Pretty Little Liars just breaks my brain. But it's fun!
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Timestamps
0:00 Intro
2:28 The Story & The Creator
5:47 Chapter 1: The Characters
6:26 Aria Montgomery
12:11 Emily Fields
13:57 Alison DiLaurentis
19:49 Hanna Marin
21:27 Spencer Hastings
24:33 Chapter 2: So Many Plot Holes
36:32 Chapter 3: CeCe Drake & The Broken Timeline
42:32 Chapter 4: The Final Season
46:03 Conclusion
_____________________________________________________
Pretty Little Liars
PLL
Alison DiLaurentis
Aria Montgomery
Spencer Hastings
Hanna Marin
Emily Fields
Lucy Hale
Troian Bellisario
Ashley Benson
Shay Mitchell
Ezra Fitz
Ian Harding
Gossip Girl
CeCe Drake
Emily In Paris
Romanticizing Ignorance
PLL was the Riverdale before Riverdale
PLL walked so Riverdale could run
PLL was truly the blueprint for riverdale. The only difference is PLL is actually still good despite how messy it is, riverdale is both messy AND terrible 💀
Lost was the PLL before PLL.
PLL is still a hundred times better than Riverdale. Riverdale’s plot is so messy and it makes no sense 😅
@@ariellestorm2991 pll walked so that Riverdale could first run then get shot in its knees and crawl more painfully than Andy dufresne escaping through his tunnel of freedom, the length of five football fields just shy of half a mile in Shawshank redemption
The fallout from Hannas shoplifting had more of an emotion impact on her than her killing someone. 😂😂😂
Pls💀
Naw fr though
🤣🤣🤣
Could be accurate characterization for a sociopath
The fact that they wanted to make us believe that by season 5 they were still in highschool is almost insulting.
Haha I know right like many teen dramas have this same issue when they cast much older actors to play teens.
The three month long bullshit was only for like three weeks, from the middle of season three (the Halloween train episode) to the middle of season five was about three weeks because the episode before the Christmas one took place in THANKSGIVING, Ezra is invited to Thanksgiving dinner where he bakes a pie. Then a month passes where fucking nothing happens and BOOM Christmas.
I dont know, I didn't find it insulting. Lots of people didn't.
The way teenage me used to compare how I looked to actual adult women😂
There are also a ton of flashbacks that we see.....lol
In my opinion, the most wasted character of the entire series was Melissa, it always seemed that she was hiding something that was plotting something and in the end it was nothing
at this point I feel like they tried to make every side character look suspicious af just for nothing
well she acted like that because she thought spencer killed ali and that she was protecting her since she was the one who buried who she thought was ali
@@a.alphonso6193 i understand but Why a fake pregnacy would help Spencer?
Taht and also Jenna.......I always thought she was gonna do more......
She did technically murder someone. It was revealed she buried that random blonde from the mental hospital when she thought Spencer hit Ali. The girl was alive and ended up being the one they found instead of Ali
If they had told us there was a fake Spencer the entire season, and we watched her interact with the characters all season without them knowing, it would have been SO. MUCH. BETTER.
The problem with your idea is that the Evil twins thing wasn`t scripted since the beginning of the show. It simply came up from nothingless. In other hand, I think that a lot of the plote holes in the history existed because of the same reason. The key points of the entire histoy weren't planned.
This is off topic but that lipstick is so your color
They do not have guts to do such a thing 🤷♀️
If they had told us, it would have ruined the surprise. The way they did it we had to go back and search for those times we were questioning Spencer. Didn't ya have a questioning feeling half of the season? THAT is what they wanted.
@@MapiK.95 plot holes*
When you invest 7 years of your life into this show, and realize on the last episode the writers were just winging it the entire time. Such a disappointment.
Very true
You knew the definition of true pain when you were an "Aria is A"-theorist on Tumblr back when the show was airing.
@@d1etpussy621 frl 😩😩😩
@@d1etpussy621 so true!!😭
Lesson here, nobody asked you to, you made your choice and have to live with the consequences 😄This show is so bad its good
Friendly reminder in the OG books Aria and Ezra's relationship lasted for five seconds and she ended up with someone her age long-term. There was literally no reason for this creepfeast
WHAT??? i never knew that wtf why did mar mar like them so much?? ewwwww
If im not wrong Ezra was even arrested
@@too-sad-so-bad probably because the audience liked them for a couple of seasons
@@tobias_cooper i'm in the middle of a rewatch right now and i just finished season 6A (everything before the time jump) and he hasn't been arrested yet :/ should be tho 🤢
@@too-sad-so-bad "in the OG books" not the show
There’s a scene where Hanna gets groped by Aria’s mums fiancé, and Hanna tells Aria and Aria basically tells Hanna that she asked for it. It’s really bad
This triggered me so bad when I was 12 ☠
That's literally so freaking bad! Book Aria would've been all over her mom's fiance if he did that to her friends or anyone for that matter
Yeah at this moment I started to hate Aria so much
yeah, aria is just a bitch
She blamed Hanna for A//zacks behavior.. oh Kay … 🙄🙄🙄
I feel like Ezra being the main villian in the end would been good plot twist. That he secretly controlling Aria, which explains why she was so shady all the time/why she also being torture alone with the other girls. When they hinted he might have been A, I really hoped they followed through with it, but nah they threw that away.
YES! Him having a secret lair in ravenswood, him following Allison when everyone thought she was dead and collecting all that information just for his BOOK????!!!! Most stupidest, lazinest, nonsensical thing ever.
@@Mixhelle.n it also ruined his character for me. Before this reveal, I kind of felt for Aria and Ezra and how messed up it was that he became her teacher. But him being involved with Alison before and the whole book-plot ruined their whole relationship for me. And him continuing to be her teacher was just so ... Wrong.
Ezra would have been a great A. The liars could start suspecting Aria for why she's seemingly missing or barely gets hurt, but it could have been because Ezra wanted to subvert suspicions.
@@Singapore-Aviation72If they had planned for him to be A from the start, that could have eben awesome. Totally agree. I just don't like the book-storyline as it is.
See I think Aria was so shady to start because the original plan was for her to be A but then the fans figured it out (it was a whole thing) so Marlene had to change course
The best thing about Alison is, that she didn't even go to school and becomes a teacher.
Sorta of the same thing with Archie from riverdale except he didn’t graduate
an English teacher too!! which is very difficult as you don't have a set curriculum and requires a lot of background education and skills
And also, she disappeared for 2 years and then came back to school in the same class as the other girls??
@@randywhite3947 ROTC isn't a teaching position, it's extracurricular activity (similar to playing a sport ins school)
@@colonelsanders1621 In a lot of places it is, at my high school ROTC was an actual class.
"It's still better than Emily In Paris though." Footage of rats dying are better than Emily In Paris.
Anyone with camera can do better than that
Why would you say that. You know i can only like it once, right?
That would still be an accurate portrayal of Paris
looks like Ratatouille
Not when you were a fan and spent lots of time reading fan theories like me 😂😂😂 the ending was a kick in the teeth for everyone. But to be fair the books are a lobotomy to everyone’s intelligence
I think the fans figured out exactly what was originally planned for the ending and she had to scramble to fix it. It was absolutely supposed to be Aria. Lucy’s “shock” is because she took the role knowing what was going to happen and that’s why she was playing Aria the way she was.
I don’t believe Lucy Hale took the role to _become_ A. I think Marlene made Aria more suspicious after Mona’s reveal because she wanted her to be A until people figured it out. Aria wasn’t going to be A before the show began.
@@jaylondoneyeexactly
Nope, the writers confirmed the network didn't approve of any of the liars becoming A, so even if they wanted too they couldn't. And it wasn't their plan. they wanted AD to be Wren originally.
I've never seen the show, but I know Allison is A in the books, so here's my take: I feel like it would have been more interesting if the person who attempted to kill Allison didn't matter, because the entire town of Rosewood refused to turn them in. She terrorized everyone so much that when she was "killed" everyone agreed that it was for the good of the town, so when she turned out to be alive, she used A to bully the people in the town into admitting who attempted to kill her. And the writers could have played around with who the killer was, maybe by planting it on different people or making it a team effort.
That would have been a really good idea but isn´t it too predictable that Alison would be A ?
