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Team Redcoater Noel Kahn brings the Liars and Alison together so that she can sit them down and inform them of the events of her death such as, who buried her and why she was everywhere in the universe that day. The answers are pretty good!
Like, the reason everybody except Spencer slept through that shit was because Ali was tired of getting harassed and decided to narrow down her suspects, dosing the Liars to eliminate them first and then running through her list of suspects. Toby came by the Barn to thank her for framing him because it was nice to be in juvie with a do-rag on rather than constantly getting raped by his sister. Oh and Ezra showed up just to call her an underage asshole, that was a pretty great scene.
But her threat of exposing the NAT Club didn't stop Ian from being pissy, which maybe has something to do with A's later activities and certainly has something to do with that time Alison saved Spencer by pushing Ian off the bell tower (although he didn't die right away, which brings his creepy fake life/suicide afterwards back on Mona). In the end, after a confrontation with the shovel-wielding Spencer that ended with tender embraces and a promise to help get her off drugs, Alison was clubbed with a rock directly in front of her mother, who then accidentally buried her ass to protect whoever did it.
The Grunwald dug Ali up again, and then at the hospital she ran off because A was still on the loose. A traumatized and wandering Alison was rescued by Mona, who took her to the Lost Woods Inn room adjacent to A's Lair, and acted very Mona Vanderwaal in all the greatest ways. Eventually she inspired Ali to take advantage of her seeming death and go on the run, which was always Mona's plan as A. In return, Alison advised Nerd Mona to transform into the hot beast we all know and love, protecting her from the bullies that were actually herself. They created each other!
Melissa's sketchiness, while it may matter now, was at any given point always what it seemed to be: Hastings bullshit, essentially. (Or she is A.) Jenna Thing was a creep who didn't really care about consent, just like mostly everybody else on the show. CeCe Drake killed Darren because he was awful, and maybe didn't even mean to frame Ashley for it. Ezra's "book" project swiftly became a "save the Liars from A" project (despite his reticence to share info and his willingness to sell the thing?). Alison first returned to Rosewood after Hanna got run over, and was also there to rescue Hanna from the Lodge fire, but the rest of her appearances we didn't manage to discuss. There was a lot going on! But mostly it was just Mona torturing everybody like she always said she did, and then whoever stole the Game that she never saw (because they are everywhere and nowhere!) coming back twice as hard, because of whatever happened later.
Back in Rosewood, Gabriel pulls in Melissa and the Hastingses, as well as CeCe Drake and Jessica, to try and figure out where the girls have gone off to. Eventually he gets a warrant to track them to Philly, but thanks to Noel's help they aren't with their cars anymore. So while Melissa is whispering to her dad about who the dead girl is and/or who killed her that night and put her in the same hole that Ali crawled out of -- which might be her, but we never find out -- the Liars find themselves on the run from A at the Philly location, and Mrs. D returns home...
Where she is murdered, and dropped once again into that same hole. So now the person who can identify the original murderer, at the very least, is dead. And then back with Alison, the Liars are rescued from the wild A bullets by Ezra Fitz, who believes so strongly that he's identified A -- and that saving Ali will win Aria back -- that he has tracked down Shana and found his way to their location. Which is nice because he saves the girls and has important information to share, but not that satisfying because A gets him in the abdomen. So as he's lying there dying, and Jessica is getting buried in her own yard, the Liars just kind of lose their shit entirely on a Philadelphia rooftop, and that is a wrap.
What did you think? I loved seeing that night through Alison's eyes -- minus the flying a plane around the world -- and loved seeing Mona Vanderwaal in her natural crazy state, kissing Ali's forehead while secretly celebrating her victory and generally acting like ten pounds of nuts in a very small bag of nuts, but the whisper cheat and Ezra cliffhanger leave me feeling unsatisfied in other, minor ways that I don't even really care about. But of all the driving questions for this half-season, almost all were answered: We still don't know who the dead girl is or her connection to the killer or who the killer is, but that seems like it's really just one question at this point, with a fairly straightforward answer that would end the show.
