The long-running ABC soap opera General Hospital will be seeing the exit of a controversial character this week: Natalia Ramirez. Played by actress Eva LaRue, the character’s upcoming departure may not come as a surprise to many loyal fans of the show,

Eva LaRue is exiting General Hospital over a year after joining the show as Natalia, the disapproving and homophobic mother of Jacqueline Grace Lopez's Blaze. Initially serving as a villain, LaRue's character quickly earned the ire of the long-running soap's viewers.

On the June 30 episode of General Hospital, Natalia Ramirez fatally overdosed on a mixture of pills and booze, and on the July 1 show, she was officially declared dead. For Eva LaRue, whose exit from