@@beyourselfx3145 Sometimes being predictable is ok. It would have been really interesting to see everyone having to team together to fight alison. the books followed this plot and they were much better than the tv show.
very agatha christie and I’m here for it
@@beyourselfx3145 yeah but it’s much better to be a bit predictable and then be able to play around with a coherent, good plot and characters than trying to make the most unpredictable choice ever and to try and outsmart your crowd you mess up all the potential your project had.
@beyourselfx3145 there were other twists around Alison being A, that were the real shockers of the books not really who A ended up being
It annoyed me how Emily had a permanent worried expression on her face
I really like her as a person but she’s just not a good actress unfortunately..
nooo, I liked Emily, the only one I liked on the show, oh well 🥴
thank you 💀💀 finally someone said it, that's alwayyys what i thought it bothered me so much. she always looked like she on the verge of tears
I mean, she wound up with Alison, so I don't blame her for looking constipated all the time. That's literally the thing she was trying to avoid, but that bad writing tho...
I imagined that face as soon as I read this comment
Aria was a teenager girl going to bars during the day, drinking and hooking up with her teacher in the bathroom. Sooooo relatable
I hate rewatching their scenes. I loved her with little Fitz - because it made wayyyy more sense.😒
Yeah writers essentially want them to act like college kids but with the restrictions on a school kid
Ngl I went to bars and hooked up with adults as a teenager...we make questionable choices when we’re young
I really think they wanted it to be college, but also shock with high schoolers and most media fetishizes teen girls behaving like adults. **gag**
@@zombelladonna ...
Honestly, the end that writters gave to Allison snd Emily disturbs me a lot. Pregnancy by forced artificial insemination makes me so repulsed and scared, and made them look so happy about it after all just is too much for me
yea even as a guy I thought that story was a bit to far, they really could have found another way to have them end up together
It was actually forced "in vitro", not artificial insemination, as the eggs got fertilized prior to being implanted in Alison. The eggs were Emily's retrieved stolen eggs, not Alison's, and an artificial insemination would have led to Alison's egg being naturally fertilized inside of her own body.
Yeah, it was very disturbing. Also, I think Alison and Emily had more chemistry during the flashbacks. When they actually get together, I think they look so stiff. It lacks passion, their kisses are so bland. I rooted for them out of nostalgia, but their relationship wasnt believable at all for me.
They basically ended up really being Wrens & Emily's babies biologically, which to me was odd, but then again, so was the whole situation. 😬
The creepiest thing about the entire show is that Ezra went out of his way to have a sexual relationship with 16-year-old Aria. And the show NEVER talks about this. The only reason Aria gets angry and they break up is because he was writing a book about them, not because he is a predatory pedophile. Everybody else, including Aria's parents, thinks that Ezra and Aria started out as a one-night stand without realizing the age difference but in reality, he sought her out and groomed her.
Jack ezra and aria were a great couple .one of the best in the show also this is a dark show and not made for social messages so overall i am so fed up with haters 😒🙄 who takes things too seriously and personally . Dont be a snowflake
@@mylifeislegendary942cringe
@@mylifeislegendary942 "dont be a snowflake" you are defending literal pedophilia, which is an actual crime
well her parents were super against for a WHILE
@@mylifeislegendary942 ah yes being against rape makes someone a snowflake
pretty little liars is the biggest waste of potential in a teen series ever, it could've been an iconic classic masterpiece and it was just...disappointing
It could've been the "Gone Girl" of television, the premise was just as effective!
honestly if the show stayed the same quality as s1 when the plot wasn’t as complicated and focused on the characters more it would have been amazing
nailed it! the story was so good in the first few seasons. It seemed like the show decided to cater to the fans later on ("ships" for example ughhhh). I honestly thought the finale would have been great if Ezra had been A instead of glorifying an inappropriate relationship. hopefully this reboot will stick to the story.
First seasons were very fun but then it got so repetitive and boring
@@sarahxo2317 With most bad shows, the first season is great then proceeds to go downhill because they have to write seasons within a shorter timespan than they got to write the first season in. The first seasons of shows are written out over years and pitched numerous times to numerous networks, the ongoing seasons have to be written out during Winter and Spring.
And they somehow went from Allison using Emily’s sexuality to toy with her to Allison marrying Emily and getting pregnant with her stolen eggs. WTF
What?
The stolen eggs thing was so bad. If you actually think about it, she's pregnant with WREN'S BABY
as someone who hasn’t watched past season 1 wtf
@@bakeymykakey Same. WTF?? O.o
As someone who watched the whole show at the begining of COVID-19 i don't remember shit how comes it is Wren's baby?
I really like the "Aria is A" theory, and I think that if the show hinted MORE of Alisson and Aria being the closest in the whole friend group bc they are "evil" or "manipulative" the same and that's why they gravitated towards each other and also why Aria is the one Alisson "picked". I would love for the both of them to have ended up being A or Aria assuming the position of A after Alisson died bc she wants to manipulate the girls into becoming friend again after they split up with Allison's disappearance (it would also explain why none of the girls ended up dead and why Aria would often be the one to "be around" after something traumatic happened to them all bc she wants the girls to trust her the most and to maintain the group together).
Lucy probably was right, but Marlene wanted to "gotcha" the viewers so bad that she changed things per season after seeing people were on to her. She gave us Cece (which wasn't actually possible) so that she could say "haha! I outsmarted and shocked everyone". Like yeah, Noone would have guessed that because it literally makes no sense.
The Cece reveal SUCKED! I almost hated it more than the AD reveal. At least I was prepared to be disappointed by the AD reveal. The CeCe reveal really caught me off guard by how nonsensical it was.
100%. She saw everyone theorizing that Aria was A but was so determined to seem smart that she threw together this awful reveal that makes absolutely no sense
In the books Ezra is completely a predator. He gets arrested pretty quickly and when he briefly returns later on, he hits on another teenager and is viewed as gross
That's how would have been in the series! :/
I thought that was going to happen. When I realized they were romanticizing it I signed off.
Because book writers knows the difference between real life and fantasy and Hollywood knows only 2 things jack and shit and jack left town.
@@JustTooDamnHonest nah bro, hollywood writers don't see it as bad because this kind of abuse is common in Hollywod and they're trying to normalise it.
@@chavaspada That is what I meant by knowing jack and shit. Because Hollywood wouldn't normalise it because they have minds of predators and we got most of them but the more people come into Hollywood the more we have to watch out for.
It’s infuriating that 15 yr old girls in the fandom were writing the show for Marlene and she ignored it because it was too “predictable” 🙄
But didn't ignore the alison x emily somehow having biological kids??? That was such a weird choice that she only did cause people kept writing the fanfics with that trope and i- MARLENE WHY?! she changed A to being a trans women introduced in season 3???? Because people realized what marlene was setting up for season 5, with Alisons twin and marlene changed it last minute
@@Juanmaligno lmao cece was always supposed to be A- you can go all the way back to season 3 and tell....
@@billy28061100 no she was not lol you can tell cece was never supposed to be a
@@Juanmaligno yes she was you can tell she was supposed to be A lmao. like why else would she be in a BLACK HOODIE spying on ezrias conversation....
@@billy28061100 but it doesn’t make since what was her motive the only A that made since was Mona all the other ones had no motive
The sad thing is that the books were really good! Part of what made Allison so evil was the lasting damage she did to her friends. In the first book, we learn that Hannah has Bulimia that effects everything she did, even in later books. Emily was a bisexual who was shipped off to her incredibly conservative aunt and uncle to 'straighten her out' and then ran away from them because of it, she also gets pregnant and has to give up the baby with no support from her family. Aria is a nice person who genuinely cared about others but was a little weird, she had to hold onto the secret of her fathers affair for years and Allison held it over her head. IMO Spencers relationship with her sisters fiancé felt a lot more predatory in the books, she tried to support her sister but her future brother in law kept making advances. Mona dies and stays dead. I couldn't watch the tv show because they ruined the characters and made them so shallow
and they're not the complete opposite of role models in the books.
It didn’t ruin anything
Also in the books Ezra goes to jail like he should!!