So I'm glad we didn't find out who A is, because really A is BOB and doesn't even exist, and I'm awful sad to lose Jessica DiLaurentis who never gave up trying to blow your mind, but it feels like this is the best way to close things out: Peter, CeCe and Jessica have been pulling so many of the strings, in different (and it turns out nonessential) ways, that taking them out of the game in time for Ali to come home and uproot a bunch of their reasons for even being involved seems like a fresh evolution.
10 June, Season Five starts with what we're told will feel like the second half of this episode, so maybe this stuff will get resolved, but either way simply having Alison back is the biggest and most impressive change to the show's DNA, if you think about it. There will always be an A to torment the ladies and there will always be skeeves and parents and SO's to fuck everything up, but adding a permanent fifth Liar -- who has certainly changed in some ways, but which and how much? -- feels like the biggest payoff of all. Well, that and a whole cumulative minute of Noel Kahn I guess. So give it a while to sink in, and I'll see you then. Kisses.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Ezra Fitz wasn't A, just your average perverted amateur journalist whose teenage girlfriend was murdered and he decided to become famous from it by seducing her teenage best friend, the better to investigate her murder. Alison's not dead, just on the run from whoever replaced her mysterious bully, but now the cops know she's alive and some random girl is in her sarcophagus. Her mom Jessica is some kind of lunatic but probably not effective enough to be a teen terrorist; Spencer Hastings is a different kind of lunatic who thinks she may have killed somebody and then forgot. The Liars have located Ali's latest bolthole in Philadelphia, and gone there to meet a beautiful stranger.
PHILLY
Everybody is dressed like spies. Even Noel Kahn is dressed like a cat burglar that means to steal your heart.
Liars: "I can't believe it was Noel Kahn that met us at this place! How great is that."
Aria: "Spencer, stop fidgeting. We are here for answers!"
Hanna: "I'm still not convinced this isn't another trick. Why would Ali trust Noel?"
Alison: "...Because he has secrets too. Don't even ask."
The Liars all wonder if they should hug her for not being dead, or beat the shit out of her. She suggests they opt for hugs. Even Spencer.
Spence: "Why are you glad to see me? Didn't I possibly kill you on drugs? Isn't that why you tortured Emily into an emotional insanity?"
Alison: "Yeah, whatever. Once you guys told me the cops are onto me, we have to make this the endgame. We have to figure out who A is, tonight, so we can all go home."
Liars: "Easy, that's your crazy bitch mother."
Alison: "Right? But no, not exactly. I am going to tell you everything now. And if we don't figure it out, that's it for me. I will disappear permanently. Again."
RWPD
Throughout the episode, we check in with Gabriel Holbrook, who is holding the entire population of Rosewood in different interrogation rooms. Sometimes what they say is very meaningful, sometimes what they say seems to answer questions we never really asked, and sometimes what they say, they don't actually say, due to whispering.
CeCe: "I just wanna know who turned me in, because I was a very good Redcoat."
Gabe: "Tell me that he was intimidating you out by that muddy lake and that's why you killed him. Nobody is disputing that Darren Wilden was a beautiful jerk."
CeCe: "Well he was certainly that. Who's gonna identify me?"
Gabe: "Travis Hobbs, again. So you can murder him before Caleb moves back."
CeCe: "If you want me to make a deal, all I can offer is that I know who killed the random girl that is not Alison, that maybe it has to do with Wilden, and that the person is still after Ali, who is alive, which I can also prove."
Gabe: "Those are very interesting topics! But I have to go now, bye."
CeCe: "Also she snapped this bitch's neck one time at this party. I feel like as long as I'm here I should tell somebody that."
ALISON
Spencer: "So if you trust me, then you know I didn't attack you with a shovel?"
Alison: "This episode is a full hour, Spencer. Give it time. You don't even know how much shit went down that night. It all starts in Hilton Head..."
HILTON HEAD
Alison: "The bullshit with A started around Halloween, that time I thought Noel was torturing you all dressed as a giant baby, but I guess it turned out to be Mona. I was stressin' and wanted to take Ian for a holiday. Now, Halloween is October 31 and Labor Day is the first Monday in September, so props to me for making it almost a year before I cracked. Little did I know that Labor Day would be the busiest of my life."
