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While Aria's off dealing with a strangely acquiescent Maggie and an even more strangely forceful Ezra in Daddy Bear mode -- on which more in a minute, because what -- Spencer gathers the rest of the Liars and finally tells her horrible secret: Toby swiped her v-card as a massive A game and their whole relationship has been a sham.
This leads to a hilarious metafictional scene where Emily tries to commandeer the narrative and remind everybody how Toby is her best friend and always has been, to which Spencer is deliriously, nastily, sexily averse. It's a whole new flavor of Spencer in this scene, and it's brilliant -- but not as brilliant as the bit, when she remembers "Oh yeah, and by telling you this probably I have gotten one of you killed, per A's last threat."
Emily spends the episode replaying all of Spencer's steps in trying to reconstruct a sensible version of Toby, and it's as troubling if not as heartbreaking as Spencer's last few episodes in this boat, but the parallels are really pointed up in a smart way. Meanwhile, Spencer gets last week's funeral wreath and determines from it that Emily is the one who is going to die. So then Emily has to split from the typically protective Spencer in order to track down Toby and figure out what's going on: Is he an unlucky Lucas in A's game, or a straight-up Mona Vanderwaal?
These two ladies on their two different paths to figure out the Toby situation is a miniature of the whole show's grand epic mythology of creating meaning in the wake of Alison (and Maya)'s murders, and it leads to some really dark places. Emily ends up in a mysterious midnight mockup of a woodworking warehouse, reminiscent of Synecdoche, NY and -- just as Spencer's discovering Mona haunting Toby Cavanaugh's Dead Body in the woods -- receives a memento of her own: A future funeral announcement for our favorite homie-turned-A-Teamer.
Aria's babysitting goes awry when Ezra's son falls off a bed by accident, earning him some stitches and Aria a very serious freakout about the responsibilities of step-parenthood that, Ezra's impressive kindness and understanding about the whole thing aside, help her see the wisdom in Ella's suggestion that maybe this is not her problem and she should just go back to being a teenage girl. It's actually fairly moving, as Ella helps her navigate the waters of this very difficult choice, and we're left wondering along with old Aria just what her move should be.
Hanna leads her shellshocked mother down the primrose path to full Hitchcockitude by telling her to stay quiet about last week's hit-and-run, even as Ashley ghost-whispers Wilden around town, just like on Halloween. Eventually, so disturbed is she by the implications of his cop car randomly showing up in the Marin garage with that footage playing on a loop, she takes it to the level and gets Aria's help in sinking the car to the bottom of the lake. (For at least the five seconds, which is how long it takes until this week's A-Tag, in which Wilden's policeman's hat is randomly fished out of said lake.)
And as if the car thing isn't bananas enough -- it just sits there on this abandoned road with its turn signal blinking for three episodes, then randomly shows up in Hanna's garage with a video playing, and then she pushes it into the lake, where it is still blasting its lights and that video well after the deeps have made their claim -- you also have Spencer, who after discovering Toby's dead body and chasing Mona for awhile spends the rest of the evening wandering the forest in full Brontë mode until finally they find her, call her a Jane Doe because she's in like a nightie, and go ahead and put her in Radley.
That's incredible, right? That's insane. I love this. I love everything about this, Ezra growing up and Toby growing dead and Spencer growing insane. Perfection. Dangerous.
Week: Three episodes left, nobody knows where Spencer is because she's checked in anonymously, and only Mona knows what's going on. Recipe! For! Disaster!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Wilden's spookiness was notable for a variety of Rosewoodians, but came to a head when he stalked Ashley all over town, to the point where she ran him over and headed home to get good and drunk. But when Hanna took her back to the scene of this latest Ashley Shenanigan, he was gone. Maggie, Ezra's teen babymama, is more than likely moving back to Rosewood -- the better to ruin her relationship by existing. And now that Spencer's life has once again been threatened by A -- possibly by Toby himself -- she's decided to come clean about exactly what has been causing her to act so insanely of late.
POST-ROBOT DEATH SHOWER
Liars: "So wait, you were attacked by a computerized sauna in your house?"
Spencer: "It was really creepy! Where's Hanna? I can't do this whole thing twice."
Liars: "She's not answering our calls. Maybe she's helping her mom hide a body or something. Looking for a big enough pasta box."
Spencer: "Anyway. You may have noticed that I am out of my fucking mind. Perhaps you've even wondered what it is, that's got me so upset."
Aria: "Honestly? Not really. We all have stuff going on, Spencer."