I should read it
The most shocking thing rewatching the first episodes was Ezria. The fact that he knew her age and still kissed her and than again when she was in a vulnerable state at Alis funeral makes me sick to my stomach. And the actors actually being close in age and therefore being seemingly fine as a couple is just so 🚩🚩🚩 for whoever thought it was OK to write that and show that to a teen audience.
I think the actors being so close in age IRL is a large part of why so many of us were fine(ish) with it. Like, if they had cast a literal 30 something and teen in those roles, it would have been SO visibly creepy.
@@ash_613But he wasn’t a 30 something he was like 24. I think the relationship is gross but honestly not because of the age gap but because of the power dynamic and the stalking
I feel so bad for people who were devoted fans of the show since 2010 and spent so much time creating theories about who A was, only for A to be a random evil twin that no one could have possibly known existed before the last episode.
Omg exactly !!!!!
I remember being so excited to find out then just absolutely pissed... I had so many ideas in my head that would’ve been a great ending and I was just disappointed. My sister then binge watched the show with me a few months ago and I remember how confused she was at the ending. It was just pure shite
While I do agree that the finale (and pretty much every season post the Mona arc) is just a dumpster fire with a 💩 on top, I actually remember theories popping up of Spencer having a twin around halfway through the final season. Still trash, though
I remember there were some theories around 2014 where people theorized if Hannah or Spencer had an evil twin.
I've watched it since the beginning and I have read all the books and the thing that frustrated me is in the books(SPOILER) Allison had a twin sister and that twin sister was "A" and that made sense because there were times where Allison was mean and times where she was really nice so that would explain that switch and they could've easily done that storyline,but instead,in an effort to trick the audience, they did that storyline but with a different character. All these tricks and turns just to get to a similar storyline
13yo me was reading theories about aria being a narcissist with multiple personalities and that was why she was always looking on the mirror. i feel robbed.
Same. Those sound like sound theories. I love them already.
THIS! The theories were so good and when you knew and watched it further, you could see how often she was looking in a mirror and „switching“. I would‘ve loved that.
Yessss on tumblr!! I loved those theories. She was legit always looking in the mirror.
I don't like the insinuation of using DID for a villain like that, and how looking into the mirror.. made her switch?? What????
@@thatsdisco I don't think it was much about DID as much as it was more like aria was A and she actually started caring about the liars but when she looked in the mirror she would remember she's not one of them and go back into A mode like it reminded her who she really was. There's the episode on the Halloween train where she tells Adam Lambert her name and spells it on the window and writes her name with and A type A.
I’m genuinely convinced if they had sat down before it even aired and said “this person is A.” Instead of hop skipping and jumping it wouldn’t have been so awful, after a bit it became clear even the writers didn’t know who they were pinning as the real A.
The problem is them thinking there had to be one "Boss A", in the books "A" is just a name used by multiple different people unassociated with each other.
So, from what I understand, Allison got hit with a rock by Cece; Mrs. Dilaurentis buried Allison's body; the old lady pulled Alison out of the dirt; Mrs. Dilaurentis went back to unbury Allison's body and found an empty grave (it explains why later in season 6 girls found the basement with all the files and investigation Mrs. D kept on everyone); then Mona hit Bethany with a shovel; and Melissa found the body, thought Spencer killed this girl and buried her alive.
The way Alison had beef with every single person in Rosewood and they all feared her will FOREVER be iconic
FOR REAL. they took all her power away and it made the show so much less exiciting. she was THE villain, like everyone wanted her to be the villain she was a good villain!
@@cammejia5665 what I hated the most, was when she married that fake doctor and she became a damsel in distress essentially just ruined the character beyond belief
I wanted her to be A so bad
YES
Agreed. I hate that she wasn't A in the end, it was stupid to give her a redemption arc.
They got greedy. They could’ve had a great show on their hands if they had ended the show by season 4 or even 5, but they wanted to make more money. Further proof: Ravenswood.
If they had followed the books instead of going off the goddamn rails at every second, could have been better
!!!!!
Who was A in the books?
@@just1desi *Spoiler Alert* Mona was the first A (books 1-4) The real Alison was the second A (books 5-16). There’s a twin twist in the books that’s a long story and kind of combination of CeCe and Alex’s storylines, but written and handled much better.
@@jemaredwards8636 are the books any good?
I rewatched the show and I definitely feel that Aria was supposed to be A. In one episode when she is watching those old black/white films, it includes the movie audio saying "Even his son", and a few episodes later it's revealed that Ezra has a son. In another scene of her watching a movie, it says something about a person having someone's head inside of a box; so it made me think that she hid Allison's head in a box (before they brought her back to life). Aaand, just before Mona was killed, she tells Aria "You know just where to plunge the knife and twist it", then she is killed in that exact way afterwards. I wish we weren't robbed of the Aria is A ending, it would have made the show much better.
Aria is beyond suspicious
she was meant to be A but everyone guessed it too quick so the writers changed it
I still want to know how Eddie Lamb recognises Aria when according to Aria, they've never met. I honestly have so many questions.
I think it's because the writers thought about making aria A but so many people guessed they just changed it
@@emilymurphy6920 exactly this. The fans figured it out and so Marlene couldn’t just accept it and had to change it and like “nope you are all wrong hahaha” instead of giving us the story we deserved.
When they changed Aria from being A, it ruined that scene...honestly if they let her be A, it would have been a hint saying that Aria at one point was a patient at Radley in the past.
@@kevinarm6499 Ahh, thanks for letting me know!
The fact that Spencer was accused of murder when she was the only liar who didn't kill anyone 😶
Alison never killed anyone either
@@XX-um1du didn’t she kill Ian in the season 1 finale?
@@danielb3381 no somehow he wasnt dead. A killed him
@@danielb3381 According to Marlene King, Ian killed himself.
@@XX-um1du alison, in the show has said that she killed ian
the POWER that Alison held during the first seasons. It’s so infuriating how they just threw that all away
kzhead.info/sun/ib6Yk6qllnagrZs/bejne.html
100% agree sasha was woww it was awesome. after season three was so dumb
@@ladyc663 no
And the fake bang they gave her...ughhh god it was hidious
Exactly
it just goes to show that making your audience go "i knew it!" can be just as powerful as "i didn't see that one coming!"
lets be real if you were working at rosewood high why on earth would u hire Alison??? she was extremely well known for being a terrible terrible person in her teens, then disappeared, came back with a very iffy explanation that eventually broke down. maybe it’s sympathy, but too many people in the town were happy to see her dead for this to make sense to me. how tf were they like ‘yeah :) she can guide the next generation’
Even then she goes out of her way trying to make a dig at Paige yet again Paige who she threatened to stay away from Emily because Paige had a crush on her. She was so horrific to her Paige was suicidal for a while
When Spencer says "You know what they say about hope. It breeds eternal misery", that was an easter egg left by Marlene to fans who expected the show to make sense and have a coherent plot.
LMAO
Valentina T I was about to write the same exact comment, just lmao, all capitals. Really all you can say, isn't it?
Oh wait... I didn't see it UNTIL NOW!
OML NO U DIDN'T 😂😂💀
That quote actually felt natural though! Wouldn’t have been very Spencer to tell Melissa’s selfish ass to fuck off 😂
I seriously don't understand this impulse to outsmart the audience. That feeling of "Yes I figured it out!" can be just as satisfying as "Wow I didn't see that coming!"
the only time the "yes I figured it out" is bad is if it's sooooo predictable and you get that feeling immediately. Some ppl have insane guessing or intuition, but that's the minority. the majority of ppl can enjoy a well written piece of media and respect that even fi they figured it out, the media was still good nonetheless.
@@ggundercover3681 me guessing who the Tinkerer is in Spider-Man: Miles Morales comes to mind. It's a difference between figuring out a twist (like if you figured out Knives Out's mystery) and seeing something so obvious that you hope you're wrong because it takes so long to get to the reveal that you're being beaten over the head with the hints that are so obvious a child could figure it out
@@Whiteythereaper I experienced exactly that for season 1 of Flash. It was so obvious that Wellis was reverse-flash, but due to how long the reveal took and the crazy fan theories popping up back then, caused me to second guess myself.
I'm re watching season one and now that I look back there were lots of subtle clues that Mona was A.
EXACTLY!!!! Wandavision is proof of this!