Melissa: "Ian, I followed you here to Hilton Head! I can't believe you let a teenager fly you in a plane across state lines!"
Ian: "I don't really have an answer for you!"
Melissa: "Let me into this resort to physically fight a child, or else!"
Ian: "This is not what I envisioned for this Labor Day weekend."
Melissa: "By the way, I am going to murder Alison DiLaurentis! Maybe with a giant rock, in front of her mother, later this evening! Or else I am just using hyperbole."
Ian: "Wait, aren't we here to get an abortion? Or you're having a miscarriage? How is everything happening on this one night."
Alison: "We'd set up a camera to have sex, being super creeps, but once Melissa arrived I thought for sure I was dead, and also they would be going on and on like that for some time, so I started looking into Ian's many other creepy videos while he was distracted. One of them was Jenna raping her brother, which I thought was pretty interesting. I copied everything. By this point, Melissa and Ian were making out in my grandmother's parlor, so I skipped town and left 'em to it. I'd only gone there to hide, but now I had ammo to eliminate every threat and figure out who A was."
FIRST: JENNA THING
Alison: "First I flew a plane to Jenna Thing's blindness hospital, because I knew she was probably still mad we blew her up, plus she had a bonus pet cop to help her hide everything, so it was a good first guess."
Jenna: "This video of me raping my brother, it sounds pretty bad."
Ali: "Oh it looks pretty bad. So if you don't stop threatening me, I will metaphorically bury you."
Alison: "But then right when I was leaving, A texted me Bitch can't see you, but I do. Tonight's the night I kill you. I could tell A had that one locked and loaded, and it wasn't Jenna after all, but I didn't care because it was nice to make her feel gross about how gross she is. Then Jenna wasn't important again until way later, when she heard Garrett not kill me that night I kept not dying, but that's not going to come up in this story. One down."
HASTINGS
Veronica: "Mom Tree! Ella, the cops are at all our houses searching for the girls. Ashley, is Hanna also missing? Pam says Emily is missing, and that's everybody. They all took off after the fundraiser. Peter's on his way back from being a lawyer as we speak."
Gabe: "I can't chit-chat with you right now because instead of solving the disappearances of two girls I am now solving for six. Stop being a Hastings for like one second and cut a brother a break finding your kid."
Veronica: "To what end?"
Gabe: "Oh, because Alison DiLaurentis is alive, no big."
Veronica: "Huh? I feel like I'm on Spencer pills right now."
The front door opens and Veronica spins around.
Veronica: "Spencer!? ...Oh, it's just Melissa."
Melissa: "Uh, is this Opposite Day? Did you really just say that shit to me?"
Veronica: "I know! It sounded weird just coming out of my mouth."
ALISON
Alison: "So where was I? Oh, A was threatening me with death and I had only just crossed off Jenna Thing from the list. I still had like a hundred more people to blackmail that night. Time was of the essence."
Jessica was freaking out on the phone when Ali came to get her sleepover shit together for Phase II: "How could this happen? I don't understand. Is there any news? Please hurry! I'm very, very worried. Please send someone, immediately!"
Alison: "That sounds very interesting but peace out."
Jessica: "You are not going out tonight, specifically. If you're going to destroy your enemies, which I support, please do it in the living room."
Alison: "It is the last weekend of summer and possibly my life, please don't be a dick."
Jessica: "I'm not being a dick, I am trying to save your life from..."
Alison: "-- Whatever. I'm taking some of your sleeping pills to dose my friends."
I guess this was around the time that Alison flipped out at lunch, which makes Jessica even more interesting in retrospect, because the whole time she was being a hardass it was because she thought a person or persons was going to kill her daughter, but she was just playing it cool. "No, you can't roofie your friends in a barn tonight, sorry. No, you can't fly a plane to Georgia just to see your babydaddy (?)."
Jessica: "Also, please do not hang out with Spencer Hastings, today or ever. But especially today."