Spencer: "Okay, well. Toby's disappeared, but that's not the headline. He is also A."
Emily: "Fuck you, I'm so sure. He would have told me, we tell each other everything."
Spencer: "Oh, because you're such good friends?"
Emily: "Not onscreen for several years now, but apparently yeah."
DEAD MAN'S CURVE
Dude's car is still just sitting there, taping everything onto its police-car blackbox, with one door hanging open on its hinges and the cherry going up top.
Hanna: "I mean, maybe he went to the hospital? Maybe he crawled off into the woods like a deer. Does it matter? Hopefully you killed his ass."
Ashley: "Right, but just in case, I should call the hospital and also my lawyer."
Hanna: "What? No!"
Ashley: "I may not know much about morality or ethics, but I do know that when you kill somebody, you better lawyer up."
Hanna: "Can't we just see what happens? Give it a day or two?"
Ashley: "I ran over a policeman, mister. I'm a cop killa. In my video ho days they used to sing songs about people like me. Rap ones."
Hanna: "Well, okay. But if I can't tell the authorities or my lawyer, you can't tell the pretty little liars. Pinkie swear."
Hanna: "Jesus Christ. When I woke up this morning my biggest problem was having goaded a con artist into stealing from your boyfriend's church. Look at me now. Covering up the first vehicular manslaughter in Rosewood history that I wasn't directly party to."
TOBY STUFF
Spencer: "I guess Ali was right. I guess Toby never forgave us for framing him for blinding his sister that time, sending him to juvie, that do-rag, and being Boo Radley."
Aria: "Which kind of means he swiped your v-card under some really icky circumstances. Trust me, I feel ya."
Emily: "No way, fuck you. Toby is the best. And he was in love with you. There has to be more to the story."
Spencer: "My words exactly. Those were literally my exact words. But trust me, I've been through the entire rollercoaster you're about get on, and it's not worth it. Let me illustrate for you my last several episodes of figuring this out."
Emily is not about to give up. It starts getting both frustrating and kind of appalling, watching her make this about her. I mean, in one way it's necessary because Spencer is crazy and always needs a control group, but in another way it's like, Time and Place, man. Deal with the broken wreckage of Spencer in front of you, not the hurt feelings of your BFF being a psycho.
Spencer, hissing: "You need to stop thinking about Toby as the person that you thought you knew, and start looking at him for who he really is. Look at the facts, Emily! Mona's with the decathlon team in New York, she couldn't have locked me in the steam room. That leaves Toby."
Emily: "Now would be the perfect time for me to point out that I have already stated at least once in every episode that the A-Team is bigger than two people, and Red Coat is the leader. But since it's the only time that would make sense for me to bring this up, I will not. Instead, I will give Toby a call and then go on to literally act out Spencer's entire storyline for the past several weeks."
FITZPATERNAL FITZPARTMENT
Aria: "Who wants some of that sweet, sweet underage aaaaaHHH! Why is there a biracial seven-year-old in your living room? Why am I constantly walking in on other children in your apartment?"
Ezra: "Malcolm, this is Aria."
Malcolm: "Hello, Miss Aria. Is it Halloween?"
Aria: "No, I just dress like this. Why the hell are you here?"
Malcolm: "Mrs. Fitzgerald evicted us after Ezra blatantly told her to, so now we're his problem. And, it would seem, yours."
Aria: "So let me guess. You're moving here and your mom is getting a job here?"
Malcolm: "There is quite a high rate of turnover in your Rosewood teacher population."
Aria: "Between me, my boyfriend, his brother my other boyfriend, you, and your mom, this studio apartment is gonna get pretty crowded. In fact, it's already kind of closing in on... Are you hot? Is there oxygen in here?"
Malcolm: "Don't be silly. They haven't started hooking up yet. We're living in a hotel."
Aria: "Okay, well, nice to meet you. I am just going to get the fuck on out of here."
Ezra: "No, Aria! Stay! Make it weirder and weirder! What my son needs is more people in his life appearing and disappearing at random."
Aria: "Rosewood's guaranteed to give him that either way, but okay."
REAR WINDOW
Emily: "All of Toby's sad shit is still here. I guess he really needed to get away from Spencer. I wish he had turned to me."
Hanna: "What? I was just watching the news on his sweet-ass TV to see if they found Wilden's body yet."
Emily: "Who?"
Hanna: "Don't worry about it. I made a promise not to tell you about how we ran over the guy you've been tracking for weeks and who has threatened our lives. It would only calm you down to know you had one less thing to worry about."