In my opinion, the golden lesson that we an learn from this show and Gossip Girl is that when you’re writing a serialized TV show - or any story, for that matter - you need to at least have an idea as to how it’s going to end.
I think the evil twin thing could've worked if they were actually planning for it. If they had decided when they started deviating from the the plot, the exact way they'd change the ended, and actually foreshadowed it. Like imagine if some of the scenes had been Spencer's twin, and we could look back on the seasons and pick out where were seeing Spencer, or Alex. It still would've been tropey, but it could've worked, but it was obvious they just pulled that out of their ass and tried to make it fit.
some of them were spencer’s twin! alex looks through the photo book, has s*x with toby in the cabin, kisses toby before he says goodbye, etc. they mention that in one of the last episodes i think. but only in the last season, before that it’s never foreshadowed.
They did foreshadow it but only once
Abandoned plot lines- check countless plot holes- check Characters introduced out of the blue- check Fillers- check Wasted characters- check bad writing-check Engaging premise- check wayy too many baits and switches- check So Pretty Little Liars was basically Riverdale of the early 2010s
At least PLL didn’t have three musical episodes
I’ll take pll over riverdale any day lol but yeah pretty much lol
PLL was actually watchable tho
Let’s not forget how I’m pretty sure Riverdale is gonna end like how PLL did. Every old hookup in HS is gonna get back together in the future because that’s realistic 👌🙄
I.e why I gave up on the show 😅😅
They really took Alison’s character from this badass villain that had secrets on everyone and was bold enough to blackmail grown adults to a kind of pathetic shell of her former self who feared everything and proposed in a pug sweatshirt
Proposed to one of her former victims, who was also a shell of their former selves, and just this subservient babysitter/comfort character for other people rather than being a character of her own, who was fleshed out and complicated anymore. The only sign of life was when she suspected Alison was up to shenanigans that episode. But with Emily, at that point in time? The lights are on, but nobody's home. They really just absolutely destroyed her too, and I'm forever mad about it. Forever mad they forced her to be Alison's pet rather than just give her the happy ending she wanted with Paige for YEARS now.
@alibeaulieu Okay firstly stop saying that Allison is scared of everything. Are we just going to ignore the shit Ali went tho? She was kidnapped, threatened, she was fucking hit on the head by her SISTER and buried alive by her fucking mum, her mum then got buried, lots of people she loved died, she married a guy who gave her fucking drugs to make her crazy so he could keep her quite, she was tortured by her own sister, So yes she gonna be scared she went through shit so I’m not fucking surprised she’s scared of everything for years she was being followed and attacked randomly. She couldn’t tell anyone or they would die the police didn’t listen to and was even tormented by a police officer she came very close to death multiple times and then your saying she fears everything well no fucking shit Sherlock of course she’s scared she doesn’t know who to trust. Also I love how this guy is saying that most of the girls are useless every girl and every character in this show has something to do with the plot they all bring something different.
@@kerriespires2571 Out of all the girls, Emily was probably the most useless. Her plot mattered until season 1 was finished. Then it didn't matter anymore. She just became an extra detective for the girls. Same with Hannah after two seasons
Pug sweatshirt😭
that pug sweatshirt was an absolute slap in the face. she would never. even if she’s more modest now, and even if she’s a mom, she shouldn’t even own something like that.
There's no way spencer was supposed to the smart one of the group but still managed to Falsely accuse so many people of murder and getting off Scott free lmfao. One of my only issues with her.
No one can be smart enough to instantly detect a killer. Especially bc all the characters r so damn suspicious.
I mainly hate how she was the smart one, but she never actually figured out that CeCe was A. They had to be told directly by CeCe herself once CeCe decided she was ready to be caught, I guess, which makes it lame. Also dumb that Spencer was the smart one and she was the only one who didn't play a part in figuring out who AD was.
Yes!!
THIS BOTHERED ME SM… she was constantly always so sure and then was like let’s go to the police
I always felt like Spencer was the smart one academically but Hanna was "smarter" at predicting or coming up with theories as to what was happening. That's why I think Hanna was always vital to the group when they were dealing with A in the earlier seasons
This is so masterfully put together. I'll never forget watching the end of season for like... HOW IS IT THANKSGIVING?!?
I see your comments everywhere broskie lol. You got good taste
i am SO MAD they turned alison into a regular suburb nice lady mom and wasted her opportunity to be a villain with aria LIKE IMAGINE THE TWO CLOSEST FRIENDS BEING A THE WHOLE TIME IMAGINE
ugh imagine if it was aria and alison and then one of them would backstab the other which would start it all!!!!
It took you less than thirty seconds to write a better plot for PLL. Yet they had 3 years after season 4, to be groundbreaking. But instead we got : “you’ve heard of filler episodes...😱 GET READY FOR FILLER SEASONS 🤠💀
SOMEONE MAKE A WATTPAD RECREATING THIS WHOLE SHOW RN BC YALL HAVE GOOD IDEAS
Aria was a villain?
@@acho2030 That would take forever, they would need help, lol
How many shows were ruined because writers were trying to outsmart the audience? 🤦🏻♀️
BBC Sherlock 😓
@@user-ux9zm9il9r i think Sherlock was a good show
Westworld has a very interesting mix of trying to outsmart the audience while dumbing it down in season 3
Make it stop!!
Gossip Girl
I read all 16 books or whatever that went to this series (they are very fast reads), and I have to say they are pretty good. There's very little artistic value and are more like the junk food of literature, but they are very entertaining and I genuinely didn't expect the plot twists. The author either had the ending planned from the very beginning, or she was really good at building an ending on loose threads she'd placed throughout the books. There was literally a clue to the final books in the prologue chapter of the second or third book that I had missed entirely.
Same... I read all the books and while they weren't literary masterpieces, the actual mystery plot was 10/10, especially the whole Cortney/Alison plotline... I especially loved how we had like 99% of the puzzle from nearly the start too... It was so good and well thought out that it would've worked in the TV show for both people who didn't know (surprise/shock element) and people who read the books and knew (because then you would've been able to enjoy all the tiny hints of the truth).
What was the clue?
@@davineuskens21 Spoilers: It's revealed the Alison the girls knew is actually dead and was really the twin sister Courtney who had tried to kill the real Alison as a child and was sent to that hospital. Courtney came home one summer because the hospital closed, before being shipped off to a different hospital. The twins looked similar and even their parents couldn't tell them apart, so they wore color coded bracelets. Courtney swapped out the bracelets and got Alison locked up. The clue is that in one of the earlier books (book 5, I went back and checked), the girls go visit Alison and are told that she's in her room. They go upstairs and see her on the bed, but before they can talk Mrs DiLaurentis comes up stairs and tells Ali to come downstairs in a very "you're in serious trouble" tone. The girls eventually come downstairs and find Ali outside on the patio. She's wearing a different shirt and when Spencer asks her what she got busted for, Ali looks visibly confused. What had happened is that both girls were at the house at this time, and the main girls encountered one girl upstairs and another on the patio.
@@FurTheWorkers thank you! Your original comment made me interested in the books, so I literally downloaded the first one and I'm about to read it now 😄
@@davineuskens21 They're actually really fun reads. I ended up reading them back to back for the most part because as soon as one ended, I wanted to know what comes next. I watched some of the show first, and it was interesting seeing the changes between the characters.
The fact that writers have the audacity to go ahead with shows and actually ending them without having story plans 💀
Damn what's with writers trying to outsmart the audience, you should be proud the audience is able to follow along and piece things together, a little predictably isn't a sin.
Right
your audience being able to tie your plot together is a direct sign that your plot makes sense 😭 why would they shatter it like that
"oh no, I was too good at writing this mistery in a way that makes sense and with clues to piece together and some fans actually did what they were supposed to do, welp now I need to change the whole story" That infuriates me it's so stupid
@@yoshmarsh8412 the fan theories were better then whatever the writers tried outsmarting the audience with
Yeah, the best part about the reveal of a mystery is being able to connect everything, like “oh that explains...”, ”that's why this character...”, “so _that’s_ what happened there” and “that’s why *all* this happened”. Like, finding out who River Song was in Doctor Who, how she knew the doctor, why she did what she did, her name. In such a short span of time we found out who Amy's friend was really, and *then* River Song appeared. Man, I had to pause and start connecting all the threads for a bit. It explained so much. Even if I had guessed it earlier, it wouldn’t have been a bad reveal, because it made sense. You’re supposed to be able to connect the threads if you pay attention.