Alison: "I have that shit on lock. You told me to fight fire with fire and that is exactly what I'm doing. No more Mr. Nice Jailbait. I'm taking this to the streets."
Jessica: "I know things about that family that you don't. I've seen what they're capable of. Never turn your back on a Hastings."
Alison: "Not planning on it, dude. Later."
No idea where Jason was at this time, which seems important for the whole rest of this story. Wasn't he fucked up and asleep in the yard, along with the rest of the entire population, while various people ran up and down the stairs and yelled and didn't kill Alison, over and over? Or maybe he was just somewhere having private time watching wrestling videos on YouTube. A hobby of Jason's that I am still mystified by.
THE BARN
The girls were so scared! But Alison was just playing a gotcha spooky game, for fun and to distract them and herself from her impending brutal murder. She put all the pills in a tall glass of sumpin' sumpin', made Aria drink first so she would shut up, tossed some subtle lesbian digs at Emily, and waited for everybody to pass out so she could continue her mischief.
Then two more people showed up at the Barn that we never knew about, but that is frankly mere raindrops in the ocean of nonstop action that went down that night.
Alison: "What do you want, Toby Cavanaugh?"
Toby: "I wanted to say thank you for exploding my sister and then framing me for exploding my sister. If you had not, I would not have this do-rag, and she would still be raping me."
Alison: "What do you want, Ezra Fitz?"
Ezra: "I want to say fuck you for being a teenager, because now I feel like a pedophile."
Alison: "Or is that because you are a pedophile?"
Ezra: "Maybe. We will find out for sure in one year, when I start molesting your best friend for a certain kind of journalism."
RWPD
Gabe: "Where was Spencer last week?"
Veronica: "I don't feel like telling you! It's embarrassing!"
Gabe: "Okay, you can be as awful as you want, Special Victim, but you're stuck in this station until things change because it's like a Lady Gaga song out there, from back when she was just barely even an embarrassment to America. Specifically 'Paparazzi.'"
Veronica: "I need to find my husband. Cell reception! Why are you challenging me?"
Cop: "We're tracking their phones and Spencer's car. For some reason, that will take an hour."
Gabe: "Keep me posted. I have to keep playing this manipulative shell game with the various members of the Hastings family for no clear reason."
Melissa: "...I've always looked out for my sister. Mostly so she wouldn't fuck my boyfriends, but also because my peer group is constantly endangering her life. So when Toby Cavanaugh lurched up to me in London with that face of his, and said she was on drrrrrrrr I mean, that she missed me, I had to come back."
Gabe: "Miss Hastings-Thomas, we both know that you would never come back for that reason, and that Spencer would never miss you. I'm recording you."
Melissa: "We can't do that until my mom gets here and okays it."
Just pointing out that even when they are in the same building, Spencer's parents are still never seen together.
Peter: "Where is my wife? She was being a lawyer here in Rosewood this week."
Gabe: "Where is your crazy daughter is the more immediate question."
Peter: "Why would I be here if I knew that?"
Gabe: "Answering a question with a question! You are being a lawyer right now!"
Peter: "You don't have kids, do you? Not with those slim hips."
Gabe: "What? Why are you challenging me?"
Peter: "Because go find my crazy-ass daughter before somebody figures out she's a drug-addicted spree murderer, that's why!"
NOEL KAHN
Noel: "Here is your cash, a passport, and a plane ticket. You have one hour before... Um, I guess before A finds you? That seems kind of arbitrary."
Jacob: "Noel, you can stay if want! Enjoy the story with us, if you... Oh okay bye."
Alison: "Okay I just quickly have to spend that entire hour telling this weird story."
Aria: "Not to make this all about me, but..."
Alison: "Jesus, Aria. Okay fine, the Ezra part of this story."
