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‘Pretty Little Liars’ Series Finale Recap: “Til Death Do Us Part”

This is it PLL fans, the one we’ve all been waiting for. Who is A.D., and will everyone survive the destruction of his or her takedown?

We open in an assumed fantasy world where the girls reminisce over a world that exists without A. Jenna cruises by on a horse and I kind of want to live in this world, but it turns out this fantasy only lives inside Mona’s snow globe head. She’s at Radley and is suddenly confronted with A.D., the identity of whom shocks the hell out of her.

One year layer, with no A incidents, Aria and Ezra are about to be married, and Emily and Ali have twins together. Ali, always protective of her secrets, meets Emily’s mother at the hotel. My first thought is engagement ring, but that would be a total 180 from Ali’s constant need of displays of affection. Spencer has reunited with her sister, who wants her to move back in to the main house and out of the barn. Melissa’s appearance seems rather random, and she’s always been one of my favorite A fan theories. Toby has apparently been away in Africa building wells, and Spencer has been riding horses.

Ali is covering Ezra’s book with her students as part of the curriculum and goes toe to toe with the mean girl in training we haven’t seen since the beginning of the season. The little bitch face Addison continues to torture both her teachers and friends, while both Ali and Jenna attempt to school her on some high school etiquette. Do we have a glimpse of the next generation of Liars here?

Hanna and Caleb are squabbling over Hanna’s continuous involvement with Mona’s recovery. You see, Mona is getting released from Radley and, of course, Hanna feels the need to let her stay in their home while she finished recovering. The Liars hold a joint bachelor and bachelorette party at the newly remodeled Last Woods Resort, and while Hanna is in attendance, she leaves Mona along at the loft, which doesn’t look like safe plan. During the party, a creepy stalker in a black hoodie reveals herself to be…Melissa?! Could it really be true? Not this early in the episode, right?

Spencer confronts Hanna over the obvious distance between her and Caleb, and Emily and Ali take off to spend a night alone with no babies to take care of. Spencer asks Toby to take her back to her room, and they play Scrabble while she discusses how perfect her life is now. Cue a repeat montage of every couple coupling we saw during the last episode, but we finally get to see a teensy bit of extra skin this time around.

In typical lesbian fashion, Ali makes an attempt to pause some steamy lovemaking to talk about feelings, but Emily shuts her down. Thanks for playing into those stereotypes, PLL. Hanna and Caleb are trying to make a baby together, which is obviously a fantastic idea given the state of their marriage. Babies solve everything, right? Well, I guess that’s true in the case of Ali and Em, so why not?

Aria suddenly receives a startling phone call and tells Spencer in the middle of the night that she can’t marry Ezra. Just as Melissa is smirking in the distance, she takes off a ridiculously realistic looking mask and, low and behold, it’s Mona. What? Wait. Is this how the entire episode is going to go down? Mona is working yet again as one of A.D.’s henchman and wants to spill Aria’s secret (turns out she can’t have kids), but A.D. turns her down.

Is Mona on the hunt just to find out who A.D. is, or is she still down for some Liars torture? The Aria secret is a bust, because she tells Ezra herself anyway. In all seriousness though, why would a doctor have called Aria in the middle of the night?

In other news, Spencer now calls Mary Drake “Mom”, which isn’t weird at all, and Hanna shows up at Aria’s rehearsal dinner with Mona in tow. Rude. But wait, could it be true? Are the Wine Moms all here? I don’t care who A.D. is anymore, because the Wine Moms are reunited and feeling as sassy as ever. It looks like the reunion picked up right where the Moms left off, and the rowdy ladies end up using Spencer as their designated driver. Can we get a Wine Moms spin-off, please and thank you? If one of them ends of being A.D., I’ll be devastated.

As Ezra and Aria leave the dinner, she reveals that she had known about her fertility issues for quite some time, so now there’s trouble brewing in paradise. After the party, Emily confronts Ali about whispering with Emily’s mother and interrogates her about what they were discussing, forcing Ali to forego a romantic proposal for an improvised one all while rocking a pug sweatshirt. Okay, I might officially be converted to Team Emison, because that Ali speech was pretty sweet. Don’t we all just want to be the person our partner sees?

Someone has decided that this finale needs to be packed with more sex than all seven seasons combined, because we’re treated to a steamy sesh between Toby and Spencer, along with some baby making innuendo with Caleb and Hanna. During the afterglow of the romp in the sheets, Spencer wanders downstairs upon hearing some music only to be hit in the face by a hoodie-wearing Mona. She must have a mean left hook, because Spencer wakes up in a glorifies makeshift prison cell.