The problem is, they decided to start mysteries before they even answered them theirselves. So when they realized they didn’t have a good reveal, they just abandoned it.
Actually, a lot of the mysteries were in the books and had perfectly sensible build-up and development, but Marlene King wanted to "surprise" the audience or something and decided to take a different route most of the time. And I suspect a lot of the ones she wrote herself had a sensible answer too but once the fans figured them out, she decided to scratch that for the sake of outsmarting them.
themselves*
That is the biggest reason why I stopped watching the show I think after season 4. The premise was so interesting with all the mysteries but I eventually realized that none of it made any sense
@@miaferrari958 I’ve never actually read the books, once watched the show. Are the books good?
27:20 This is exactly why I got hooked! Every episode gave the promise of answers but then only delivered more questions. I would end up bingeing episodes because I thought if I just watched ONE more, I would get an answer. I tapped out around season 4/5. Thank you for the recap because I definitely wasn't going to dive back in.
killing Emily off in S4 would’ve done what killing Prue in s3 did for Charmed… they cheated death for so long but losing Prue made them take things more seriously so losing Emily would’ve made them see things more
True
Seeing you compare this to Charmed made me giggle solely because Aria’s mom played Piper. Also this is the second time Holly has gotten done dirty with a show she’s starring in being really strong at first and going downhill(Charmed seasons 1-4 were amazing, and then everything started getting wonky) At least she wasn’t one of the lead characters this time
I agree with the Allison part. She was so mysterious and alluring the in first 2-3 seasons, but by the end, she was really annoying
Yeah, i liked the show better when they didnt know ali was alive 😅
Right she literally turned into Emily
I think it would have been better if they had either given a reason for all that alli did or just fully committed to making her the villain. If they made her do all those things for fun Bc she was seriously manipulative and sociopathic, it would have been interesting and then they could have explored what made her that way
SPOILER FOR THE BOOK SERIES . . . . . . . . . . In the original books the TV show is based on, Ali actually WAS A all along, and it honestly worked a lot better than whatever the whole “spencer twin” thing was in the last season.
@@ky-pr7sh frfr
Fuck if aria was A that shit would have been so crazy. I'm upset she wasn't now lol
Right!! Those theories were great and actually made sense
I want Cece to be A but her reasons for being one was pathetic
It would have been good but what would have been her motive?
All the theories I’ve seen throughout the years have been way better than the plots of the show
I feel like you say that because you hate Aria lol no hate. It’s just the comment section be shading Aria and wanting her as A because it makes sense. And of course it does in a way because the truth is she kind of faced the worst in terms of A’s torment. But I feel like that would have defeated the purpose of the show if one of the girls was actually A. Isn’t it supposed to be them against a common enemy? That’s what they did for 7 seasons
Personally, I think Alison should have been the second A like in the books. I think one of the main reasons Marlene changed it because she wanted Sasha Pieterse to come back and play Alison in the present, but you can still do that with the A theory. You could even make her good if that’s what you wanted. You could make her pretend to be good while she’s “helping” the girls find out who A is, while making her draw them further from the truth. You could add some clues to this too, have the girls slowly pick up on the fact that Alison is constantly ruining their plan. It could clear up other storylines too. Noel Kahn’s motive could be his love for Alison like in the books. Noel could’ve been in love with Alison. Alison was also the only one not in the dollhouse, this could’ve been because she was A. If you wanted Cece to fit into the plot, she could be the one helping Alison stay hidden. She could be the one being A as Alison is in jail. This could also help the Red Coat storylines too. That was why Cece put Emily in the box, to keep the liars away from Alison. If the writers had taken more storylines from the books, Mona’s reveal could’ve been better as well. Mona wanted revenge for Jenna in the books, this would’ve worked for the show because we _literally_ see Mona *befriending* Jenna during the Halloween episode in season two. The Alison is a twin thing would be good for the same reason. Alison told a story about a girl who murdered her twin sister, just like Alison and Courtney. I think the main reason Alison shouldn’t have been in the liars on the show was because she doesn’t *care* about them. She’s not _supposed_ to. They’re just _dolls_ to her. She doesn’t care about them, they’re there for her to play with. She views everyone as her dolls and that’s how she’s so manipulative. She killed people in the books because they didn’t _mean_ anything to her. They were not on her level, for lack of better words, she was better than everyone. When we found out she killed Ian, like she did in the books but in a different way, I thought later we were gonna find out that Alison was just pretending to be back. Bethany Young was such a dumb plot point because Courtney was already there. The layout was there, but Marlene ignored it. You could’ve had a better mystery if it wasn’t for the shock value. The audience is _supposed_ to figure out who it is. It’s not supposed to be so hard that it’s literally impossible to figure out. TLDR; Ali would’ve made a better A.
I have always wondered if the artists got cocky and decided because everyone was suspicious of Aria that they were just gonna change the direction entirely. All signs pointed to her and never were tied up. I think they just wanted to surprise/shock us so badly that they did it in the worst way possible.
Yep it was meant to be aria but the fans figured it out so the writers just changed it and it made no sense
@@cypress2289 So upsetting. It's a mystery, you're supposed to solve it. They could've executed it in a way that still was exciting to watch. I doubt people would've stopped watching just because they knew what was coming.
Pretty Little Liars is one of a number of shows that, honestly, I think should have been set in university/college. The student/teacher relationships would still be taboo, but like, not underage. Being in college would explain the ridic amount of freedom (and money??) they seem to have, and I mean, look, none of the actors really looked 15/16.
Completely agree. It would make more sense also with the whole alison pregnancy scare in season 3.
@@islaR05 ahhhh i forgot about that wow
@@emma9995yeah I’m currently doing a rewatch and I’m just PST that episode
Lol it's not on Netflix anymore where can I watch now
@@islaR05 no U.S.
God Aria and Alison working together as A would have been phenomenal
That would be the dream
Those were my 2 favorite characters.
it is too smart for Marlene I King to think of
It definitely should’ve been one of the main character or at least like a secondary character smh
@@leedongwok86 they wanted to do it but fans already knew so it wouldve been spoilt
Spencer was my favorite character but the best performance came from Janel Parrish as Mona. I think she saw the other actresses checking out and decided to camp it out. They could've killed off Emily or Hanna but not Mona - she was the one character that had any life to her.
Sometimes I'll randomly start to get the itch to rewatch the show but then I just rewatch this video instead and that itch is scratched for a long while. So basically, thank you for saving me from spending even more hours of my life on this show and from being extraordinarily frustrated all over again!
How did allison become a teacher when she missed like 90% of school, nor did she care about it
plothole #788
Right!!!!!!
You do know GED’s exist right lol?
And she hated teenagers
@@Rose-hh7mk exactly, shes just not the teaching type. It was such a weird direction for alison to go in.
Ezra is so much worse once you realize he knew Aria was underage before they hooked up. We’re led to believe, along with Aria, that he only knew she was in high school when he saw her in his class during the first episode, but he was already doing research on Alison and the other girls for his book about Alison, once she went missing...a whole year BEFORE they met at the bar for the first time. The fact that the show wants us to root for them is so disturbing!!!
Omfg this really! 🤦🏻♀️ It's disgusting...
He stalked all of the girls.
@@jujube1013 I saw I theory right before the series finale were Ezra would actually be A along that would have been a better finale.
It wouldve been AMAZING if Ezra was A! He was a full-on creep, he was a little too neat and nice and A never directly went after him (A only threatened Aria to go after him basically) and then they had him act super creepy and intimidatingly, he stalked and spied on the girls for years...... for a novel??? that he never even published???? like what... just so he and Aria could end up together?? such a letdown
@@hoseokismyhope3351 Hey I remember how at the end of every episode show A doing something and one time the had the girls faces on bottle and spined another bottle to see who would be tortured next. It landed on Aria and another A moved it to Spencer. That so would be Ezra. My picks were always Wren, Ezra, Melissa, Courtney being Jason's twin since in the book Ali and her are Spencer's half siblings and in the show Jason was so having it be him would be like the books but with a twist, and Pastor Ted I know the last one sound crazy but I want it to happen.
