Five things we learned from last night’s Pretty Little Liars #5YearsForward special

Last night, Pretty Little Liars aired the episode we’ve been waiting for since the midseason finale back in the summer. It was revealed that not only is CeCe (or Charlotte) “A,” but she is also trans, previously going by the name “Charles.” This landed her in the children’s ward at Radley, and her oppressive childhood is supposedly what triggered her rise to “Uber A.”

So that’s where we left off. Now, five years later, the liars return to the screen. While the time jump doesn’t officially start until the first episode on January 12th, last night we got to watch interviews and discussions with the cast as they prepared us for what’s to come. Here’s what we learned:

1. The liars are pretty much where you’d expect them to be. When we left the girls, they were packing to go to college. Now, Hanna has her dream job in fashion after attending FIT in New York, Spencer works on Capitol Hill, Aria works in publishing after a brief stint with photography, and Emily quit school and now bartends in Malibu.

2. Ali is not where you’d expect her to be. By the age of 21, she’s engaged and teaching at a high school. For some reason, she’s still defending CeCe, and I’m sure the season ahead will tell us why.

3. Pretty much everyone has broken up. Yeah, that’s right. No #Ezria, no #Spoby, and definitely no #Haleb. The only couple that’s made it is Emily and Paige, but with all the stress that Emily is under after the death of her father, we’re sure things are pretty rocky. Plus, this special revealed that Emily returns with the biggest secret, so what could that possibly mean?

4. Ezra isn’t doing so hot. While (surprise, surprise) Ezra and Aria end up working together in publishing, Ezra’s life has gone downhill since we last saw him. After following Nicole to work with Habitat for Humanity, it all goes belly-up (but we don’t know how). He returns to Rosewood disparate and with an alcohol problem.

5. January can’t come soon enough. Seriously, we have more questions than answers following this special, which we should have expected by now. Write and producer Marlene King has always loved teasing us, so it looks like we’ll have to wait until the new year to discover what’s actually going down in Rosewood, but if these past six seasons are any indication, we know it can’t be good.

(Image via ABC Family)