Warning: this post contains spoilers and overly excited comments regarding the Halloween episode of Pretty Little Liars.
Our favorite “little liars” chased down Red Coat in last night’s Pretty Little Liars Halloween special. With tons of plot twists and suspenseful scenes, the episode was certainly a nail-biter.
The Halloween episode, which has become somewhat of a PLL tradition, picked up where the summer finale left off.
So obviously all us PLL fans have been dying for some answers. Thankfully, this Halloween episode seemed to provide an answer for most of our burning questions. The biggest question answered: is Alison alive?
This article contains an entire play-by-play recap of the episode. It’s super sassy and very informative but if you want to get right to the good stuff, then skip to the last page. If not, then without further ado, I present to you The Complete Collegiette’s Guide to the PLL Halloween Special. Continue to the next page to get started!
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The episode started off with the Liars entering the Ravenswood party. (Which, by the way, takes place in this terrifying aboveground cemetery.) Of course the girls had to dress to the nines in period attire. Admittedly, they looked a little ridiculous, but they rocked their costumes nonetheless. Plus each costume suited each character pretty well. See for yourself in the photo below.
“This girdle is cutting off my air supply,” complained Hanna. “It’s a corset,” Spencer said ever-so sassily. Then Hanna, “It’s torture… I’m never complaining again about wearing a sports bra.” (Ugh, Hanna, we’ve missed you.)
Moving on, the girls enter the graveyard even though Emily is afraid (hello, I would be too!) because she doesn’t know if she’s ready to see Alison. Aria reminds her that she already has seen Alison. Suddenly, we leave the spooky graveyard and the scene cuts to Caleb on a sketchy bus. There is a guy sitting in the back of the bus and he looks creepy and terrifying, and he keeps looking at Caleb. That’s pretty much it.
Aaand back to the Graveyard. Aria gets a call from the #1 most hated man of the moment: Ezra.
After telling him that she’s in Ravenswood, Ezra tells Aria to be careful. She listens to him but I’m definitely not buying the whole nice guy act. After they hang up, it’s revealed that Ezra is in the graveyard. And I would have been totally mad at him for lying to Aria but he’s wearing a vintage army uniform as a costume and he looks really attractive.
Then, BAM, the intro credits. They’re edited to be extra Halloween-y and scary. As in they added lightning flashes, blood, and bats and it was actually pretty disturbing.
After the intro, we see Caleb on the bus again and this time a random girl who we’ve never seen before shows up next to Caleb (if you were a die-hard fan you would know her as Miranda Collins from the PLL spin-off, Ravenswood). She talks to Caleb and we find out that she’s going to Ravenswood to look for her long lost uncle because she’s an orphan. Miranda is hungry and wants to go steal chips from the creepy guy who is now sleeping in the back of the bus. (Um okay, yeah, you go do that.)
Back at the party, we see the girls mingling in a tent. A boy in an army uniform catches Hanna’s eye and she wants to question him. The girls say no but then we witness the mystery guy talking to a mystery blonde girl in a white dress. The girl in the white dress goes outside and Aria decides to follow her. Meanwhile, Emily is approached by Mrs. Grunwald, she tells Emily and her friends to leave now. Of course, they don’t.
Out in the graveyard, Aria searches for the girl in the white dress. She’s alone walking through the graveyard (because, you know, that’s a totally normal thing to do). Out of nowhere, a hand grabs her ankle and she screams (and I scream and clutch my pillow tighter). The hand belongs to the girl in the white dress who says she was pushed into a burial ditch. The kind-of-good-looking mystery boy in the vintage army uniform appears out of nowhere, says that she’s his cousin, and then leaves. K.
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After that, all the Lairs gather in the Graveyard because why not. They see Red Coat, Ali, and chase her into a crypt. Yet when they enter the crypt Ali is not there—shocker! Spencer, the smartie of the group, points out that there are no leaves covering a certain area of the floor. After some team work and muscle-power, the girls move a statue, revealing an eerie staircase that you couldn’t pay me to walk down. They walk down it.
While they’re walking down the staircase the door mysteriously shuts on them. They freak out for a second and then Spencer tells them to calm down like it’s that easy. Anyway, after a few shots of the girls wandering in the Ravenswood catacomb, a mysterious and unrealistic wind picks up and causes the girls to take shelter against a wall—the lights turn off. A single tear rolls down my face. The lights come back on and- spoiler– Hanna is gone (even though Aria was holding her hand)!
Ah, where did she go!?
You’ll find out later because then the scene cut to the bus again. Snooze. On the bus, Miranda officially introduces herself to Caleb. She decides to back out and not go to Ravenswood. The creepy guy gets off the bus, Miranda is about to step off too but the creepy guy looks at her all creepy. She gets creeped out. She stays on the bus with Caleb. Next scene!
Hanna is lost, wandering around the tunnels alone. She’s looking for her friends but instead stumbles upon writing on the wall that reads, in red, “Help me.” She examines the letters, but bats fly past her, scaring her. Her hat gets knocked off and the lights turn off. She gets out her iPhone and uses the handy camera function because she probably downloaded iOS 7. She sees a bunch of rats, freaks out, and starts running. Eventually she finds another staircase, but this one leads her inside a big, old house that looks like the Haunted Mansion. She leaves a room with grand piano, and when she does we see a figure shut the piano. I don’t really know how to describe what happened next or how to describe who it was so I’ll just type exactly what I wrote in my notes: “omg this person in a GAS MASK closes the piano after she leaves the room. literally crying.”
Cut to Miranda and Caleb again. (Ugh, spare me). They are in front of the Graveyard. They say goodbye, but apparently have plans to meet up again and have exchanged phone numbers. They part ways. That’s it.