HART & HUNTSMAN
Alison, pretending to be CeCe Drake's roommate at UPenn, gets a big girl drink and then sets her eyes on a tiny, lovely young man reading Tender Is The Night. Which blew my personal mind, because I was already thinking about Serena van der Woodsen based on how "Paparazzi" was playing -- "I'm gonna make you love me, Papa" -- that long-ago night at this pub (and because I am always already thinking about Serena van der Woodsen), and I always thought that would be a better favorite book for her than Beautiful & Damned. Anyway, Alison is in it to win it, so she Wikipedias that book before she even approaches him.
Ali: "Tragic, isn't it? I read it every summer, sunning in the French Riviera."
Ezra: "I am intrigued by your lying ass. You're a bit of a fabulist."
Ali: "You are immediately awful! Love that, me too."
Ali: "Ezra seemed to get that everything I said was made up and crazy, but he liked it. Maybe in the wrong way. I was flattered the first time he compared me to Holly Golightly, but later it turned out she wasn't glamorous Audrey Hepburn at all, she was just this phony homeless bitch who couldn't even name her cat."
Aria, choking up: "She didn't name her cat because she didn't think she deserved to be loved. They were just a couple of poor no-name slobs..."
Ali: "Fine, this can be all about you too. Fuck it. Just stop crying about Holly Golightly, you're coming off real Axis II right now."
There is a thing in all of these flashbacks where they make sure to set us straight that she wasn't fucking any of these people: The baby scare is the only thing I can think of that would keep her from being a virgin. And while that could be a slightly icky way of humanizing her for Season Five, I think it's more about the false bravado she carries into every scene.
Like, so much of Ali is about how her corruption gives her power, but she's also been telling us since the beginning that most of that is bullshit propaganda. She's always shown the cracks -- CeCe Drake's entire existence is basically to show us that Ali had an Ali of her own, showing her how to be the Mean Cool Older Sister -- but these flashbacks are also about illustrating how out of her depth she always was. She shivers through every one of these confrontations, and sometimes barely keeps the face on long enough to turn away.
And so then the fact that the naïve -- the Liars, their parents, the whole school, really: She drove Paige around the bend based on this act -- all bought into her bullshit wholesale is one more illustration of the central themes of the show, which is that the lies we tell to protect people or bring them closer will always end up destroying them, or holding them apart from us. So far apart in fact that now, four years into a show about her, we barely even know her at all.
"Long story short, Ezra showed up at the Barn to yell at me about how being a jailbait liar was gonna get me killed, and I told him to back off and shut up, but he was like, Weirdly enough I actually consider you a worthwhile person and I don't want you to put yourself in danger and I was just, so tired of that shit. I mean, I'm sorry my existence invalidates your entire relationship, Aria, but I guess the real moral of that story is don't let adults fuck you, even if they tell you they're special and different and you're special and different, and that somehow makes it special and different, because actually it doesn't."
KISSIN' ROCK
Ali: "Thanks for meeting me at this rock and then strangling me for a while. That will make for a great video for to A project on a tombstone in a cemetery some time."
Ian: "I need to know if you are going to fuck up my life, okay?"
Ali: "Are you kidding me? You're the worst. And I don't want that Hastings chick coming after me, she's got the crazy eyes. And also is a bitch."
Ian: "Watch it! That's my future mother of my imaginary fake baby!"
Ali: "Wanna go to jail? Stop yelling at me."
Ian: "I didn't even fuck you!"
Ali: "No, I was talking about these NAT Club videos I downloaded. Sorry, I forgot to segue! Now what's happening is I'm blackmailing you."
Ian: "Into what, being your boyfriend?"
Ali: "Eddie Munster, stick with me here. I am talking about those creepy texts and threats and weird dolls. You and/or Melissa need to cut it the fuck out. Clear?"
Ian: "Can I blackmail you back real quick? Because those tapes will get you in the hottest of water. They could bring down everybody, including your family."
Ali: "Then don't make me use them. And tell the NAT to leave me the hell alone."
"Well. I guess Ian was more flipped out than I thought, based on all the other stuff that happened later in my bedroom and yard that you already know about. But at that time, he ran off like a quote 'plucked peacock.'"
