Previously on Pretty Little Liars, Alison DiLaurentis returned from the dead, a beautiful phoenix who admitted to eating her fair share of humble pie from the trash cans at bus stations over these last few years. She doled out answers about how Spencer didn’t kill her, but about how Ali herself did kill Ian on Spencer’s behalf, and about how she pulled Hanna from that lodge fire, and about how she held court in her backyard the night she died, a parade of every person in Rosewood dropping by to swing something at her head, and oh my god, Aria, no, she didn’t sleep with Ezra! Christ, you haven’t changed at all! Speaking of whom: Mr. Fitz got shot in the gut by A. Aria cried and shook her fist at the sky as the pigeons flitted from tree to tree, their whisper of chickpeas! chickpeas! echoing out into the Manhattan night.
It is Noel Kahn to the rescue once more, as he explains to a dozen cops that he, alone, ran up to that rooftop when he heard someone getting their guts pumped full of lead, and all he saw was Spiderman in civvies leaping across rooftops. One wonders why he’s suddenly so altruistic but then one remembers that his cabin came to life and nearly killed two of these girls and also he one time played the guitar in Aria’s face while she sang in his face. He has a lot to make up for. Aria tries to wrestle her way out of the Liars’ grip as they watch Ezra get loaded up into an ambulance. Alas, she is but a tiny thing with minimal kung fu training.
Where is A, though? Just max relaxin’ on top of that ambulance as it drives away.
The Liars yell at each other for a little while about What Would Sun Tzu Do and decide that he would buy a burner phone to tip off the police that Ezra needs a bodyguard at the hospital and then split up to do some deception to save his life on their own, because when has a cop ever brought anything into their lives but some straight-up bullshit. Emily’s like, “Look, I don’t want to make things weird, but just in terms of math, it’s not really fair for me to sacrifice Ali so that Aria can have more golden days of cake-eating with Mr. Fitz. Back me up here, Spencer; your boyfriend was resurrected once, right? And Hanna, didn’t that girl from The Ring kill Caleb over in Ravenswood? I’ve still got one dead girlfriend and I dumped Paige on the way here – so all my eggs? Kind of in this basket.”
But no, her homosexual pleadings will not be heard. Aria and Ali head off to be murdered in Midtown while Emily and Hanna and Spencer head off to be murdered in the East Village.
Back in Rosewood, the Hastings clan returns home to sulk around and keep secrets and shit-talk Spencer like they used to do back when Ali was alive the first time. Old habits. Melissa hates Ali so bad. Like, it’s not just that she was dry-humping Ian or whatever out at the kissing rock or that she stood by and smirked while Melissa did incest with Jason; it’s also that she was a catalyst for every dumb thing Spencer ever did. Which, for once: I don’t think we can blame Ali for Spencer being a gorgeous, gorgeous psycho. Seems to me she came into the world that way, all fire and competition and grande Frappuccino in hand. Melissa wants to come clean about the secret she whispered to her dad in the finale – both to her mom and Det. Holbrook, who shows up with the news that Cece Drake escaped from jail and is on her way to wherever the Liars are right now – but her dad cuts her off and tells her to lock it in her pocket and take it to the grave.
Before Aria and Ali arrive at the hospital, Aria connects some dots and asks if Ezra followed them and A followed Ezra and that’s how come Ali almost got shot in the face. Like, is that why she had to stay away so long, because of this exact thing? Yes, actually. But also: “Aria, Ezra entered into a romantic relationship with you knowing that you were going to be his underage subordinate, in the hopes that he could make a career as a True Crime novelist by mining you for information about me, your presumed dead best friend, and then he watched you and your best friends get tortured for years without intervening. But he did get shot tonight, on our behalves. That was a nice thing to do. Do you think you’ll get back together with him?”
Aria doesn’t know. She’s waiting to see if further flashbacks will reveal him to be less of a felonious creep.
Rear Window Brew. Mona is watching a local news story about how Alison DiLaurentis’ spirit has found purchase in a human body once more and now she is on the run with those girls who keep going to prison for shovel possession. Mona is dressed like Black Widow but with more eye-makeup. Her eyebrow does that amused little uptick. “Well, now,” she says. “This changes everything.”