Back to Hanna: she’s walking around the mystery mansion that already is giving me nightmares. She finds an old phone booth, steps inside it. Long story short: she tries to dial a number, strange sounds happen on the other line, and someone closes the door on her and locks her in. Then she realizes she’s locked in the booth and looks out the blurry windows. She sees three, maybe four, lights, and they surround her form the outside of the booth. They all go out in an instant. The phone rings, she picks it up but the only thing she hears is old music being played on the other line.
In the following scene we see Miranda entering the same house that Hanna is in. But Miranda is looking for her uncle—say whaaat?
Next, Emily, Spencer, and Aria enter the house from the same staircase that Hanna entered from. While they observe the old piano and what looks like blood that is dripping from the ceiling, they hear screaming and it sounds like Ali’s voice. Spencer runs out a door, towards the voice. Emily and Aria follow but suddenly Spencer is gone and nowhere to be seen! I’m left wondering where she is and why one of the Liars always seem to go missing at least once an episode.
Hanna is still trying to get out of the booth. She hears something and looks out the window: it’s Ali! But she gets grabbed by the neck and Gas Mask appears (I’m calling him/her Gas Mask now)! Gas Mask disappears and the door slowly opens, it’s *sigh* Miranda.
Hanna and Miranda talk about why they’re each in the house. They’re both afraid and confused. I think that the house needs a good dusting. They find what looks like a funeral parlor. Miranda sees two caskets and has a flashback to when she was a child at her parent’s funerals. In the flashback a man tells her a bunch of stuff that has nothing to do with Pretty Little Liars and is so obviously a set up for Ravenswood. After the flashback, Miranda cries and explains to Hanna what she saw. Hanna is sympathetic and they become BFFies.
After finding a window, Emily decides that she wants to climb out of it and find help. Ha, okay, go for it but just be careful of that giant shard of glass that’s about to fall on you and Aria! The two girls hear a scream and quickly back away from the window. Said glass shard falls and shatters into a million pieces right where they were standing. They look at each other like “whoops that could’ve been us.”
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Then, drum roll please, our epic heroine SPENCER HASTINGS, shows up again. She’s in a green room. She cuts herself, because blood, and then she sees Gas Mask. They stare at each other… then Spencer attacks him with a giant hoe and starts fighting him. She knocks him out like it’s no big deal. Is it Ezra? She reaches to see who Gas Mask is but then he/she wakes up and Spencer freaks out (like I did) and falls backward and hits her head on a sharp corner. Gas Mask then picks up giant scissors (because I don’t know what the gardening tool’s professional name is), and OMG CUT SCENE.
Miranda is in the cemetery and I don’t care. Caleb and Hanna are reunited and it’s beautiful. Miranda is there watching and things are awk because she totally is in love with Caleb (#TeamHaleb). Later, Miranda reads a tombstone with her name on it… and her face on it. Dun dun dun. (But I still don’t care.)
Then Aria and Emily find Spencer knocked out. They probably think she’s dead, I sure did, but Spencer wakes up thank god. The girls hear a scream and someone saying, “Help me, please, please, please they’re going to kill me!” They run into the room the voice is coming from, and … it’s a recorder. Aw, man!
Mrs. Grunwald appears out of nowhere and tells them that she is the house’s caretaker. She tells them that the tapes were stolen six months ago. Then she looks at the girls, frightened, and says “One of you has been touched by the one Alison fears the most.” Was it Spencer with Gas Mask? Aria with Ezra? Emily with Paige? Who!?
After getting out of the terrifying house of horrors, they see Ali again. Then they lose her. (I’m getting really sick of her games.) They go back to their car and realize they have a flat tire and no spare. Miranda decides she wants to stay in Ravenswood for answers about her life and her uncle. Hanna asks Caleb to stay with Miranda in Ravenswood and help her. They kiss and it’s a really romantic moment even though they’re in a graveyard. Hannah doesn’t know when she’ll see Caleb again. Neither do we since he’s now the star of the new show Ravenswood. Bye, Caleb, bye.
The girls are all together now, and they really, really want to get out of Ravenswood. Then, from out of the gates of Hades, enters Ezra with his fancy car acting like he drove there from Rosewood when we all know that he is lying. Regardless, Aria looks at him like he just saved them. They all pile into his car and drive back to Rosewood. Ezra drops them off at Spencer’s house. After kissing Aria with his poisonous lips, he drives off. The girls see Red Coat/Ali. They run after her follow her into Spencer’s backyard. The mysterious girl takes off her hood revealing a head full of perfect, curly, blonde hair. She turns around. It’s *gasp* Alison!
The girls are shocked and I’m shocked. Alison says, “I want to come home but you have to help me.” She looks distracted by an approaching light. They ask her whom she’s afraid of and Alison simply says, “Remember what I told you at the hospital, Hanna?” She then presses her finger to her lips and says “Sssh.” Then, Ezra-who-we-all-hate, walks onto the scene, approaches Aria and is like, “You forgot your cell phone.” Like, okay. They look back to where Alison was standing and she’s gone.
*Faints*
And that’s about it. Although some questions were answered, we were left with an equal amount of new questions. Who is Gas Mask? Was Ali afraid of Ezra? What did Ezra do to Ali and what is his motive for being A? Is Hanna ever going to see Caleb again? Will Miranda and Caleb find out why Ravenswood is so gosh-darn scary? Do we really care about Ravenswood? All these questions will have to remain unanswered until the series returns on January 7th. Comment below with all of your thoughts and predictions.
Until next time… Kisses -A. (Sorry, couldn’t resist!)