We all know the 2010 teen thriller show Pretty Little Liars, with its classic plot of the queen of the best friend group going “missing” and the other girls uncovering hers, and their own, secrets, as they are tormented by the unknown “A.” I know we like to think of the show as “cringey” now for its ongoing and unnecessary side plots, but truly, this has to be one of the best teen series to binge-watch if you are in need of that wonderful, delusional feeling it can give you. I may be a little biased when I say this is my number one show, since I did have a Pretty Little Liars Instagram fan account I was way too active on during middle school, but the events of these seven seasons will never get old for me. I thought it was about time I rewatched every single episode of Pretty Little Liars, as it’s been too long in my mind since I last did. So, I rewatched the series, and these are my summaries and thoughts on the four main girls and their storylines throughout.
First, we have to talk about Aria Montgomery. Aria’s entire family moved to Iceland when her best friend Alison went missing, because California or Canada was just too close to Pennsylvania, I guess, so Iceland was the best option. Aria’s best and worst storyline is dating her high school English teacher, Ezra Fitz, a “totally normal teenage thing to do” that was handled a bit too calmly by her parents. They met at a bar when Aria was 16 and Ezra was 25, the day before her sophomore year of high school, and then boom, she walks into English class the next day and sees the guy she was with at the bar last night teaching the class. They continue their relationship throughout these next seven seasons in-and-out of secrecy, and the iconic 20th episode of Season four actually reveals that Ezra had been writing a book about Alison’s disappearance for years now, and he had been watching the group of best friends’ every move ever since. More Aria and Ezra lore also includes Ezra believing he had a seven-year-old child, which distanced him from Aria for a while, but the mother was actually lying to him about who the father of the child was. Of course, there were also a few episodes of Season three, when Aria was with Ezra’s younger brother, Wes. Aria definitely has the most insane of the romance storylines in the series. Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, Aria and Ezra did get married at the end of the series, and she always passed English class with an A+.
Spencer Hastings, my personal favorite of the girls, is probably the smartest and most cunning of the main characters, making her the unspoken leader of the group. My all-time favorite character is Spencer’s boyfriend for most of the series, Toby Cavanaugh. Their relationship, simply put, is a wild ride to keep up with. Toby was in juvie for blinding his sister, something that Alison actually did, and then made him take the blame for, so he was seen as the dangerous bad boy of the school, making Spencer wary of being near him. Spencer and Toby teamed up at the end of the first season to spy on his sister and started dating after that, which the friend group took a lot worse than Aria dating her teacher. Season three is the highlight of Spencer’s storyline for me. First, Spencer breaks up with Toby to try to protect him from getting tormented by “A,” and distances herself from him. Then, she finds out that Toby was actually a part of the “A” team for a period of time, but he only did this to try to protect Spencer from the real tormenter of all of this. While Spencer and Toby are separated as he’s on the “A” team, Spencer thinks she sees Toby’s dead body in the woods and is admitted to a mental hospital because of the state she’s in. When she eventually gets out, Toby is actually alive, and they’re in love again! Of course, I can’t forget to also mention the insane ending of the series that reveals Spencer has actually had an evil twin sister this entire time that we didn’t know about. Typical!
Hanna Marin, the kleptomaniac, is probably the most realistic of the girls in my eyes, personality-wise. She has the most character growth throughout the entire series, and went through so much as a teenager; she struggled with body issues, family problems, and relationship turmoil. Her best friend, Mona, also ran her over with her car in Season one, and turned out to be “A” for all of four seasons. Hanna had some pretty intense trauma occur to her throughout the series, including being drugged and given oral surgery where “A” put the smallest of handwritten notes inside of her tooth, held her prisoner, and was doused with cold water and attacked with a cattle prod, and accidentally sending her mother to prison for a murder she never committed. Normal teenage events. Thankfully, Hanna had the sweetest boyfriend throughout most of the show, Caleb Rivers, who literally got shot to protect her and her friends, and was also the only boyfriend who really never turned into an awful person at some point in the show. Hanna was seen as the dumb blonde of the group, but personally, I think she became the most stable and confident of the main girls after facing so many issues and growing up way too fast, to become the adult of her single-mother household many times. The ending was a good one for Hanna, thankfully. She and Caleb did break up for a while, and Hanna was engaged to another man, but then Caleb came back into her life, and she left the other guy as quickly as she fell for him. Then, Hanna got pregnant, and she and Caleb lived happily ever after.
Emily Fields, the last girl of the friend group, is the most unlikeable character because of her personality, according to everyone I know who’s a fan of the show. I have to say, I would agree with that. Emily’s entire storyline is based around her secret of being in love with Alison, and besides that, there is not much more to her character. She constantly ignores red flags and signs of danger; she’s definitely the weakest of the girls, easily making her slightly unlikable. As the show progresses around Seasons three and four, it uncovers a lot of Alison’s secrets and actions, which, no matter how selfish they were, Emily always defended them and chose to stand by Alison instead. Emily wasn’t all that bad, though. She did go through a lot of insane, traumatic events, like her father dying, her girlfriend being murdered, getting a stomach ulcer that ruined her swimming career, and “A” fully driving a car into her house, almost running over her mother. Also, Emily struggled with her sexual identity throughout the entire series – one of the few realistic parts of the show for a teenager. The ending of the series for Emily was a bit of a wild concept. It was revealed that Alison was actually in love with Emily the entire time as well, and the two ended up getting married and raising twin daughters that Alison gave birth to from an unknown father. Classic storyline of your high school crush liking you back, and when she comes home after her two-year-long disappearance, she is ready to marry you and raise her children with you that you didn’t know about!Now, this show is not necessarily great, but as a girl in her 20s who still wants to be a teenager, it’s phenomenal. It has the forbidden romance trope, the bad boys, murder mysteries, insane plotlines, and a group of best friends that we all wish we had. If you haven’t watched Pretty Little Liars in a long time or have never seen it to begin with, I’m begging you to sit down and glue your eyes to those seven seasons of pure chaos. I still hear the theme song in my dreams every night since middle school, and I absolutely love it.