understanding of the part of themselves that most people don’t understand. But she has feelings, too,” he points out. “And why should she allow somebody to take advantage of her?”
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