Hanna is so unnerved by that strange phrase that she drops some shit while retrieving some cookies, and then rejoins the group. Aria is still thinking about Holly Golightly, but it becomes beautiful because she knows so well how Ezra thinks, so now -- and this is a very admirable, Anita move, no matter how self-centered she's coming across -- she's suddenly considering Ali from his perspective: This person who absolutely believes she's incapable of being loved, so she has to get her power some other way. Wound, but don't kill, the right kind of darlings, to make them want to die for her. Transform into a beautiful, immortal object.
Ali: "Okay, so about Ezra. He tracked down Shana in Georgia, and he wanted to help find me and save me, because he thinks that will get you back."
Aria: "...I'll allow it. That gives us both a plausible out. But do you even want to be saved? You no-name slob?"
Ali: "Look, I am the worst. I absolutely deserve most of what has been done to me. But I also think that, as a person, I also deserve a second chance."
So after Ian, Ali went back to the Barn to check on the gals, and who was there but Spencer? Who was now on three drugs, making that scariest face she makes, and lying in wait for a fucking fight.
GABE
Peter: "Where is my wife? This darn cell reception."
Gabe: "Maybe here, I'll go check. Hey, why did you hire a private detective that summer?"
Peter: "It was lawyer business!"
Gabe: "I think it was Spencer business, based on this casefile..."
Peter: "Are you finding my daughter or arresting her? Which one?"
Gabe: "I mean, she was all hopped up on..."
Peter: "-- I'm calling my lawyer! I'm calling my family of lawyers!"
They drag ol' CeCe, lookin' rough, past Jessica while Gabe updates her on the strangeness of today. Those ladies share quite a look! I feel like one day we are going to look at the weird triangulating with CeCe and Jessica and Alison in a whole different way than we already do. It's a magnetic, strange dynamic but I don't think we know all about it yet. I just really like to think about that time Jessica was like, "I don't mean they sometimes traded clothes, I mean they traded souls."
Gabe: "So the good news is your daughter is alive. The bad news is, where is she?"
Random: "The car is in Philadelphia."
Gabe: "Good, let's call the police there. Get them on the phone!"
Peter: "Hey, Jessica. Weird seeing you here at this police station. Hey, do we still have an 'understanding' that you won't be talking any shit about Spencer?"
Jessica: "Mostly I'm just surprised that my daughter is alive, for reasons that will become very clear in a minute. Also maybe I am not that surprised. Either way, who cares about your stupid child?"
Melissa: "Dad! Toby Cavanaugh told me that Spencer relapsed and I flew directly home. I know, it shocked me too that I would do that."
Peter: "They have us all in separate rooms like we are conspirators. I guess I didn't cover up her murders well enough. I burned every lacrosse stick with rat blood on it that I could find. Every day I yelled at her to stay out of my stuff. What else can a man do."
SPENCER
Spencer: "I don't remember killing a girl, but I do remember being very fucked up on drugs. And fabricating a bunch of nonsense memories once I started detoxing."
Alison: "You're a bit of a confabulist. So yeah, I kept on you about breaking up Ian and Melissa because I thought he actually liked me..."
Spencer: "And we fought in the kitchen, and then what? I came hard, I remember that."
Alison: "You always do. This time it was like you bottled up every fight and exploded at once. It was freaky for sure! And I thought maybe you were A still. I didn't even care about Melissa or Ian at that point in the night, but you were just very focused on this idea, like you were on a Study Aid drug."
Then Spencer chased her ass into the yard and came at her with a shovel, and that's how Alison died! Just kidding. Alison shivered and realized Spencer had it in her to commit a shovel murder, but she held her ground -- "You're way out of your league, Spencer. Why don't you put that thing down before you hurt yourself?" -- and they tussled. Out popped Spencer's little helpers, and Alison shifted into afterschool mode, promising to help her kick the habit and keep the secret and not tell everybody about her junkie secrets. It was a very sweet moment, actually, that Spencer is not remembering. Anyway, she sent Spencer back to the barn to sleep off her drug cocktail and went to her appointment.
Byron: "Please don't tell Aria about my affair with Meredith. I will give you all the sumpin' sumpin's I have!"
