A fond farewell to ‘Pretty Little Liars’ after seven arduous seasons
By Alexis Ancel // Editor in Chief
My harrowing journey with Pretty Little Liars began the way it did for most teen girls. Fresh out of eighth grade, I naïvely decided to watch some new ABC Family show that a couple of my friends had mentioned. Why not? Little did 13-year-old me know that seven seasons and 160 episodes later, I would be crying in the lobby of a hostel in Greece at 3 a.m., watching an era of my life come to an end via FaceTime on a friend’s phone strategically propped in front of her TV. I never could have predicted how deeply I would be sucked into Rosewood, nor how devastated I would be when it was time to go.
The liars have been stalked and tortured by multiple A’s over the years. First was Mona, Hanna’s alleged best friend, shortly followed by Charlotte, Alison’s cousin turned homicidal stalker. Charlotte’s death in season six prompted the return of the third and final A, this time under the name A.D., dragging the girls right back into the world of manipulation, secrets and lies from which they had worked so hard to escape.
The two-hour finale was all that could have been expected or hoped for, and was actually decently satisfying for a change. The episode followed a fairly typical PLL finale format: fancy event, kidnapping, big reveal, and a death of some sort (RIP Wren). The most radical difference in this finale is that for the very first time in PLL history, our beloved liars were given the miracle of a happy ending. Spencer and Toby are back together, Aria and Ezra are married, Hanna and Caleb are pregnant, and Emily and Alison are engaged with two adorable twins at home. And of course, the moment we’ve been waiting so many years for: the reveal of Uber A.
A good number of fans, myself included, weren’t surprised that the infamous A.D. ended up being Spencer’s secret long-lost evil twin, Alex Drake. An overdone twist at best, but it did make for one of the more believable reveals we’ve seen over the years. Don’t even get me started on that “reveal” stunt they pulled with Ezra back in season four.
But even better than giving Troian Bellisario double the screen time was finally tying together all the loose ends that date back to 2010. We finally find out that it was really Mona who killed Charlotte in the midst of a psychotic break, and Jessica DiLaurentis’s killer was none other than her twin sister, Mary Drake. Alison’s mystery baby daddy was Wren all along, and it turns out it was really Alex who slept with Toby by pretending to be Spencer. You know. Family stuff.
That said, there was little more I could have asked for in an Uber A. Alex Drake fit the build for every anonymous sadist the girls have ever encountered, possessing the defining common denominator that drove all three of these A’s to do what they did: the basic need for friendship and love. While it would be ignorant to discount the role that mental illness played for all three characters, their actions were all rooted in their desperation for acceptance. In the end, all that Mona, Charlotte and Alex ever wanted was to be loved, a theme that ultimately became the glue holding the show together.
Like any sane PLL fan, I have had my fair share of grievances with the show over the years, and I suppose it was only fitting that the finale left me with as many unanswered questions as the other 159 episodes have. Why was Alex not revealed until the second hour? Why was no one concerned that Mary Drake was still missing after having escaped custody? And what ever happened to Jenna, the driving force behind the show’s most basic plot since episode one?
But what the PLL writers and producers lacked in realism, they made up for in character. I stopped caring early on who was secretly related to each other (my personal favorite is that Spencer and Jason are simultaneously cousins and half-siblings), and I hardly batted an eye whenever someone new dropped dead. With every passing episode, I was entirely aware of how ridiculous the show was getting, but I couldn’t abandon the girls I had fallen so in love with no matter how often they ran into the woods in the dark, wearing heels, of course. I stayed loyal to the show and the girls who taught me what it means to be loyal in the first place. It was Hanna’s sass, Aria’s compassion, Emily’s fierce loyalty, Spencer’s determination, Ali’s strength, and above all their devotion to each other that kept me on board all these years. These were five girls who had been through unimaginable traumas, but only grew stronger and closer as a result. They never let their tormentors strip them of the ability to love and trust one another, and it was precisely that bond that kept me coming back every week despite the sub-par acting and poorly constructed plotlines.
PLL became part of my life in a way I never expected it to. I grew up with these girls. I loved them, I rooted for them, and I prayed for the day they would see their happy endings. Even now that it’s over and there is nothing left to learn, I have to thank PLL for teaching me more about friendship, trust, and self-discovery than I knew a bad teen drama ever could. That’s immortality, my darlings.