This whole radical twin theory that’s been cruising through the internet the last few months? Turns out it wasn’t so radical, because someone who looks just like Spencer but with a more annoying laugh and cockney British accent has helped Mary Drake escape from prison to lock Spencer up. Wren met Spencer’s twin Alex in England when she was a bartender.

Charlotte’s sister went on a rampage to torture the girls responsible for her death, but when she returned to London it wasn’t enough. Alex begs Wren do shoot her so that she can take over Spencer’s identity completely. When Wren couldn’t handle it anymore, instead of breaking up with him, Alex killed him and started wearing his ashes around her neck.

The reason Alex stopped torturing the girls was because she discovered Mona was the one responsible for Charlotte’s death, but after a year, this closure wasn’t enough for her. She wants Spencer’s perfect life, so she’s going to take it. Cue flashbacks of many times Alex has been impersonating Spence, most of which are smoochy interactions with Toby.

This is bonkers, right? Did they just wing this resolution after the Twinser theory was brought to life? I’ve got to say, I’m pretty disappointed. All I’ve ever wanted was an A who has actually been around and dropped clues since the beginning other than wearing a watch on the other hand.

In the bridal suite before Aria’s wedding, Spencer holds on of Em and Ali’s babies while commenting on her eyes looking just like daddy’s. So Wren is the sperm donor? I just can’t wrap my head around all of these bombs. Back in cell block crazy, Mary Drake feeds Spencer lunch and tells her about how she sold her other baby to a wealthy couple, who then left her in an orphanage.

Mad Mary has officially lost more marbles than Mona, because she can’t seem to decide whose side she’s on, and genuinely seems to believe they’ll all be a happy family together. Mary is keeping Spencer in the cell, but she walks right in and Spencer hugs her, stealing a bobby pin from her hair in the process.

Back in the happily never after room, Ezra has disappeared and texted Aria that he’s not coming to the wedding, but he’s actually trapped in a cell along with Spencer. Alex returns and dishes more of the story, explaining the happy family she created with Charlotte, Dunhill, and Wren. She elaborates on Charlotte’s obsession with the game before implying that she’s going to murder Ezra.

Animals always know best, and Spencer’s horse tries to attack Alex when she makes an attempt to ride him, and the whole debacle is witnessed by Toby, who looks just as skeptical as the horse finally. Except he’s already slept with Alex numerous times and not realized it was someone else.

How can this boy even hold his own at Scrabble if he can’t recognize who he’s having sex with? After seeing Jenna outside Spencer’s mom’s office, Jenna realizes Spencer isn’t herself, because of course she does. Toby finally realizes what’s going on once Jenna calls him with the suspicion, but how does he immediately reach the twin theory? Seems a bit too easy all of a sudden.

Mona meets up with the Liars to tell them that Wren was the one who came to see her at Radley, to ask for her help in breaking Mary Drake out of prison. She pretended to help A.D. so that she could figure out who it was. Mona tells the Liars the longitude and latitude of where A.D. is hunkered down, and it’s the house Toby built and didn’t track the sale of.

The Liars race to the house to save Spencer and Ezra, while the two captured pals search through an elaborate, underground replication of the Rosewood neighborhood. Just as Alex is about to kill Spence with an axe, Toby shows up with a gun, and gun trumps axe. In a short game of Guess the Twin, Toby is magically now actually able to distinguish between the two and puts Alex into custody with the police Mona has called.

Now that the A.D. drama is resolved, Aria ditches her fancy, fugly wedding dress for an LWD in a take two of the Fitz wedding. The Wine Moms are happy, the Liars are happy, everyone is happy, and Hanna is pregnant. Even Mona is finally happy, because she’s won the game. At a local shop in what appears to be Paris, Mona smooches her faux cop boyfriend and has a tea party with her new dolls, Mary and Alex Drake.

Is this real life, or was the whole series one of Mona’s snow globe fantasies?

The last thing we see is Addison’s merry band of followers setting themselves up for a future generation of lying. RIP Pretty Little Liars, may your legacy live on.

So what are your thoughts on this crazy series finale? Are you angry that Emison ended up being the end game, or happy we finally got a happily ever after moment for a lesbian couple? Are you satisfied with the A.D. reveal? Let me know in the comments!

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