General Hospital spoilers: is a familiar villain headed back to Port Charles?

Heading into the fall, General Hospital appears to be rather light on villains. With John Cates (Adam J. Harrington) dead, Valentin (James Patrick Stuart) gone and Heather (Alley Mills) "reformed," Port Charles is missing an antagonist.

Yes, you can argue that Sonny (Maurice Benard) is still in town, but he’s hardly the big bad wolf and arguably has more friends than foes. Also, his brother Ric (Rick Hearst) may be back and has historically been quite the troublemaker, but we don’t get the sense that he’s ready to cause the kind of chaos we’re used to seeing. And as far as the Sidwell (Carlo Rota) and the people holding Lucky (Jonathan Jackson) captive, they’re a bit too mysterious and we aren’t confident they’ll prove to be the villains we want to see.

It’s worth noting that this summer saw quite a shake-up in the General Hospital writers’ room. As reported by Soap Opera Digest , Patrick Mulcahey exited the role as co-head writer alongside Elizabeth Korte, and Chris Van Etten stepped back into the job. Van Etten has been with the show for nearly 12 years and Korte is a fixture with the soap having worked on it since 1995. That means they have a deep history of storylines under their belt, and we hope they’ll use their knowledge to bring back someone who always kept the drama in Port Charles spicy. If we had it our way, we’d like to see one of the following characters return.

First up is Nelle Benson (Chloe Lanier). Now we’re fully aware that Nelle fell off a cliff after getting into with Carly (Laura Wright) and her dead body was allegedly found and buried. However, a soap character being revived from the dead is hardly a nuanced idea. Jason (Steve Burton) has "died" on a few occasions, and the Cassadines have more lives than cats. So we can picture a scenario in which Nelle faked her death to regroup and remerges ready to exact revenge against Carly, Sonny, Michael (Chad Duell) and more.

Plus, with Michael about to be in for a big surprise when he finds out that Willow (Katelyn MacMullen) has been sneaking around with Drew (Cameron Mathison), now would be the perfect time to bring Nelle back. If Michael and Willow head for a divorce, Nelle could return as Wiley’s (Viron Weaver) birth mother and try to stake her claim for custody.

Option number two for our returning villain of choice is Peter August (Wes Ramsey). Again, it will take a bit of soap magic as he also is believed to be dead. He suffered a fatal blow at the hands of Felicia (Kristina Wagner) who was rescuing Maxie (Kirsten Storms), and Anna (Finola Hughs) supposedly watched as he took his final breaths in the cold snow. But with the right writing pivot, Anna could have got it wrong and Peter survived.

The exciting part about Peter potentially surviving is the sheer pandemonium it would cause for the Jones family. Having recently embraced Cody (Josh Kelly), the Joneses are in quite the zen state, so Peter being back could stir up some drama for them and Cody could officially cut his teeth as a member of the family.

Our final choice for a villain’s return comes from the maniacal Cassadines. The madness of the family always made for great entertaining TV moments, and they’ve been sorely missed. Although Valentin and Victor (Charles Shaughnessy) are Cassadines, they never really delivered the kind of drama we were used to seeing from the clan. So we’re kind of hoping someone like Helena (Constance Towers) or Stavros (Robert Kelker-Kelly) comes back as they both know how to deliver a huge impact in Port Charles.

Again, Helena and Stavros are both dead, but those two have certainly come back from death more than once. If either of them pops back up, Laura (Genie Francis) and Alexis (Nancy Lee Grahn) would be completely stunned and horrified. As it pertains to Helena, Laura has long been a target for the Cassadine matriarch and Alexis was the bane of Helena’s existence. Stavros has been obsessed with Laura for years and he wasn’t exactly the nicest to his sister Alexis.

Going back to Helena, fans will recall she once cursed Sam ( Kelly Monaco ) to a life of unhappiness. With Monaco leaving the show and rumors swirling that it will happen with Sam’s death, Helena surfacing could provide quite the interesting plot twist.

New episodes of General Hospital air weekdays on ABC. If you miss an episode, you can catch up on Hulu .