The Liars arrive at the hospital in shifts, which is supposed to mess with A’s head, even though A’s main thing is being everywhere and nowhere, so of course she is (and isn’t) spying on all the little sub-groups at once. Alison arranges a fake page to the emergency room, knowing that A will follow her. She ducks out into the dark night and weaves between taxi cabs and jazz musicians, while A tails her, while the Liars – sans Aria, who remains behind to monitor Ezra – tail A. Ali runs to a dark, abandoned park, which makes you wonder if she stayed alive all this time by sheer dumb luck. A arrives and menaces her. And then the Liars arrive and menace A. And then like one hundred As arrive and start whispering rude things and dancing all around the Liars like some kind of ritual sacrifice situation. Like prom for boogeymen. Like a hobgoblin dance troupe. It is truly spectacular.
After they’re done doing the jig, all the As zig-zag off in different directions. Ali is like, “Well, hopefully we kept Ezra safe and Aria got to smooch on him a little bit.” And Emily is like, “I hate everything.”
In Rosewood, Mona continues looking fierce as hell, making phone calls about how it’s time to mobilize, while Lucas stares out the windows of their new lair, hoping Caleb will come back from Ravenswood and share bunk beds with him some more. I love that Mona has the infrastructure in place to call to arms an army in half an hour, in the off-chance that any of her sworn enemies return from the fake deaths she coerced them into dying. Lucas is like, “I thought you said there’d be a lot of people here.” And Mona is like, “Relax, man. I just posted the meet-up deets to our website page. Give it a minute.”
Peter Hastings is just sitting in the complete darkness in his kitchen, all unshaven and grumpy as piss. Melissa finds him there and tells him she’s going to tell Veronica and Det. Holbrook the thing she told him, so that Spencer will have a reason to come home. He grabs a bottle of whiskey from the kitchen counter and scowls, talking about, “If anyone finds out what you whispered in my ear before season six, I’ll eat my briefcase.” She scowls back because he’s correct and also because that’s her main face.
Ali leads the Liars to The Fitzgerald Theatre, a place she and Ezra used to come and eat peanut butter sandwiches and pretend to be themselves pretending to be different people. Ezra’s family owns the theatre, of course, and when Ali found that out, it made her like him even more because it meant he was as good at making up shit as she was. She stood up on the stage one night and said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely puppets.” He said, “Players, I think you mean. All the men and women merely players.” She smiled at him back then because he had a cute little head and wasn’t secretly filming her in her underwears. Patronization she could handle. Accidental pedophila, she was OK with that too. But she shook her head and said, “No. I meant puppets.” And a janitor interrupted them.
Hanna finds a real live shotgun on the stage, which Spencer makes her put down immediately because Chekov ain’t no joke and that’s the second firearm Hanna has handled tonight. When Spencer’s stomach growls – what? she hasn’t had anything to eat since that petit four at the bridal show – they raid the snack bar and laugh about Freaky Foodies, a show about people who eat couch cushions and dryer sheets. They’re like, “Ali, don’t you love Freaky Foodies?” And she’s like, “Yeah, I love to marathon it in the free time I have from hitchhiking with truck drivers to get away from the mother who buried me alive.” She splits to make a phone call to some friends who’ve been helping her out along the way.
The Liars feel sad that she’s shutting them out, no less than four hours after they were almost shot with a gun by A and trampled to death by a herd of dancing As. They’ve sacrificed for her too, you know. Instead of dwelling on it, they talk about what they’ll do once Ezra wakes up, reveals the identity of A, and their omniscient emotional torturer is carted away to jail forever. Hanna’s like, “I’ll probably take up a sport, field hockey maybe. I like the skirt and I’m pretty fucking angry, to be honest, so hitting people with sticks sounds fun.” Spencer goes, “Sleep probably. I haven’t been to sleep since the pilot episode. What about you, Emily?” Emily smiles gently. “Well, since my life not being in perpetual mortal peril is a fantasy on par with Lord of the Rings, I guess I’ll say, ride a unicorn into space and have a picnic on the moon with Katharine Hepburn.”
They drift off to sleep thinking their delusional happy thoughts.
At the hospital, Aria is juuuuust about to fall asleep when a familiar form appears in the waiting room. It is Shana Costumeshop, looking sexier than all get out, talking about how Ali sent her here to check on Aria. Aria is like, “You drove her from Rosewood to be my watchdog?” And Shana is like, “That sounds much more convincing than saying I drove her from Georgia, so yes, we’ll go with that.” She tells Aria to close her eyes and go to sleep and she’ll take care of everything. After Aria closes her eyes and goes to sleep, Shana covers her up with her mammoth-fur jacket and sneaks away…
… to Ezra’s hospital bed, where Aria finds her and flips out. But not as bad as Ezra, who wakes up and freaks so hard that he goes into full on cardiac arrest. Shana casually gliiiiiides out of the room while Aria screams for help.