Emily: "Get your ass up and help me find the one clue we always find everywhere we go."
Hanna: "No. This is stupid. I have werewolf problems and vehicular problems. I can't also be dealing with Toby. If Spencer says he's A, he's A and good riddance. I'm not gonna get my panties in a twist."
Emily: "He has never hurt us! Therefore he is not A!"
Hanna: "What? If he's A, you'd have literally no way of knowing that."
Emily: "He is the most honest and trustworthy person in Rosewood! A thing you cannot say about A!"
Hanna: "What? If he's A, you'd have literally no way of knowing that either."
Emily, verbatim: "I've been alone with him how many times now?"
Hanna: "On this show? In the last like five seasons? None. But even if we're assuming it occurred off-screen, how often was I alone with Mona? Uh, remember your scary massage?"
Emily: "Stop saying things!"
Hanna: "And the killer robot shower? We're cool with him doing that, too?"
Emily: "All we have is Spencer's word on that one."
Hanna: "She saw him standing in her kitchen, dressed as A. He put on a black hoodie and broke into her house. The most A thing a person could do."
Emily: "That doesn't mean he is dangerous!"
Hanna: "Bitch, are you for real?"
Emily: "Okay, I'm not saying this right. You know how Lucas wasn't really A? He just did A stuff because Mona was blackmailing him?"
Ladies, ladies. This is the same logic by which we've determined that Jason was only pretending to be on the A-Team that time he nailed Aria into a box with Garrett's corpse and then tried to throw her off a train. That he was only being SNEAKY when he did that. (Right? Did I miss something with that one? Because I still don't get that.)
Emily: "All I know is, he gave me the strength to acknowledge that I was gay."
Hanna: "Whoa, right. I forgot that part. Okay, I get why you're being so dumb about this now."
Emily: "See this coffee table book on his coffee table? I gave it to him for his birthday. 101 Tips For Scaffold Safety. I guess he never read it. I don't even know if he ever learned to read."
Hanna: "He sure did use it to shove clues in, though. Look, parking pass for Radley matching the name he used to visit Mona, E. Lamb. It was on that laminate in that drawer. Or rather, the lambinate."
Emily: "Is that an anagram?"
Hanna: "I don't know what that word means, but if you rearrange the letters it spells amble. Or Me Lab, or Em Lab. Mothers Always Bring Extra Love."
Emily: "He did walk pretty slow. I would call it more of a mosey."
Hanna: "Why don't you go to his horrible haunted house and talk to his freaky invisible ghost-parents? That should shut your ass up."
PIED-À-TEZRA
Maggie: "Honeys, I'm home! Just kidding, I'm a single mom with tired feet."
Aria: "Maggie! Is it okay that I was playing with your kid while you were out looking for work? Last time we talked, I promised not to ruin the sweet thing you had going, and then I totally ruined it."
Maggie: "It's fine. I was being pretty creepy, both with you and with Ezra. I'm super glad you blew my life apart with idle gossip."
Ezra: "You guys have a real chemistry, you know that?"
Maggie: "Ugh. Listen, I have to go network over coffee..."
Ezra: "I'm 'tutoring' instead of having a job."
Maggie: "Uh, if I don't find something soon you'll be working for three, so..."
Aria, desperate: "-- I can babysit! I have worth! Please, please let me be a part of all this."
Maggie: "Are you... Does your mom even let you babysit, yet?"
SPENCE
Receives that giant wreath from last week's A-Tag with a Condolences sash and a card reading, "Someone close to you will pay for your loose lips!" Remembering that she was warned not to rat out T unless she wanted to lose one of her 3, Spencer drags all the gals to the Brew so they can talk about their impending deaths.
Aria: "Whatever. You guys always take this A stuff so seriously."
Hanna: "Emily, you best leave the Toby hunt alone for now. When A starts sending funeral shit around it means it's getting real."
Spencer: "What? Emily I was very intense and scary on you about this."
Emily: "Look, it's not that I don't believe you. It's just that I am going to have to find my own meaning in all of this. I'm not doing anything you haven't done lately. Just faster and more efficiently because I'm not also losing my goddamn mind at the same time."
Spencer: "I hear you. But you're on a trail that's been cold for weeks. Don't you think if he wanted to be found, he would've been by now?"
To spare them the inevitable and unsayable, "Maybe that's truer for some of us than others," which is really the only place this conversation can end, they all simultaneously notice Mona at the register. Which means Mona's in town and, just sayin', that means Hot Andrew's back too. Somewhere.
