34 things I swear really happened during the “Pretty Little Liars” series finale, I kid you not
Once upon a time, I was pretty obsessed with Pretty Little Liars, and I have the receipts to prove it.
However, since no mere mortal can successfully watch every single show on television — and trust me, I have tried — Pretty Little Liars and I broke up sometime around the end of Season 5. We had finally learned who ? was (or, so I thought) and then there was that whole “Dollhouse” conundrum, and it was seriously too much for me to handle. I said my goodbyes to Spencer, Aria, Hanna, and Emily, and carried on with my life, PLL-less.
And now, since I’m a sucker for series finales, I thought “Hey, what the hell, let’s watch the Pretty Little Liars series finale. This should be fun!” Keep in mind, I went into this episode roughly 40-ish episodes behind on this show, and if you know PLL, you know that about 400 things can happen in the span of just one episode. To be completely honest, I understood literally none of the finale, and at one point Spencer and Ezra were on an unused set from The Truman Show, and I was just like, “Sure!” But I am getting ahead of myself.
Here, I present to you — for what is (dear god) hopefully the last time ever — 34 things that really, and truly happened during the episode, “Till Death Do Us Part.” I didn’t make these things up, but the writers of PLL did:
1. The episode opens with the Liars drinking iced coffee at roughly 10 p.m. at night, because none of them sleep, I guess.
2. Lucas comes by in a white suit with coattails and tap dances for absolutely no reason. I assume it was in his contract that he got to appear in the finale, so here we are.
3. It starts to snow. For no reason.
4. Just kidding, this is all happening inside one of Mona’s snow globes (¯_(ツ)_/¯), and PLL teeters very close to turning down a St. Elsewhere path.
5. Ezra is now some “fancy writer,” and sure, so he gets a movie deal or whatever, and he and Arya are on the Warner Bros. backlot, conveniently where Pretty Little Liars has filmed for the last seven seasons, and they make out in front of a group of tourists.
6. Alison has her twins, and she names them Grace and…shit, I can’t remember the other baby’s name. Since I never want to watch this episode ever again, let’s just call the babies Grace and Frankie. Alison is raising them together with Emily, and there is literally so much I have missed, but these two are a couple now, and I accept it. You should too.
7. About 45 minutes into this episode, Alison will propose to Emily while wearing a pink pug sweatshirt that reads, “Waiting for the weekend.”
8. Then, in about an hour, we’re going to learn that Ali was impregnated with WREN’S sperm, so her babies are actually Emily + Wren. This is shocking, and I don’t have the strength in me to explain why.
9. Mona has been away somewhere (?) for something (?) and now she’s back and has moved in with Hanna and Caleb (?) because Hanna is Mona’s sponsor (?) for whatever reason she was away in the first place.
10. Hanna and Caleb are trying to have a baby, even though they’re having marital issues. Because YES, BABIES SOLVE ALL PROBLEMS.
11. Spencer now owns the Lost Woods Resort, where the Liars have almost been murdered roughly 500 times. She’s redecorated it, so it’s really cute, and not at all murder-y.
12. Melissa is creeping around the motel, but then she whips off her FACE to reveal that she’s really Mona. Glad to see this PLL trope is still alive and kicking.
13. There is an opposite-of-sexy sex montage set to a horrendous song with a saxophone solo. Everyone has sex except for Spencer and Toby, who play Scrabble instead. Looks like someone has been binge-watching Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu!
14. I went to go remove my nail polish, and when I came back, Arya was crying, and I was like, “Oh nooooo,” and it took me a half hour to realize that it’s because she can’t have kids, and Ezra is like “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine, there are other ways to have kids, let’s not make a big thing out of it,” but Arya is already like “TOO LATE, I AM MAKING A BIG THING OUT OF THIS.”
15. Ugh, shit, Arya is Game of Thrones, Aria is Pretty Little Liars. Uggghhhhh. This is what I get for giving up on PLL and switching to GoT.
16. Remember the Pretty Little Liars Moms? They continue to be the best part of the entire series, and they get five minutes of glory during the finale where they all immediately get DRUNK and talk about how they were once trapped in a basement. (Side note: I think their “trapped in a basement” episode was the last one I watched all the way through!)
17. Spencer is kidnapped for maybe the 9th time of the series.
18. …Spencer is kidnapped by her twin sister.
19. ……………………..Spencer is kidnapped by her evil British twin sister.
20. Spencer’s Evil British Twin Sister, Alex, has been behind this thing all along after a chance meeting with Wren in a bar many years ago. Alex decides to hatch a plan to take over Spencer’s life for…reasons that don’t make a whole lot of sense. Something about Charlotte’s death, and avenging it — even though Mona killed Charlotte but Alex blames the Liars for it, and this is revenge. Just go with it. I promise at no point in time will you ever be quizzed on the events of the PLL series finale, and if you find yourself in a situation where you are being quizzed on the events of PLL, that is your own damn fault.
21. Spencer’s Evil British Twin Sister kills Wren and then turns his ashes into a diamond. Evil Twin wears this necklace around her neck and kisses it.
22. Spencer’s Evil British Twin Sister does not plan to kill Spencer, but rather keep her locked up in an underground dungeon. As Spock might say, “Logical.”
23. Coincidentally, Ezra is also trapped in the dungeon. (He misses his wedding because of this, whoops.) More than likely, the PLL cast members were gathered together and politely forced to draw sticks to see who would be trapped in the dungeon with Spencer. Ezra got the short stick, and this is the only logical explanation as to why he’s here.
24. Spencer breaks out of her dungeon with a bobby pin.
25. No context, but this character shows up for about a minute, I shit you not:
26. Spencer and Ezra find themselves in an unused set from The Truman Show, where there’s an artificial world and they’re trapped in it (this is all in the underground dungeon, because all characters on this show have a disposable income, and meanwhile I eat cereal for dinner four days a week). At one point the “daylight” goes out and it turns to night. It’s about 80% less exciting than The Truman Show. You can watch The Truman Show right now on Hulu if you want.
27. Evil Spencer is now living Spencer’s life, and Jenna — lolz, remember her? — knows that Spencer is really Evil Spencer by smelling her.
28. Toby is able to quickly figure out that Spencer has been replaced by a double because this double is not scribbling notes inside of books, a thing I guess Spencer has been doing that has not been revealed until this exact moment in time.
28a. Someone in the PLL writers’ room once looked up the term, “deus ex machina,” and was like, “We should literally do this at every conceivable moment.”
29. Offscreen, everyone breaks into the location where Spencer and Ezra are being held. Though Toby is (and correct me if I’m wrong) not a police officer right now, he’s still got a gun on him. Since moments ago he proved himself as the real gumshoe of the group, he’s able to figure out which Spencer is Real Spencer and which one is Evil Spencer.
30. Real Spencer also recites lines of poetry in French, to really drive home the point that she’s Really Spencer.
31. For the last time ever, Hanna proves that she is the “confused but lovable” one of the group by arguing with the rest of the Liars about a duck.
32. Because Mona can smuggle people out of the country willy-nilly, she somehow gets Evil Spencer and Mary Drake (if you have to ask, just give up now) to France.
33. Mona has a très chaud French boyfriend…and also has Evil Spencer and Mary Drake trapped in an underground dollhouse for what will probably be all of eternity. Because she’s Mona. Cool.
34. The episodes ends on a dark and stormy night where some kids wake up, only to realize that one of their friends is missing, and oh god they heard a scream, and oh please no, time is a fucking flat circle in Rosewood.