It’s very fitting that Hanna’s mom was played by Sydney from melrose place, because melrose was kind of the original show to start sort of normal and completely fly off the handle. Plus my iconic girl Hanna should have an equally iconic mom 💖
I batted an eye. I think I only made it one season. Ezra/aria was always creepy to me. The fact that the actress for Alison was actually a teenager made those scenes between her and ezra SUUUPER icky for me. I remember the moment that annoyed the hell out of me was when they investigated a remote barn, knew they were being watched and threatened and yet LEFT THE CAR UNLOCKED!!! That’s when I went “nope this is too ridiculous”
tbh I didn’t even liked Ezra as a character he was so horrible and nonsense! They should have ended aria and Ezra after 1 Episode it should have been over Ezra should have been killed off
well tbf even if they had locked it. A had remote access to all the vehicles
Spencer was iconic, hanna was funny, aria was annoying, emily was boring and allison was wasted
I feel like Mona was pretty under utilised too 😔 her character was the most interesting IMO
Yesss, thank you
@@elenajohnson6336 honestly, mona is iconic too
Spencer and hanna were the only characters who carried the entire show
I always found Spencer kinda annoying
Underage relationships are one of the reasons why it makes me so angry that teenage girls are too often portrayed by women in their 20s. It doesn't seem really wrong because those teenagers look like full adults, so you don't realise they're supposed to be 16.
but then again 16 year olds nowadays are starting to look older and older, doesn’t make it right though still.
Yup!!!
@@katherinepierce5506 that's a like typically used by pedos. There is no excuse
@@bleue5218 no lmao i wasn’t making an excuse i literally said “doesn’t make it right though still”.
@Uh Ok That's different. The show wasn't sexualizing Tori. The Landlord is shown to be creepy and not romanticized like Ezra, and he got beat up by her sensei for sexually assaulting the underage girl. Although I do agree with the rest of your statement, just not your example.
just to quickly add on what was presented in Chapter 2: the beach hottie was Wilden; he was relevant to the story because that's how we find out more about Ali's connection with Cece, and what could've been a reason for Wilden to be so obsessed with finding Alison's killer. Shana was not working for A, she was working for Jenna who was affiliated with A
Im always so confused when ppl say they don't know who the beach hottie was. like I swore they told us but I feel gaslit when everyone questions who it was lol
Wasn't beach hottie literally Ezra?
@@chaozz2643Beach hottie was Wilden but Alison had another name for Ezra it was Board Shorts
It’s embarrassing for Marlene but also embarrassing for us. I feel like this was just a social experiment. We were led to believe that we had to decipher the storyline when we really should have been deciphering the creators and discovering the true villain: Marlene.
Even though everyone was suspicious of Aria being A. If they made her A in the end it would have blown everyones mind.
EXACTLY
People are supposed to be able to find out the mystery, that means it makes sense! It will still blow the minds of most people who weren’t suspicious, and will be satisfying to those who found out themselves. Then you just sprinkle in some unknown information, to explain it better and tie up loose thread, like what happened the night Alison went missing, and you have a good finale. Always tie up the loose threads, preferably gradually during the show when introducing new mysteries, and not cram it all in the finale, but even that is better than leaving them open.
The fact that Aria being A had so much sense even with the mess the writers had created and STILL they chose not going that way just to outsmart the audience, just wow
I didn't watch the show but watching this video the writters could have made Aria a psiquatric patient, that spend a year in a psychiatric hospital and have a doctor from the hospital being a co-villant as well cooparating with her to commit the murders
@@JasminMiettunen aria was the worst friend imo. She always ditched them for her teacher!(🤮)
They were just obsessed with preventing the audience from working out the twists so every time we got close they changed it up which created an absolute mess lmao
The audience can't figure out a twist if the twist doesn't make sense!
I started watching midway through its season 4 run on TV and got so confused because each plausible theory I had got thrown out the window every other episode.
That was definitely the wrong thing to do!
I still stand by the simple fact that if they had made Aria turn around in the very last scene of the show and made her do the shushh with an somewhat menacing expression, it would have probably made the ending so much better. but thats just me.
i like how they made every boyfriend/husband/male fling is evil or rlly bad lmao. toby = being an A minion. Caleb = only getting with Hannah bc he was getting paid by Jenna. Ezra = yk the whole book situation... Wren = cheating on Malissa with minor. Ian = cheating on Malissa with minor than trying to kill her to silence her after she found the videos of him filming other minors. Aria's dad = cheated on Arias mum. Jason = being creepy. Nate = being a murderer. the list really goes on forever
oh but then they kill off emily’s dad THE BEST MALE CHARACTER
EXACTLY LIKE @@bbabykkait2001
Jake was the only love interest that was a half decent person and Aria ran back to the groomer 🤦♀️
Also the fact that aria dad is a bad person cause he dosent want his teenage daughter to be with her full grown teacher ooo how despise that storyline it’s a really bad message Edit: thanks for the likes and I lowkey started a war let me say it again arias dad is a bad person I know that but he is allowed to be angry at extra for dating his 16 year old child Yh he’s a hypocrite but his still right to be angry Ezra is CREEP
He is a bad person because he was in a relationship with one of his students himself and cheated on Aria's mom
They started to show him as a bad person for cheating on Aria’s mom but I do agree that the show treated him as even more unlikable for not being ok with Ezra
@@AnkaRaubertochter His student was an adult in college. Whereas, Aria was 16 and (as it’s later revealed) Ezra always knew that and actively sought her out to solve Alison’s disappearance. He groomed a teenage girl, manipulated her but because he apologises, it’s supposed to be okay??
right like i was hoping he'd turn ezra in but they were just like but dating high schooler good
I probably hated him more when he accepted that relationship 🤢
I hate the concept of outsmarting the audiences The surprise element isn’t necessarily the only driving reason for us to watch Anticipation, character admiration, nostalgia and many more can keep the audience
Surprises are cool but with how intuitive audiences are nowadays I always like to say “if no one in the crowd predicted it, you didnt set it up right”
@@sugarycitrus8247 Great statement
the whole point of mysteries is that the audience is supposed to be able to solve them, clues have to exist so it makes sense. changing the ending just for shock value is basically destroying everything youve built
... which is why I'm waiting for The Blacklist to just go down the same path
@@BroTastic23 I refuse to watch it. I’ll keep my dignity for better shows
i haven't watched the whole video so this might have been mentioned, but for me the thing i hate most is alison's 'death' being an accident (charlotte meaning to kill bethany). when we found out alison was burried alive i was amazed, like that was the perfect death for her- so terrifying, messed up and just felt like it fit the story so perfectly. even when we find out jessica thought she was burying the dead alison, it was still interesting and 'messed up' to me. and i love the theme of secrets, and the iconic "two can keep a secret if one of us is dead". alison's 'death' was fascinating, i was so invested in what secret got her killed (at least, attempted). to decide that her murder was an accident completely undos the whole build up around secrets, and so anticlimatic after you've tried to figure out why she was murdered
Writers trying to be unpredictable really is what ruins all shows that have any kind of mystery to them. People just want a story that makes sense😭
The definition of pretty little liars: “I’m not mad I’m just disappointed”
I’m hella mad
@@cyanscrewdriver2092 don’t get me wrong I’m still mad lmao because I invested 7 seasons to be rewarded with utter garbage lol 😆
@@megc8470 same
@@megc8470 lol I made it for 2 seasons before I called bullshit on the show. I only watched it because of a girl as well and we would watch it together. I just couldn't, I called out the disgusting pedo relationships that was "romantic" and all the dumb shit that was happening. It did have a kick-ass intro song though which I made my ringtone for a long time
Your pfp matches with my nail colour🙃
Watching this now I realize PLL is probably the reason Riverdale exist
PLL Walked so Riverdale could crawl.
I hate the fact that makes sense. 😭
omg😭
Riverdale copied so much from PLL it’s ridiculous.
OMGG and the high school sets used for riverdale is actually the same high school set used for pll so that’s a coincidence 💀
Emily's character is basically dating/falling for the broken/evil characters after meeting them for seconds and cry over them till they die or someone else comes along.