(As is, possibly, Darren Wilden -- it's right before this scene that Ashley notices him standing around, watching her from a doorway, and realizes it's been almost two hours since her breakfast chardonnay. I'm gonna say it's really him, but then for some reason some people are saying that it's indicated he's been in his own trunk since the accident, which I can't figure out why you would think that, either.)
Spencer: "How the fuck long has she been standing there?"
Mona: "Oh, are you gonna choke me out again? Awesome."
Spencer: "No, I just wanted to thank you for the flowers."
Mona: "No idea what you're talking about. Maybe a little more mental health is on the agenda?"
Spencer: "If you harm any of my 3, I will ruin your face. And then your everything."
Mona: "Whatever, crazy. I got shit to do."
But oh, at the door, she turns back with that smile.
"Little tip on the orchids? Make sure not to leave them in direct sunlight. I did once -- they didn't make it through the night!"
Her gaze, meaning the focus of the camera, works its way down the line of all three Liars, ending on Emily. It's chilling and awesome and exactly that magical thing we were promised and have been receiving for 3B, this thing of having Mona in plain sight and still being scary as shit. That solving a mystery doesn't mean solving your problems; that any amount of overcoming adversity doesn't rule out future problems.
MONTGOMERY
Ella: "Why are you here?"
Aria: "Why are you here?"
Ella: "Tax paperwork, why are you here?"
Aria: "[Random lie about how Emily is babysitting so she needs kid crap.]"
Ella: "I happen to know that Emily is working the Brew today."
Aria: "[Even more bizarrely random lie about how she meant to say Hanna.]"
Hanna Marin would be the best fucking babysitter on the planet. If there were a way to do it without getting arrested, I would love to get something like that going. I mean, can you imagine? The prettiest girl in the universe teaching you to put on lip gloss and telling you the best bands and all about her cute boyfriend and like, putting hot wax treatments on your hair, and styling your clothes, and telling you stories about vehicular homicide? Oh my God. You would be like, "Mom, Dad. Take the night off, go out and see a picture. This one's on me, you deserve it. Stay out as late as you want."
Aria: "So while I'm lying for no reason Jacob can fathom, do you think you could get this person named Maggie a job as a teacher? I guess with Meredith in the nuthouse..."
Ella: "Maggie who?"
Aria: "I mean, I don't even know her. She like, Ezra knows her? Or something? He left a voicemail. I have since erased it. But I guess she's a teacher. I mean, she's from a Secret World so I don't... You know how you're a teacher?"
Ella: "Okay fine, whatever."
Aria: "Also don't ask Ezra about her. His phone is broken and he left it in Denmark and he is also tutoring. Or he will tell you a heap of lies about how they have a baby together and stuff, it's like this funny joke just between us. Like how couples have funny jokes? So just get her a job and um, then I guess you can meet her or find out her full name. Okay?"
CAVANAUGH PLACE
Even the cobwebs have cobwebs on that motherfucker. Even the ghosts are like, "Did you hear something upstairs? This place gives me the willies." The front porch is just like splintered boards and rusty nails dripping with lockjaw. The lace curtains form faces in a silent, ever-changing agony. The porch swing moves of its own accord; a flute can be heard playing blind-girl songs, somewhere across the way. One hundred snow globes in a room choked with dust whir to carillion life, a hundred dolls slowly turn their heads to look at the door...
Emily: "-- Whew, I am so glad Toby's truck randomly just drove up at this exact second. I did not wanna go in there. It still smells like burnt blind girl."
Dude: "I am not Toby. I am a surprise person."
Emily: "Do you know where Toby is?"
Dude: "No, only his truck. He gave it to me to finish a job. It is doing woodworking in the middle of the night at a strange place."
Emily: "Can you give me any other information?"
Dude: "Not at this time."
Disappointed, the dolls begin to sing. A threnody of hunger, unfulfilled. Emily does not hear them, for she is on the case. Sometimes I wonder if Jenna and Toby ever had parents. Unsettling and grisly, or deliriously awesome?
FIELDS
While Ashley checks in with Hanna -- no news about the manslaughter they're fully covering up -- Spencer obsesses on the wreath, noticing that two of the letters on the sash's embossed greeting are not shiny. Those letters? E M. E is for Emily! M is also for Emily!
Spencer: "I DON'T KNOW HOW I MISSED IT!"
Emily: "You are getting so Homeland, honey."
Spencer: "IT IS A SIGN FROM MONA! YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!"
Emily: "I am being awfully blasé this episode."
