So, get ready for his answer because he’s clear, concise, and still very grateful for the seven-year run on the show. DeVry told us, “Um… I did say that if I left I wouldn’t come back,” he admits. “I think that got taken out of context a bit. I also felt it’s not my job to put everything into context for everyone. I think by reading multiple interviews I did,  you’d see how much I loved my time at General Hospital. So, to be clear, it wasn’t because I didn’t love the show or my character or the people I worked with.  I just felt that given the direction the character was going, there was nothing left to say.”

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While the fans felt there were more stories left to tell with Julian and Alexis, aka “Julexis,” General Hospital‘s co-head writers  at the time, Chris Van Etten and Dan O’Connor, not only had bullets pumped into Julian but made sure people (including viewers) saw him being zipped into a body bag. That’s about as dead as people get on a soap opera.

But deVry gracefully exited “after eight years and 700 episodes,” and he doesn’t begrudge anyone at ABC for making that business decision because “it’s a smart move to carry on… both personally and for the show.” Yet he didn’t downplay the “obvious challenges of moving on” because Julian was killed off at a time when there was high “unemployment during a worldwide crisis…[a] pandemic for one.”

But that’s where things get really interesting. DeVry shared that he had a conversation with General Hospital executive producer Frank Valentini around the time of his departure — and gave him an offer that sounded pretty good to us. “I also told Frank I’d be open to come back for a short stint to ‘fix’ the character,” he said. “Salvage Julian’s image within [the] context of what went down within Port Charles while also producing a brand-new fresh story (including all the history fans love) that would encompass a good portion of the characters… affected by Julian’s actions. Or perceived actions.” There are a lot of stones that could be unturned if Julian somehow found a way to rise from the grave.

DeVry is chock-full of great ideas, but where does he stand with General Hospital in 2024? It might be the exact answer fans don’t want to hear. He summed up, “Frank knows that my ‘wish’ still stands. But with new writers and a ton of new characters on the show now, I don’t see that happening.”