Starring: Ashley Benson, Lucy Hale, Shay Mitchell, and Troian Bellisario [full cast list under the ‘Cast’ tab]
Created By: Marlene King
Based on the Popular Series of Novels Written By: Sara Shepard
Series Premiere: June 8, 2010
Second Half of Season 1 Debuted: January 3, 2011
Season 2 Debut: June 14, 2011
Second Half of Season Two Debuts: January 2, 2012
Season 3 Debut: June 5, 2012
Season 4 Debut: June 11, 2013
Genres: Mystery-thriller/ Drama
Running Time: 1 hour
Network: ABC Family
News: Pretty Little Liars picked up for another season
Season 2: What You Need to Know:
Returning for the second half of season two, Pretty Little Liars is the story of four teenage girls – Aria Montgomery (Lucy Hale), Emily Fields (Shay Mitchell), Hanna Marin (Ashley Benson), and Spencer Hastings (Torian Bellisario) – whose clique falls apart after the disappearance of the Queen Bee, Alison DiLaurentis (Sasha Pieterse). That is until her body is found and they must join together again because, while at her funeral, they immediately begin receiving text messages from an anonymous source, “A”, who threatens to expose their secrets – including long-hidden ones they thought only their close friend Alison knew. As the show continues, they discover more secrets that can harm not only them but the ones around them. They also discover clues that may lead them to find out the identity of “A” and Alison’s killer.
Although this series is based on novels written by Sara Shepard, Lucy Hale went on air on KIIS-FM with Ryan Seacrest and stated that the TV show is different from the books. Yes, the general storyline is the same, but the specifics are much different.
From Season 1: We learned a lot of the girls’ dirty little secrets, including the biggest one of all: that the girls blinded a girl named Jenna (Tammin Sursok) when they threw a firework in her garage. But no one knew the truth because Alison convinced Jenna’s step-brother, Toby (Keegan Allen), to take the blame. It turns out Alison wasn’t the only one who knows the girls’ secret… Jenna comes back after going away following her “accident” and the girls wonder what exactly she knows.
Meanwhile, Spencer and her sister, Melissa (Torrey Devitto), have had a tumultuous relationship, but things are at an all time low when the girls discover Melissa’s soon-to-be-husband was secretly dating Alison the summer she disappeared. The girls had their suspicions of Ian (Ryan Merriman) for the murder of Alison, but it’s when Ian discovers the girls have proof of his relationship with Alison that he tries to kill Spencer. Someone comes to Spencer’s rescue and pushes Ian out of a bell tower where he dies.
Season 2: By now the girls have been to the cops with their suspicions of Ian – and they were starting to be known as the girls who cry wolf until Ian’s death, which makes the police and town of Rosewood start to believe their stories. None of the girls have come forward about their text messages from “A” out of fear of “A” exposing their secrets, but they are starting to realize maybe “A” and Alison’s killer aren’t the same person. After much digging, they are starting to realize maybe Ian didn’t kill Alison after all.
The girls discover that officer Garrett, who is investigating Alison’s death, is secretly dating Jenna. While Spencer is going through a box of Ian’s things, she finds out that Ian, Alison’s brother Jason, and the cop Garrett were all in some kind of secret club called “N.A.T. Club,” apparently named after a Latin expression that refers to “Seeing All.”
Throughout both seasons “A” makes the girls do stuff they don’t want to do, but they don’t want their secrets out. The girls have had enough of “A’s” games and finally decide to let someone in on “A.” They confide in their therapist (the one they’ve seeing since Alison’s death) and tell her everything. So, of course, shortly after telling their therapist the truth about “A,” their therapist goes missing. “A” instructs the girls to go find the therapist before she runs out of air and leaves them a shovel and coordinates. While digging they’re suddenly surrounded by the police and get hauled down to the station. The police tell the girls that the shovel they were using to dig with that night was actually the murder weapon that was used to kill Ali. At the end of the summer finale, Jenna and officer Garrett talk about them killing Alison which brings up more questions than answers…
Catching Up Before the Start of Season 3: What You Need to Know:
“A” is still wreaking havoc on the girls’ lives, threatening to spill the girls’ dirty little secrets if they didn’t comply with his or hers demands. One secret Aria (Lucy Hale) didn’t want people to know (especially her parents) is that she was having a relationship with her teacher Mr. Fitz (Ian Harding). Ezra Fitz took a job teaching at the local community college so Aria decided what the hell, he’s not her teacher anymore anyway, and she wasn’t going to let “A” have the pleasure of telling her parents. She and Ezra told her parents, and her parents reacted how most parents would react: extremely mad, forbidding her to ever see him again. Of course they didn’t listen, and Aria even enlisted the help of an old friend. She acted like they were going on dates, but really she would sneak off with Ezra while her friend went and did stuff he didn’t want his family to know about.
After several episodes pointing to Lucas (Brendan Robinson) as being “A,” mainly because he hated Alison so much and at one point the girls too just for being Alison’s followers and making his life a living hell, it is revealed that he is not…and that’s the last we see of Lucas.
Next, the girls stage a fake fight among each other, “A” takes the bait and tries to meet Emily (Shay Mitchell) but the plans goes awry and, after getting away, the girls discover that “A” dropped their phone. The girls ask Hanna’s (Ashley Benson) tech savvy boyfriend, Caleb (Tyler Blackburn). for help getting info out of the phone since the phone’s now broken. However, all Caleb could recover is a creepy picture of a doll with hideous wallpaper in the background. After going to Spencer’s (Troian Bellisario) grandparents’ lake house, she discovers that the hideous wallpaper in the background of “A”‘s doll picture is in her grandparents’ attic, so that meant “A” has been in their house.