Alison: "I don't think you're A, I just want you to know that I have blackmail materials in case you are on the grapevine somewhere or I disappear."
Alison went back to the Barn, where Spencer was sleeping soundly along with the rest of the Liars, and waited for another text from A, and it never came, so she assumed that somewhere during her very busy night, she silenced the beast.
Spencer: "Wait, so did I kill a person?"
Aria: "No, honey. She just said you slept through the whole rest of Labor Day."
Spencer breaks down in relief, and even Aria is like, "You needed a win."
Who did not win on Labor Day though is Alison, who strode home high on her victory and saw her mom in the window of her house, coming home, and before she could even manufacture a way to get angry at Jessica before Jessica could get mad at her, somebody clonked her on the head with a big rock! Just like Jessica was, apparently, afraid of.
When Ali came to, Jessica was all, "What have you done!? What have you done!?" and shoveling dirt over her daughter's body. Ali couldn't quite pull it together to yell at her mom to stop burying her -- this part freaks her out to talk about, and all the Liars start crying along with her -- so then she was buried. But who was the person that she was protecting, that she seemed to know was coming for Alison, and then saw kill Alison, and then covered up for? (I have an idea! You know what it is! Everybody already knows what it is!) Because until it actually went down, she was still acting like it was Spencer specifically or a Hastings generally.
Emily: "Tell me that The Grunwald actually psychically heard you getting buried and drove here from Ravenswood to dig you up because her ESP is real."
Ali: "That part totally did happen. But then when we got to the hospital I was alert enough to realize that I was still in danger but not cogent enough to stay in a safe place, so I went wandering around town looking wack."
That's when Mona Vanderwaal, nerdy version, rolled up on her and was like, "Girl, you look like you just got clubbed and buried! Get in this car, I will take you to a remote location." She was very good about not hiding her hateful feeling of victory or her simultaneous opposite feeling of obsessive love, for once. Usually those things are both brightly written on her face but not tonight, because tonight was showtime. Like with any given episode, this is the best part of the episode, because Mona is wonderful.
LOST WOODS RESORT
Mona cleaned Ali up, kind of, and she was still a zombie, because what a day. Mona got Ali the room to her A Lair under the Vivian Darkbloom alias, and laid her in the bed, and kissed her on the forehead, and then went door to play with her dolls and be nuts as hell.
Mona: "Man! It's like this A person is just never going to give up. They're probably a superadrenalized genius in a hyperreality. Gosh, that sucks. Maybe you should just take this opportunity to be dead and go for it. I'll help you dye your hair."
Ali: "Are you sure?"
Mona: "Nothing would give me more pleasure than to kill you. What are friends for?"
morning, Vivian was ready to rock. Mona brought her the supplies to get the fuck out of her life forever, and they were sweet in the mirror. Alison thought she was being nice. Just like when she showed Aria Byron and Meredith that first time, or when she kissed Emily. Maybe she was, although Hanna would feel differently.
Hanna was the first to forgive her, and the first to say goodbye. But when I think about the infinite things Alison needs to make up for, Hanna's also the first one I think of.
"Come here. Look at yourself. Ditch the glasses, and the barrettes. Have Kim at the salon do your hair, and ask for Cindy at the makeup counter. Buy everything she tells you to. Never go to school without your face on. Burn those kneesocks. Tell Mandi at the boutique that Vivian sent you. You don't have to be a loser, Mona."
It was the nicest thing she could think of. And Mona took her advice, as tainted as it was. And then she waved goodbye.
And then she took a year to get full-on psycho pretty, waiting for them to find the body and Aria to move back from Iceland, so she could destroy everybody for not being Hanna, which was the second part of the plan, I guess, after killing or disappearing Ali herself. (Notice how this also makes sense that she would go for Spencer as the most likely turncoat, during the complicated-as-hell Black Swan maneuver, based on how obviously Spencer might have killed her.)
RWPD
Melissa: "Dad, wait! You actually think Spencer killed a girl? Here is a secret whisper that is going to take the roses right out of those cheeks."