Spencer: "SHE SAID SHE WAS GOING TO KILL YOU IF I DID A THING. THEN I DID THAT THING. THEN SHE CAME TO THE COFFEE SHOP AND SAID SHE WAS GOING TO KILL YOU. IN FRONT OF YOU SHE SAID THIS. ALSO SHE LEFT THIS THING WITH YOUR NAME ON IT AND A NOTE SAYING SHE WAS GOING TO KILL YOU. WHAT THE HELL?"
Emily: "Yeah, it's just not quite addin' up for me. I gotta go to swim practice, Spence."
Spencer: "CAN I COME? CAN I GO EVERYWHERE WITH YOU TODAY?"
Emily: "No, girl. You take a nap. I promise not to go looking for Toby in the meantime, spoiler alert that was a lie, and in return you need to give me this sash because you are going full Gollum right now."
PIED-À-TEZRA
Hanna: "Babysitting is cool!"
Aria: "I know. I like how he just sits there playing a video game while we talk about our various friends getting murdered. What a great kid."
Hanna: "What happens if he moves here with his mom? Is that going to ruin your life?"
Hanna: "No, I'm sure it'll be fine. We've overcome worse. Like my dad wrecking his career, or his mom's constant Machiavellian destruction. Or me making out with his family members. This is just one more in a long line of problems we've caused for everyone around us."
Aria: "For the first time in my entire life, I was thinking about someone other than myself."
Hanna: "This should be good."
Aria: "If Toby's working with Mona, what signs did we miss? You know, like how he randomly brought Dr. Sullivan back into town right when she chasing us all of that cliff?"
Hanna: "Yeah, that is suspicious. I guess Mona knew we'd found the Lonely Woods Resort by then. I miss Harold."
Aria: "And you know what about Sullivan coming back at precisely that second was..."
Hanna: "She put her in Radley. Said all that wondrous bullshit about the adrenalized hyperreality and got her off the hook for killing and torturing everybody all the time."
Aria: "Pretty lucky, right?"
Hanna: "On the other hand, she fixed me. If it weren't for her, I would only kinda be the best one of us. She made it medically, literally true."
Aria: "You can still be a good therapist, even if you're getting blackmailed or threatened to do some questionable things on top of it."
A cop car goes by, sirens blaring, and Hanna wonders briefly if it's going to come get her, or if it's on the way to pick up Ashley, or Caleb's dad, or maybe it's nothing to do with any of that. But you know, she's already got a million things to be scared of that she can't do anything about -- but this jumping whenever she hears cops, she can take care of that. Especially if Wilden's dead, then she won't ever have to be afraid of that again. Until, you know, we learn the name of a third cop in town. So I guess this is when she decides to think about solving the Wilden issue on her own in some wildly outrageous fashion. Marinating on that idea, if you will.
RWPD
Emily: "What is the point of you doing ... whatever your job is that we still don't know ... if you can't misuse police resources to track down my creepy friends?"
Pam: "First of all, the kid's got a family. Of sorts."
Emily: "Not from the looks of it. They are clearly 'away.'"
Pam: "So maybe he's with them."
Emily: "Maybe he's not, though."
Pam: "Have you called him and texted him a million times? Of course you have. Hmm."
Emily: "This breakup with Spencer is... It didn't go well, from what I can tell."
Pam: "Look, you're a sweet girl. Great big old heart, sees the best in everybody. But that kid is Boo Radley. I've hated your friendship with him since he caused that fire."
Emily: "WHICH ONE?"
Pam gets called away, but lets Emily fuck around on her computer just long enough to almost get a picture of the real "E. Lamb" from whatever database. It's a very suspenseful sequence, even though nothing really happens and she gets interrupted by a text from Toby saying, "Okay fine, come meet me."
FITZPOCALYPSE
In the time it takes Aria to get a juice box out of the refrigerator, tragedy strikes. Malcolm falls off the futon eighteen inches to his doom, causing Aria to fumble a buncha lemons in the air and start making noises like Mr. Drysdale's secretary. And I mean, visually it's hilarious, but you know that feeling of like, "What if I broke this person's kid?" The worst feeling in the entire, entire universe. So while I would like to point and laugh at the melodrama about to ensue, I really can't, because just the thought of that makes my stomach hurt. And I'm not half the fruitcake Aria Montgomery is.
MONA
Spencer is lurking on the steps (to Toby's?) when Mona gets a call: Somebody telling her to take a huge bag of money somewhere. Dressed in her finest yoga formalwear, Spencer follows.