A leather-gloved hand wakes up Ali, but fear not! It is no Risen Mitten! It is that ephemeral enigmatic, that mannequin maniac, that soul-trading sister: Cece Drake! Ali is like, “OMG, how did you find me?!” And Cece is like, “Because we spliced our brains together that one summer to drive your mom crazy; you don’t remember?” Ali does remember. Her fondness for Cece flares up, and not just because they look alike. She gives Cece her plane ticket to France or wherever and since they’re face/hair twins, they agree that she’ll get through customs no problem. Never mind that she’s using a dead girl’s passport. Noel asks them to make out. They think about it. But they decide no, there’s no time, even though they’ve both totally stared down the mirror and thought about how awesome it would be to make out with themselves.
Emily isn’t so thrilled that Ali gave up her ticket to safety, or that she’s sneaking around doing secret shenanigans again, but Ali weaves a yarn about them not taking the fall for Cece and Emily is appeased.
When Ezra wakes up again, he whispers something into Aria’s ear and her eyes get so big. Bigger. Even bigger. Bigger than the moon. She runs out of that hospital as fast as her tiny little legs will carry her.
Meanwhile, at Rosewood PD HQ, Holbrook is just Googling away. First, he discovers that Ezra’s been shot. Then he discovers that Ezra is a Fitzgerald. Then he discovers that the Fitzgeralds own a theatre. He calls it up and Alison answers and even though he’s never heard her voice in his life, he’s like, “…Alison?” She slams down the phone like it bit her and the Liars stand around watching it ring for an hour.
A hearty crowd of outcasts has joined Mona and Lucas in their lair. Among them is Paige McCullers, looking like one million literal dollars in her new leather jacket. Mona tries to rally the troops by convincing them that if they’ll follow her, she’ll keep them safe from the kind of ridicule they suffered at Ali’s hands back in her first life. They say all the names she called them and Paige is like, “OK, y’all, but sticks and stones. The names that bitch calls you isn’t who you are.” They look at her like, yeah, easy for you to say, on account of you grew out your Lego man bangs, got a full-ride to Stanford, started boning the hottest girl in school, and took your voice to a heretofore unheard of level of sexinesss – and we’re all still generic looking nerds from an ’80s movie. Paige rolls her eyes, makes for the door, and finds herself face-to-face with Melissa Hastings. They stare at each other for a long minute, a (day) dream (or two) Paige had about Spencer flashing in her mind’s eye. She closes the door, stays put for a minute. Melissa says, “There’s not much time!”
At Fitzgerald Theatre, the lights go out! The Liars panic! And then Shana Costumeshop is standing on-stage in a black hoodie, holding a handgun! The Liars grab onto each other and run around in a pandemonium and finally Ali is like, “Oh, balls. Fine. You’re going to kill me because you fell in love with Jenna, correct?” Shana confirms Ali’s theory, but that’s only part of it. Ali was a real dillhole to everyone in Rosewood, is what Shana found out when she moved to town to work in the Halloween store and do some spying at Ali’s request. And yeah, she fell for Jenna. And yeah, she’s mad as hell that Ali blinded her with a firecracker, and then she got her eyesight back, and now she’s blind again. So now, for justice’s sake, she is going to off all these guys (like she tried to do with that lodge fire) and Jenna can get on with her life again, playing the flute out on her porch and eating cherries in peace.
Shana aims her gun at Ali, releases the safety, and gets SMASHED IN THE FACE WITH A RIFLE BY ARIA MONTGOMERY.
That is not the thing that kills her. It is the four-foot fall from the stage that kills her.
Emily, familiar with killing a guy, checks her pulse and confirms that she is, in actual fact, dead. Aria, unfamiliar with even being on this show, has a fit. The Liars are like, “Girl, you know the rules. How many seasons can a black person survive on this show? Two, max. She knew what she was getting into when she came back. She should have just kept on driving down to Hilton Head.”
The Liars call in Shana’s death and head on back to the hospital to check on Ezra, each silently pondering the continued mysteries of Jenna Thing’s magical vagina and lying to themselves about how A is really gone and everything is OK again.