She whispers a secret whisper! Perhaps it is something best told him years ago, before he and his wife drove Spencer all the way into two separate nuthouses. But then we never would have met Dean Stavros, so I guess it turned out okay. And who could forget the thrill ride that was Marion Cavanaugh's curious death. Imagine how many administrative personnel, corporate lawyers, and retired medical professionals we might never have met.
PHILLY
With the local cops very close indeed, the Liars sum up the deal.
Liars: "Well, that was interesting and it was nice to see Noel Kahn, but it doesn't seem like we are going to figure it out. If only Ezra had ever given us access to all of his surveillance and information maybe, but that was not what he chose to do. Doesn't matter now, though. We know everything except who A is."
Alison: "My main deal is, why would my mother cover for this person?"
Liars: "Wouldn't it be nice, though? To come home."
Alison: "I'm a no-name slob. I don't have a home, I don't know what that feels like. It was easy to stay gone. Although I did come back when Hanna got run over by that car."
Hanna: "Man that was a long time ago."
Alison: "That's when I started the Redcoat stuff. I didn't want to just leave you guys dicked like that anymore."
Emily: "Did you come back any of the million other times?"
Alison: "I flew a plane to pull Hanna out of the Lodge fire, but she's the only one. Everybody else was already saved, by a second person wearing a mask of my face that was presumably CeCe Drake (?)."
"Oh, and I pushed Ian out of the belltower that time to save Spencer, before he went into hiding with Wren and Melissa and Melissa's fake baby helping him leave the country but then A faked his suicide. Another thing where I was trying to help that did not turn out so great."
At this point things begin happening very fast and for a while, but on paper it won't be that long. The cops are storming one place, the first location where Noel met them, and finding nothing. Another person is banging on the door of where they are, who is A. Everybody runs around crazy for a while, and then A starts shooting a gun wildly, so they run to the roof, which is what you should always do.
(Hey how come The Grunwald said the person Ali was fleeing is somebody that touched one of the Liars? It wasn't Ezra, because Ali knew about the book the whole time. Then who was it? Are psychic ESPs even real? Maybe not.)
Up there, they are immediately trapped, but then Ezra Fitz appears. Not because he is A, but because he knows who A is. One scuffle later, A jumps across to another roof, and the girls are very awesome yelling at him or her to take off his or her mask and show them who A is already. But A declines, and vanishes like a ghostface killah.
Ezra is right there, so probably they should ask him who his latest A is, but it turns out he was shot in his abdomen and died. So now for sure he is dead, and the Liars are up on this roof with their dead English teacher who knows who A is. Aria throws a massive fit about this, predictably enough.
...But wait, that's not the only person who knows! There is also Jessica DiLaurentis, who is done at the police station and ready to welcome her daughter home, whenever that happens. She could probably tell them, right?
A-TAG
But no! Because as it turns out Jessica DiLaurentis has been murdered, and buried in that same gosh-darn hole in her yard! What an unlucky hole. I would be like, "You know what, I don't even care if we ever have a gazebo. What do you think about xeriscaping this whole area where people keep getting murdered and buried in our yard?" And also when did this happen? At some point right before A hit the road for Philly, I guess, unless A is also a teen airline pilot like so many are these days.
IN ABOUT 80 DAYS FROM NOW
Is Ezra alive? (Duh, obviously.) How will everybody react to the death of Jessica DiLaurentis? Ambivalently I would imagine. How hard is Veronica going to come after Spencer for going to Philadelphia? Will we ever seen Noel Kahn again? What is senior year like for a girl who is a blackmailing zombie? Who is the person that killed the other girl? Who is the other girl? Why was Jessica so into her or them? What is her problem with the wife and daughters of the man she had a bastard with? How many things will Alison DiLaurentis have to apologize for, and is there enough time in the universe for that or will we just hear about it later? Don't you think it's very possible the season premiere will be like, "Oh, while we're stuck up on this roof waiting for the cops, here are thirty thousand million more things that happened that day."
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Bates Motel, The Blacklist, The 100, and Pretty Little Liars for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, and a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.