HOSPITAL
Aria: "I should be banned from ever being around kids."
Ezra: "No, that's me."
Aria: "I nearly killed your son!"
Ezra: "He got some stitches on his chin. That's what life is, for a little boy. I mean, from what I hear. Wesley was like that, always jumping on futons. I mostly read sonnets and coughed quietly."
Aria: "Well, as long as we're clear it was an accident I guess I can stop pretending to care."
Ezra: "Not so fast. [Freaky third degree.]"
Aria: "Really? Because it sounds like you're pissed at me."
Ezra: "No, I'm just stressed out and taking it out on you. This is true love."
Aria: "If you're worried about Maggie, just tell her that shit about little boys and whatever."
Ezra: "The difference between us and Maggie is, she is a parent."
LIARS
Spence follows Mona, still toting that money, into some scary woods. Always a top-notch plan.
Hanna goes home to see how drunk her mom is, but instead finds Wilden's car in her garage, still blasting that video footage and the lights despite it being three days later. The sound quality is, let's just say, astonishingly good, and we also get an answer to whether or not the video exonerates Ashley: It does, actually. You can't see him pull his gun, but the way he threatens Hanna like a million times in no uncertain terms? I don't get it.
Emily arrives at her destination, I believe it's the strange warehouse district/Diagon Alley where Caleb and Hanna did it standing up that time when they were pretending not to date. Settles in to just sit in her car in the dark for the two and a half hours, waiting for something wretched to befall her.
HOSPITAL
Aria: "Malcolm, when your face is put back together, Ezra's going to take you on a real trampoline! Won't that be fun?"
Ezra: "I am afraid of trampolines, actually, but now there's no way to fight it."
Maggie: "Excuse me, Aria sweetie! You're standing between me and my child you broke."
Aria: "If we could just talk about my feelings for about eleven hours..."
Nurse: "Do you belong here?"
Aria: "Not really."
Nurse: "(Brutally draws the curtain, after shoving Aria six feet backwards.)"
SPENCER
The WTF about this show is, of course, its best thing. And while I have put in a lot of time screaming "WHOA WHAT?" and laughing delightedly at the screen, over the years, I have not had that many opportunities to be wholly dumbfounded by things that happen. I enjoy things in a different way than I did before this job. Like, I don't get scared by movies or TV shows anymore, for example, because they are pretend. And so with shocks and twists, there is a part of me that stands back and looks at all the different things that are going on: Was this earned, where did this come from, where is it going, what are the characters feeling, etc.
I don't think it's a less-excited feeling or enjoyment, it's just different. In the same way, even the most fucked-up things on this show, generally -- even the big reveals, Maya's death or Toby in the hoodie -- on some level I am scrambling to fit everybody into the puzzle while it's still happening: Jenna and Lucas are talking to the Black Swan and Paige is with Emily and Aria is with Ezra, so therefore Hanna's going to be the one who figures out that Mona has kidnapped Spencer, or whatever the thing is. Caleb brought the gun which means he's the one who got shot, but Emily stabbed Nate so he's the dead one, but then where is Paige, let's get some eyes on Paige, okay there she is, now find Noel Kahn in the crowd, got it.
This was not like that. This thing I was so surprised and weirded out that I couldn't believe what was going on until an actual hashtag appeared, hilariously, to confirm what was going on. It was a very dissociated, displaced, wonderful feeling. And, oddly, sad. Not sad for her, because it's her and her rock bottom is the molten core of the earth and the show has been taking her there for weeks; sad for him. What a sad, sick little life. And you can say this is a trick or a lie or a thing, but I don't know about that. I think it could go either way.
She comes upon a campsite: Motorcycle, puptent, sleeping bag, lawn chairs. Smoke going up from a dead fire. There's a body, face-down, on a pallet, wearing a motorcycle helmet. Blood on his hands, and Toby's tattoo on his lower back: 901, Free At Last. The day Alison disappeared. The day Jenna left him alone. Sick, sad little life.
And then just as she's reaching down to open the helmet, Mona says starkly, "He's dead." And she runs off into the woods, drawing Spencer away. It's that moment we linger on, when she's about to flip the faceplate up -- mirroring the moment in the police station when the database twice comes close to bringing up "E. Lamb" -- that makes me wonder.