I think it's so funny that the show ultimately opted for the secret twin sister reveal as a way of outsmarting the audience, because when i was watching the show at the time and was very present in the fandom culture, i remember reading A LOT of theories that revolved around that same concept, and i always thought they were absolutely nonsensical and cliché. you can imagine my surprise when that was actually the final reveal of who A was
I feel like the show was never the same when Allison became one of the liars. The main plot of the show was the mystery surrounding her and how unattainable she was, her character lost its appeal when she just became a normal, kinda pathetic girl. The strength of her character was gone
She had everybody at the palm of her hands! I cannot believe they just threw that kind of power away
I still think it shoiuld have been Alison and Ezra writing a book and Alison helping him by creating a story, then Ezra wanting to. bring the book. to life and. killing Alison to hide the fact that he's a predator. Alison being in over her head with an older manipulative man would have made. sense, and that ezra targets aria (bc she should have gone to Radley) and uses her to be A to bring his book to life.
@@bahjaabdi6529 I wouldn’t have minded Ezra as A but tbh I didn’t want Ali to be A, I wouldn’t have been upset but I was content with her being part of the liars
definitely
I completely agree with you!! I was obsessed with Alison, I wanted her to be alive just so I could see more of that magnetic character yet when she comes back she's just a scared, bland girl lol. When she was being bullied by that pre-teen omg I could not
Aria was DEFINITELY supposed to be A. But that theory absolutely blew up with fans and I fully think the writers changed it to “outsmart” the fans. PISSES ME OFF!!
Ikr? I was so shocked when Aria didn’t turn out to be A because there were SO 👏 MANY 👏 THINGS 👏 hinting to SPECIFICALLY her out of all the characters - even little objects and set props presented in scenes! Everyone was pointing them out and we ALL know no one would add those props just for the sake of it, especially on a MYSTERY show. Honestly, even thinking about it now still frustrates me cause I was one of the people who would pick apart scenes and set design in this show to find clues about A. All that detective work gone to waste just because Marlene wanted to be “one step ahead” and just change the plot to suit whatever dumb surprise/twist she wanted to have. 🙄
I support this comment 💯 percent
Same! Maybe if they would have just stuck to an original storyline, not strayed from it, even if it meant making less seasons, they could have created a satisfying story that was consistent and made sense. Quality not quantity! Instead, it snowballed into one disaster plotline after another just to keep it going. The plot holes, the clues that turned out to mean absolutely nothing, the creep factor that never panned out and instead the villains just became more and more ridiculous. It started off as great art and turned into garbage.
The biggest issue I had was that they originally were going to keep this as a two season show which would have worked! Mona was A and then she would have been out away. But then it started getting popular. So then they green light it for another two seasons which then they decided to add in guess what Allison is alive. And now it’s about adjusting to a dead not dead character. Then green light again. And now they decided let’s kill Mona but then it gets fucked up again and decided to change direction. So then they decided to change the mystery again and it just didn’t make sense. You could literally see the chucks of the mystery that would work as a seperate shows and spin-offs.
@@jennyasmr5511 I remember that, lol
love this video always come back to rewatch and wanted to point out that a lot A LOT of fans of have theorized/ made educated inferences that the reasons Alison’s character went so down hill and she was unable to hold the same “power” as before she went missing was sadly almost purely on society, creators of show and fans of the shows opinion on her weight gain at the time. Moe Black did a video analysis on it and it was very interesting and hit home! makes so much sense bc she no longer fit the ideal mean girl bad bitch image in their eyes
Character wise the Aria/Ezra thing is creepy. In real life the creepiest thing as far as age inappropriate goes is that they hired a 12 year old to play Allison when the character was so sexualized.
Do y’all remember that Halloween episode where Hanna’s mom encounters a little ghost girl and it’s definitely a ghost and then we were all expected to act like that just never happened?
yess i was so confused when they never explained it again
Omg the theories!!! I remember those. Hanna’s twin etc omg
I think she was just hallucinating as Ted (who was there) never actually saw her. (or he lied about not seeing her)
I think at that point the writers were actually trying to follow the book's storyline (about alison killing her twin sister), but then as they decided to do something different that scene made no sense at all
i thought it was ali 💀
British Spencer is the worst thing that ever happened to PLL
ELLOH SPENCAH
@@magicalratfairy goodbye Alex
And with all the crap they pulled over the seven season, that is saying a lot
I literally couldn't even tell she was meant to be English the accent was so bad
God bless Troian, but that accent will follow her forever 😭
There were so many amazing plot points they could've used to make this show absolutely unforgettable. First of all, season 7 felt like a huge cameo fest - we really didn't need to see forgotten characters like Holden, Wren, Nicole, Noel, Sydney, etc. make a comeback - they contributed nothing to the plot. I also think they used up all their great mystery reveals in the first two seasons. For example, I think the whole Jenna thing reveal happened too quickly. If they waited until the end of the first season or all the way until the third season to show what really happened, it would have really thrown the readers for a loop. Plus, they could've waited to justify Toby's involvement and Jenna abusing Toby after the "Toby might be A" storyline, because until that reveal, Toby seems to have enough potential to be A, and no one would expect that kind of curveball, so letting the tension build would've been amazing. Finally, I think they really had an amazing trio with Jenna, Mona, and Alison - with them, you truly never knew what was the truth or where their loyalties lied, so honestly the three of them should've been A at different points. I think PLL also really suffered by throwing in way too many unnecessary characters and then not knowing what to do with them. I remember loving seasons 4 and 5 because the whole buildup, with Ravenswood etc., was filmed beautifully. But at some point, the writers kept alluding to literally every random character being A, which is ultimately what made it boring. They already alluded to Ezra, Toby, Jenna, Ian, Melissa, Mrs. DiLaurentis, and more being A. They had even hinted to Cece being A multiple times, with the liars exploring that theory. So it's not a good A reveal if it's already been discussed multiple times. The reason the Mona is A reveal worked is because the buildup to it was subtle - there were hints for her having a motive, but we never saw the liars even entertain the idea that it could be her, which is why it was a good reveal. Alison especially had such wasted potential - she was absolutely lethal in the flashbacks, tbh I think she should've been dead the entire time and just seen through flashbacks - the whole point of the allure of PLL was the fact that Alison is gone but she's everywhere.
If Jenna was A, there could be a possibility for Tobey being her sidekick. He could send the texts and do the errands, resenting the girls for sending him to jail. Maybe even resenting Emily for not being into him. But with time he could redeem himself, change sides and help the girls as a double agent. Then him and Spencer could develop feelings for each other and it would be juicy AF for everyone to move on from his past. He already started off shady and threatening, and that was cool. In the books he's the major scumbag who SA Jenna. Of course, the sweet and pure aspect of the character would be gone, but maybe the writer's could build their way towards it by showing his goodness and personal growth. Idk lfkdkd
I wanted Aria to be A so badly. It had so much potential. But no. 😢
WE WERE ROBBED
im so angry at the waste of Alison, they did Sasha Pieterse so dirty she was so great as Alison
She was born for the role of Alison and she had the potential to be one of the greatest villains in teen show history. i hated that they made her some dowdy housewife in season 6 onwards and they tried to make her nice but it just made her boring and ruined all the feistyness she used to have
YES she is such an amazing and actually original character at the start
Agree 100% what the hell happened in season 5? Only great ep was the dollhouse
@@everebecca9868 I feel like they made her become a housewife trope because of Sasha’s PCOS and the weight gain it caused, one of alisons main things was being fatphobic. But for some reason the writers couldn’t just go “oh fatphobia is awful anyway, we don’t want that in our show” they seemed to go “well if she can’t be fatphobic we may as well make her super sweet good guy, can’t have a teen girl be an evil character if she’s not model thin, that’s just unrealistic.”
@@lauraj6694 omg i know! It was really sad to see Sasha get so much hate at the time over something she couldnt control, and i agree i really dont think fans would have been like well Ali isnt making fun of people being fat anymore boo hoo like i wouldnt have even noticed and they could have still kept her meanness and sassyness in a different way
Can we talk about how these girl continuously self-sabotaged themselves... like getting rid of pieces of evidence, or not telling an adult or the police?!
All for “drama” like there comes a point where the plot needs to thicken without all that mindless drama.
It was just so annoying. Like please you want to lead a normal life but you constantly jump into danger and mess the minute it comes knocking on your door. It got old real fast
I just wanted one of them to learn self defense.
