ABC Family’s hit TV show “Pretty Little Liars” is back with more plot twists and drama than ever before. The winter premier of season three part two aired on Tuesday, January 8 at 8pm on ABC Family. “Pretty Little Liars,” based on the book series written by Sara Shepard, follows the lives of four best friends(the “liars”), Hanna Marin, Aria Montgomery, Spencer Hastings, and Emily Fields, (Ashley Benson, Lucy Hale, Trojan Bellisario, and Shay Mitchell, respectively) who are determined to figure out who is responsible for the murder of their mean, popular friend Alison DiLaurentis (Sasha Pieterse) and who has been blackmailing the girls with text messages signed “A.”
The drama begins when the four girls receive texts from “A” with secrets about themselves after the disappearance of Alison. Although the girls at first believe that Alison is sending the texts, Ali’s dead body is found a year after it goes missing, and the texts continue. For the past two and a half seasons, “A” has been following the girls’ every move and threatening to reveal all their secrets. The question remains: Who killed Alison, and who is “A”?
Throughout the show, the liars have had numerous suspects of who “A” could be, from Toby (Keegan Allen) to Jenna (Tammin Sursok) to Ian (Ryan Merriman) to police officer Garrett Reynolds (Yani Gellman). Whenever the girls get close to discovering who “A” is, they are thrown off track because “A” is always one step ahead. Eventually, the liars discover that Mona (Janel Parrish), who was friends with Hanna, is “A” and she is sent to an insane asylum. Once the girls finally think “A” is out of their lives, they realize that Mona was not working alone—there is more than one “A” and the torture continues, bringing fans of the series to the second half of season three.
The winter premier of “Pretty Little Liars” was packed with drama. Mona wakes Hannah in the middle of the night to tell her that she has been released from the insane asylum and her parents are forcing her to go back to school. The entire scene is just weird and creepy, and later on it is learned that Mona begged her parents to let her return to school. Next, a car tries to hit a figure on a skateboard at night, and the camera flashes to inside the car to reveal that Toby is driving. The audience discovers that Toby, Spencer’s boyfriend, is working with Mona and is definitely not on the girls’ side. Aria goes to school the next day and discovers that Meredith, the woman who had an affair with Aria’s dad, will be her substitute teacher while the real teacher is on maternity leave. Aria is caught texting during class, so Meredith takes her phone and reads the messages; coincidentally, the texts are about Meredith’s history with Aria’s dad, Byron.
Emily sees Mona talking to the janitor in the hallway and instantly recognizes the janitor from the Lost Woods Resort, the motel where Mona stayed as “A”. Aria leaves Ezra’s apartment when she finds a basket with a balloon that says “It’s a boy.” Ezra was Aria’s English teacher, and they are dating. Aria met Ezra’s ex-girlfriend and learned that Ezra has a son that he does not know about. Aria still has not told Ezra about his son. During the annual Rosewood race, the liars sneak away to check out the janitor’s office, where they find Alison’s old diary with an entry about Byron paying Alison to keep quiet about his affair with Meredith. When the girls go back outside, there is a fire in the storage shack that Meredith was in, and Meredith believes that the girls set it up. Later, Byron overhears Aria tell Spencer on the phone that “A” set the girls up. Spencer warns Jason, Alison’s brother, to be careful around Mona, and once Spencer leaves Mona comes out of the house to help Jason bandage a stab wound, implying that Jason is responsible for an attack against Aria from Halloween that resulted in Aria stabbing her attacker.
This episode of “Pretty Little Liars” began the winter season with a bang and wasted no time in getting to the drama. The show is full of dramatic music for not-so-dramatic moments, and Toby looks so mean in his acting that he might as well be wearing a sign that says “I’m the bad guy,” but the constant plot twists keep the show intriguing and capture the attention of teenage girls all over the country. The next episode of season three of “Pretty Little Liars” is scheduled to be aired on Tuesday, January 15 at 8 pm on ABC Family.