Because it could be a twist, that Spencer goes running off before she knows for sure, and since we didn't see the face it doesn't count. But I feel like any time it's been like this we didn't see the face. Ian and Garrett, yes. But not Maya, or Alison. So maybe it's just a preponderance of overdetermined red herrings adding up to the obvious conclusion: He's dead. But either way Spencer falls down, having lost Mona, and abruptly seems to realize that everything is happening. The little hashtag pops up and she has to fit that into her brain, real quick, and it just drops her on the ground.
MONTGOMERY
Aria: "Sorry I lied about Ezra's baby and babymama for no reason."
Ella: "Well, it was certainly odd of you, but whatever. I wish I knew how to help."
Aria: "Am I just crazy to think that this could work?"
Ella: "Nothin' new there, honey."
Aria: "Isn't having a child, like, the worst thing that could happen to you?"
Ella: "Not really. It makes a space in you to care about someone else more than yourself. That's a pretty good thing."
Aria: "It sounds like a living death."
Ella: "Things are going to change. I know you and Ezra will work together, and maybe that will work. You've been through a lot. You know what, though, it is perfectly okay if you don't want that, necessarily."
Hale does this neat thing where she's embarrassed of that thought, but also relieved because she wasn't actually allowed to think it until Ella said she could, so now she's able not only to think it but also feel it, and then it's like her tears are also because she's letting part of this go, too: "I love him..." she chokes out, almost like a question. After all this time refusing to doubt, how do you ask something like this inside yourself without it being an automatic admission of failure? If your love is built on resisting being apart, if the fear of being apart is the wall you built your house against, what happens when you remove that wall? When nobody's telling you no, that leaves a silence into which you can say whatever you want? How do you hold both of those things at once? Ask Ella, she did it for years.
Ella: "I love him. I know you do. But not every relationship is meant to last forever. And sometimes the best thing you can do is take a step back, and give yourself a chance to breathe."
Date some hot baristas. Explore wine. Engage in mesmerism.
DIAGON ALLEY
2.5 hours later, Emily is still chilling in her car, waiting for Toby who may or may not be dead to come and tell her it's okay: He betrayed Spencer, but not her. He didn't pull down the wall she built herself against. She sees something moving, but it's not Toby: It's Red Coat, running into a nearby warehouse. Inside, that same guy from Toby's truck is doing some woodworking in the middle of the night.
Emily: "Is this your workshop?"
Dude: "Yeah, why are you in here?"
Emily: "Toby?"
Dude: "Out of town, like I said."
Emily: "Okay but I got this text to meet him here and I've been sitting outside for two hours."
Dude: "Well, whatever."
Emily: "What about a blonde chick?"
Dude: "Nobody. Just us woodworkers. Sorry, Emily."
Emily: "Sorry? You said my name? My name I never told you?"
Dude: "Look, I'm very busy. See yourself out."
Her car window has been smashed. Inside there's a shiny bubble-wrap envelope with her name on it: Inside, a funeral announcement for Toby Cavanaugh and a note: "Toby is no more -- A."
MARIN
Hanna: "I hit the blackbox, I put it in the blender, nothing. It's like it's made to be indestructible."
Aria: "The thing is, somebody put the entire car in your garage. I doubt this video is the only copy."
Hanna: "If A did this, and Wilden is missing, does that mean A has Wilden?"
Aria: "If I were you, I would tell your mom. She can handle anything. And if she can't, just give her another glass of wine and see if she can then."
Hanna: "You think our moms are the same, but I doubt very much that your mother would run over a cop, even if he threatened her kids."
Aria: "That's where you're wrong. Your mom did it in a panic. Ella Montgomery would do it with a smile."
(Ezra: "I still have nightmares of that time at the police station, and that was Ella being chill about it.")
Hanna: "I don't want to involve her until we know what we're dealing with."
Aria: "Honey, she's involved. She ran over the guy. On tape."
Hanna: "You're right. Get in your car and follow me."
Aria: "Where are we going?"
THE SWAMP
Aria: "Wow, this is an even worse idea than I could have imagined."
Hanna: "Shut up and push, Shusher."
Aria: "I'm serious, we should really rethink... And there it goes."
The car bobs around for a while, lights still going, and finally sinks. Was your first thought that probably there's some quicksand near the Lost Woods Resort they could've used? Because Ashley has never stepped outside of the Hitchcock movie that is her life, why not just go for it?
Because you don't fish in quicksand, and this car is immediately going to be found (the whole of the A-Tag is just a fisherman finding Darren's RWPD hat). Which means the car, Wilden, and Toby (and maybe Jason?) are all unknown quantities. I mean, everything is an unknown quantity, but with this show you can just assume that all men are terrifying and that all the girls are pretty great, but also secretly gross -- this is why it's the best show of all time -- but very rarely are there just things or people about whom it is completely unknown whether they exist.