@@justunder5 And Aria did. Kind of. She just stopped after a short time because she broke up with the guy who trained her. For Ezra. Again. (Because all her relationships failed since she couldn't let go of him) Seriously, I felt Aria sabotaged herself the most because she knew that there was always someone watching her and blackmailing her and she still kept going out with Ezra. Emily wasn't too clever either (as far as I remember) but she was the most scared and unsure of herself, so I could at least understand her a actions a little better. In the end I think Spencer was the most intelligent and dealt with the A thing the best (most of the time), but of course even she messed up at time. I guess Hanna is somewhat close to Spencer's level when it comes to dealing with her problems, she's also the one with the best support system (Caleb, her mother).
Exactly! They knew that the crimes they committed would be used to blackmail them to commit more crimes... just go to the police and except what you did. I was so tired of them making the same mistakes over and over and over again 😭 they were always so shocked when A blackmailed them.
One thing that I can always thought was unbelievable was that none of the 5 girls ever questioned how “A” or “AD” immediately knows what had happened when it was only the 5 girls present. It would surely point to their phones being bugged/cloned/having spyware on them?
There were so many clues that literally went no where, and turned out to be red herrings, just because the writer's themselves forgot about them. Like the NAT club, what really happened the night Alison disappeared, MAYA KNEW, Tippy the bird, Wren being creepy and talking to someone on the phone, Red Coat and Black widow, Ali talking to A in the newspaper, the video tapes. Like, they all could have been made so much better, and had a real impact in the reveals. It made the actual reveals feel so flimsy because there was no real motivation- or if there was, it had nothing to do with the premise and set-up the writer's had given us.
In the book A was Allison. She had a twin that was bat-shit who spent most of her life in a mental hospital since she was a child. The twin liked to pretend she was Allison so that she didn't have to go back to the institute. She finally succeeded once and Allison was sent to the institute in her place cause her parents didn't believe that she wasn't her twin. When she finally broke out at sixteen she had become even more mentally crazy than her twin ever was thus the A reveal.
That's such a cool story... 😭🤷🏽♀️ DAMN IT MARLENE! 😁
Wait woah-
@@NOTHiNG2CBRA oh this is so much more exciting
@@NOTHiNG2CBRA Marlene literally ruined Pretty Little Liars.
Wooooaaahhh
The most important lesson I learned from this show is that you absolutely cannot base a story on a mystery unless you already know the answer to the main question.
That's it. That's the entire show. Words to live by.
Right? It feels like every episodes the writers changed their minds on who A was and how they were going to end it.
41:30 Mona helping Alison after she saw her injured is probably one of the only things that makes some kind of sense. I partly think this because of Janel's performance in that scene. Mona seems genuinely surprised that she killed Bethany - "but if Cece kit Ali..." and then notes that she basically never saw the face of the person she hit, just their hair and outfit. After Mona hit Bethany, she seemingly flees, which is why Melissa finds Bethany alone and is able her to bury her (alive) unobserved. Maybe Mona, realizing what she did, went back to find the body, but doesn't find her ( Melissa has already buried her) and freaks out. She's then driving around (possibly towards the hospital) and sees Alison with a head wound walking about. She must think - "holy crap, she didn't die." All Mona knows is that she hit a blonde from behind and Ali doesn't know who hit her because she (too) was hit from behind, so Mona can 'safely' assume Ali wouldn't suspect her and can offer to help. She takes Ali to the motel, cleans her up, comforts her, and then both suggests and gets her to disappear completely! Mona now must think she's safe, she hasn't killed Ali, Ali doesn't know Mona tried, and now Ali is leaving town altogether because Mona scared her enough as A and after having "hit her" in the head. Now when 'Alison's' body is she discovered, it seems like she probably didnt know it was not actually Alison - because Mona doesn't know Bethany existed (yet) and she didn't see Ali again after Ali drove off the morning after everything happened. As far as Mona thinks, it's been a year since she convinced Ali to leave. But when the body is discovered and it's identified as 'Alison,' Mona must think that Ali must have changed her mind about disappearing completely and came back. Maybe a few weeks in, Ali decided to plan a dramatic reappearance wearing the same outfit she disappeared in, but instead found another person who hated her and was killed and buried in her own backyard. Mona finds out during her A snooping that this 'Ali' was buried alive, so that would make her even more sure that 'Ali' was killed by someone else. She even noted just how many people hated Ali at that time, so there wouldn't be a shortage of potential murderers - maybe even the liars! It could have been interesting if part of why Mona was harassing the liars was because she thought one of them killed Alison. She read Ali's diaries and knew their dirt. She could have framed Spencer specifically because that's who she thought killed her! She might have thought she found a like-minded hater of Alison. But instead, Spencer inspires the liars to block their A texts, 'steals' her friend, thinks shallowly of Mona, and doesn't even properly befriend Mona when she tries to join the group. And then Spencer rejects a spot on the A team! But anyway, after all of that...MESS, Ali turns out to be alive, which must be just another way in which Ali appeared to Mona as larger than life, and would feel like even more a threat when she comes back to Rosewood High in season 5.
One of the biggest problems is that the longer the show went on the less the main characters actually mattered to the story. In fact Mona was the only A who had any attachment to the Liars- Ezra was writing a book about Alison, Charlotte wanted her family back, Alex wanted revenge for Charlotte's death. Yet the girls kept getting tortured because technically they were the main characters, but all of their storylines were filler because the main storyline didn't have anything to do with them. Essentially they were the shorts at the end of a Pixar film- cute, fun, entertaining, but you know they have no real impact. From season 3 onward the liars had no actual ties or connections to the main plot.
The fact that the Rosewood police didn't do a freaking DNA test on "Allison" corpse
Or her own MOTHER IDing the wrong body
@@matcha.clouds to be fair a body decomposing for a year wouldnt look much like a person at all, maybe she just saw the outfit/blonde hair or something like that and went into shock
that police department was a shambles
@@matcha.clouds like sge helpes cece bury the body but when the police said they found it in a complete different spot from were they buried it she just didn't get suspicious
Exactly so who was the body ?
I think we can all agree on at least 1 thing about the show: Ezra is a predator. Like, seriously. Also, because of the weird writting he can't even use the excuse that Aria lied about her age when they first met, because it's revealed that he actually knew how old she was the whole time. So yeah Ezra is creepy as fuck, and I don't appreciate the writers trying to make him a sympathetic good boi UwU for no reason other than them wanting to drive the show with his and Aria's "romance."
I ate that shit UP when I was 13 watching it and when I watched it last year as a 24 year old I couldn’t get past episode one because I was sick at the amount of grooming??? Aria and Ezra were my otp man and I just 🤢
@@Starkid_hanners SAME, i really thought that was ok, i even wanted my own teacher boyfriend because of that shit
People who defend this shit with "it's just tv" literally act like that shit never influenced anything, when not only have I been personally affected by stuff I see, and know it does have an effect on me and other people, but you can't even go mentioning this couple for example, without someone recalling how this show made them think it was cute and appropriate in their youth, and made them fantasize about being in a similar situation, or worse. There's people who have actually been groomed and abused because Aria and Ezra is made out to be romantic, so they think it's romantic when a teacher or older man shows them attention and end up getting in some dangerous situations because of this shit show.
the only reason people thought it was ok was because ezra was hot. if the predator in a series is hot: ‘omg so romantic’ if the predator in a series is ugly: ‘omg he’s such a creep’ the double standards are ridiculous
Agreed. I hated him.
Cece being A still makes sense if you take into account that she's actually CECE, not Charles. That's what makes no sense about her reveal. Her being trans. Not a single implication was made throughout the show ever since she showed up. But Marlene didn't lie when she said -A was revealed in Season 3. We literally saw Cece in a black hoodie listening to somebody (I think it was Aria, it's been 7 years since I watched it). So yeah, Cece as Cece makes sense, but Cece as Charles doesn't and it never will.
Completely agree. Cece as A is a twist homage to the second A of the books. I'm planning to rewatch the show with a differenty backstory for her and see how the story was presented initially given the absolute divergence of her backstories between S3/S4 and Charles' existence.
@@Love-xl3vqHave you already done it? Does it make more sense with another backstory? :)