After digging around in the attic, it looks like it was at one point “A”‘s hiding spot. They find a receipt for a store in another town, and Spencer and Aria think it’s a dead end but realize next to that store is a school for the blind where Jenna was going (the girl they accidentally blinded). After snooping around the guest sign-in book, they discover Garrett (Yani Gellmen) signed Jenna out the night Alison died.
“A” wants Spencer to break it off with Toby (Keegan Allen) and when she doesn’t listen, Toby has a freak ‘accident’. Spencer knew “A” had something to do with it, and she knew she had to break up with Toby. She pulls a typical high school move and has Emily do it for her.
Caleb keeps hacking away at “A”‘s broken cellphone when he recovers a little bit of a video. In the video, Melissa (Spencer’s sister), Ian, and Garrett are in Alison’s room the night Alison died, but before seeing what really happened that night – of course – the video stops working.
After digging around some of Alison’s old stuff, they find out she’s been living a double life. Not only was she posing as a brunette but her fake name was Vivian Darkbloom. They always knew Alison had secret of her own, but this made them question if they even really knew Alison at all? After finding a number in one of Alison’s old jackets, the girls speak to a man named Jonah and they quickly realize he is unaware of Alison’s death. They try to get information out of him, but he is not giving up anything until he gets paid money Alison owes him. After the girls pay him, he tells them Alison wanted his help trying to figure out who was texting her. Apparently she was getting creepy text messages before she died. He gave the girls an address he was able to dig up, and it turns out the address he gave them was to a law office Melissa use to intern for.
As if Melissa didn’t already seem creepy, Spencer found out that Melissa and Garrett have been hanging out together ever since Janna kicked him to the curb. He has even been accompanying her to her doctor appointments (she’s pregnant with the deceased Ian’s baby).
Emily’s girlfriend, Maya (Bianca Lawson), goes missing. After Emily received a text from her telling her she ran away and not to tell her parents, she still wants to find her. I personally think “A” has something to do with her leaving or just being missing, but we don’t know that for sure.
Jason (Drew Van Acker), Alison’s brother, is back in town and Spencer is starting to notice tension between him and her parents – and she finally finds why. Alison’s mother and Spencer’s father had an affair and Jason is really his son. Wow, that is a bombshell I didn’t see coming!
Mona (Janel Parrish) has been coming around more and is being overly nice to all the girls, not just Hanna. She tells Hanna she has been getting texts from someone named “A” wanting her to blackmail the other girls and if she doesn’t, “A” is going to turn her in for shoplifting.
Jenna is back from having eye surgery, and she leads people to believe the surgery did not work but it really did. There is a fire at Alison’s old house and the girls are there to leave some of Alison’s stuff on the porch for Jason when they realize there’s a fire and someone is inside. It turns out to be Jenna, and Hanna runs in and pulls her out.
Spencer decides to go back to Alison’s things because there’s got to be something she’s missing. FINALLY – she figured out why Alison kept old newspapers. She and “A” were communicating through the classifieds. Alison and “A” had planned to meet up and when the girls go to that location, they discover a creepy store called a doll hospital. When they went inside it got scary, with all these creepy dolls everywhere and an old lady and odd little boy in there. The old lady didn’t want to give them any information, but the little boy was more than willing to talk. He said Alison came in looking for a voodoo doll, and a man and women also came in looking for Alison because they wanted to hurt her. The old lady was not pleased with her grandson telling the girls anything, so she quickly got the girls to leave the store.
Garrett gets arrested for the murder of Alison because Jenna hands over a paper she said Garrett asked her to hold onto for him – and it’s the missing page to Alison’s autopsy.
[MAJOR SPOILER ALERT – Read on at your own risk]
The girls find a postcard in Alison’s stuff featuring a hotel in the woods, and they go there to check it out. They find out Alison had stayed there twice before. Later in the night, Spencer decides to go back to the hotel because something about the room next to the room Alison stayed in caught her eye, and Mona volunteers to go with her. Even though Lucy Hale gave an interview on air with Ryan Seacrest saying she doesn’t think they will stick with the books in having “A” be Mona… guess what? She’s wrong and it is revealed MONA IS “A”! After a scuffle with Mona in the car, the car crashes. Spencer is fine and Mona is banged up. Mona gets arrested and is sent to a mental institution.
After a crazy night, the girls go back to Emily’s house. They hear sirens going past Emily’s house and go outside to see what all the commotion is about. Emily’s mom informs her they found a body and it might be Maya’s.
With “A” being revealed during only season two, many people are wondering where they’re going to go from there. With there being 11 books in the series, I’m sure there’s a lot more to come. And besides, there’s no way Mona did all of this on her own. With season three starting June 5, maybe we will found out who has been helping Mona…
–Plot summaries by Alison Helms
[tabs style=”default” title=”‘Pretty Little Liars’ Resources”] [tab title=”Cast”]
Ashley Benson – Hanna Marin
Lucy Hale – Aria Montgomery
Shay Mitchell – Emily Fields
Troian Belisarius – Spencer Hastings
Sasha Pieterse – Alison DiLaurentis
Tammin Sursok – Jenna Marshall
Ian Harding – Ezra Fitz
Holly Marie Combs – Ella Montgomery
Chad Lowe – Byron Montgomery
Laura Leighton – Ashley Marin
Keegan Allen – Toby Cavanaugh
Tyler Blackburn – Caleb Rivers
Torrey Devitto – Melissa Hastings
Drew Van Acker – Jason DiLaurentis
Janel Parrish – Mona Vanderwall
Nia Peeples – Pam Fields
Brendan Robinson – Lucas Gottesman
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