Ian was sending out texts well after he died, and Melissa's pregnancy was longer as a lie than it was for real. Maya was in Schrödinger's Box (and Skinner's, come to think of it) for months before she turned up fully dead. Alison's still prancing around all over the place, despite having died a year before this show started. But these three particular things are they opposite: They either are or are not, instead of both. And the way the fans' minds work, they all go together: Wilden was in the trunk, or it was Wilden's body or Jason's body instead of Toby's, or Toby could be in the trunk and Jason is in Virginia... I should stop. This is how Spencers happen, and Monas. I am on cough medicine this week, did I not mention that?
MARIN
Ashley: "Where you been? I got home and started drinking already."
Hanna: "I had to ... Aria something something. You eat?"
Ashley: "You know, I think I saw Darren earlier. In town. Standing around. I drove by the accident after that, and his car was missing. You know, how it's just been sitting on that road for days with the lights going and the door hanging open? Gone. At first I was like, Here we go, but then I thought... Maybe he woke up, bloody and broken and then just thought, you know, I really shouldn't have threatened that pretty lady's kid like that. I'd better just go on home."
Hanna: "That's really what you think maybe happened?"
Ashley: "Yeah, like it would just, um, go away. Wouldn't that be awesome?"
Hanna: "Kind of. Preferable to you hallucinating yet more ghost-people, ya wino."
Ashley: "Yeah, you're right. They can't all just head upstairs and never come down again."
Not to be glib, it's actually an amazingly acted scene. Probably one of the best ones of the episode, which is saying a lot considering everybody is great, and the Aria stuff with Ella, and Spencer constantly finding new ways to hurt. It's just tough to relate on paper, because Hanna's spent the whole episode balancing A stuff with Wilden stuff, and protecting her mom by telling her to shut up and not telling the Liars about what's going on, so to see her bring all that to the table with a nonfunctioning Ashley is a lot.
Watching her mother confabulate these fantasies about having not killed somebody, without even that gesture towards protective motherhood she usually throws in there, and all the stuff Hanna's been doing to the blackbox and the swamp and everything, and then just at the end being like, "Lady, you and I both know this is only going to become more of a clusterfuck over the several episodes," it's just kind of sad and sweet and exhausting for everybody. Actually, it would be a lot worse if she hadn't gotten Aria involved, because then she'd just be stuck in this alone, or get it on Caleb who frankly has enough coming down the pike without also being a drowner of cars.
HOUSE OF MALCOLM
Ezra: "Hey, do you want to come over? Babies are boring and stupid."
Aria: "Nope. And that's exactly why. Call me when you're done being a grownup."
JANE DOE
"No name, no ID, no cell phone, keys, nothing."
"Who found her?"
"Hiker, about an hour ago. Wandering around, lost and confused."
"Bring 'er in for a psych eval."
"Roger that."
The girl sits in the ranger's car, saying a name. You can't hear it, she shapes it silently, but you know what it is. Over and over.
FIELDS
Emily: "Aria, without Spencer around you're the one who's supposed to stop Hanna from pushing cars into lakes and shit."
Hanna: "I mean, it's Rosewood. It could have been A messing with us, or Wilden himself, or..."
Aria: "Or Wilden's on the A-Team..."
Emily: "Is Toby dead? And if so, is that about me? Did I cause his murder by looking and looking even though A kept telling me and Spencer to cut it out?"
Aria: "Let's cross that one when we come to it, okay? Toby was A."
Emily: "Or maybe he was about to flip and that's why A killed him..."
Aria: "Or nobody killed him and he is messing with you..."
Hanna: "And me, and Spe... Hey, where's Spencer? She should be at this meeting."
FREE AT LAST
Where's Spencer? Spencer's gone.
Jane Doe sits in Radley, looking blank. Singing little songs without moving her mouth. Hollowed out.
It's a little bit of a relief.
WEEK
Now that Mona's the new Spencer and Spencer is the new Mona, it's only fair for Mona to pay Spencer a little visit at Radley, just to make sure she knows how bad it's gotten and continues to get. Anne Sullivan visits, and the girls get more and more panicked as they realize Spencer has straight-up disappeared.
Get clues about the identity of Red Coat and check out what all those visions of Ali could really mean from our friends at Wetpaint.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Deception, Zero Hour, and Pretty Little Liars for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, and a novelette, "The Commonplace Book," appeared this fall on Tor.com.