Thursday, 23 August 2012

Theories for the Pretty Little Liars Summer finale

Mostly speculation, maybe spoilers (from the Canadian promo)...

  • I don't think that Maya's death had anything to do with A. She was killed by her stalker. My money is on Nate - he certainly isn't Maya's cousin (the creepy way he said she was "fluid" to Emily sealed the deal). He's aggressive, possessive, and the way he approached Hanna after Emily told him they should just be friends definitely set off my stalker alert. The maybe-not: A's threat that someone would die if the Liars didn't comply in the second season finale and the fact that Mona's timer apparently went off right when Maya's body was found (but maybe A just made sure that the police would find her, she'd been dead for a while at that point).
  • It's pretty clear that Jenna is referring to Nate, not Paige, when she comes by Emily's. She warns her of a "friend". Jenna wouldn't have hesitated to call Paige Emily's girlfriend, and she's seen them together multiple times. Twice, Emily was present when Nate tried to intimitate her. My theory is that Jenna saw something happen and only put the pieces together when Nate threatened her ("I know you saw me").  
  • In the promo, A calls Emily and tells her to run away. If I'm right about Nate, then he is somehow putting Emily in danger and A is looking out for her. 
  • A is a team. That's not a theory, Mona confirmed as much with Spencer in the car (so the A-tag in yesterday's episode shouldn't have been a surprise for anyone). I think what's also important and hasn't really been adressed is that Mona sort of gave Spencer the opportunity to join the team, so the question is: who else they approached about this, and who might have said yes?
  • Who is the A team - not just "who is part of it" but "why and when"? Alison was a confirmed victim (this also makes me wonder how much of her cruelty was actually her doing and if some of her actions were the result of A blackmailing her - there's a hint of the latter when she walks away from Paige after picking up her love letter to Emily, but that might have been something else). 
  • A isn't actually about destroying people; he's about control and power. It feels significant that a group of Rosewood teens is regularly assembling in the Kahn cabin to play games - that are all about control and power / truth and lies. I wonder what part Alison played, considering she was friends with someone who was practically raised in that environment (CeCe). On the other hand, the kind of skills that are honed there seem to be specifically designed to help whoever takes part battle someone like Alison DiLaurentis (or become her). Maybe Jenna's "mutually assured destruction" comment quite literally comes from a long history of cold war between two parties (and how does the even creepier NAT club fit into all of this?). 
  • Lucas is part of it. He would have had plenty of reasons to join AFTER HANNA WHACKED HIM OVER THE HEAD AND LEFT HIM TO DROWN (which nobody seems to remember and yet "drowning" is usually the first thing that comes up when a different character is discussed...), or maybe he's being blackmailed. 
  • Spencer's slowly going crazy and I kind of want someone to notice. 
  • I thought it was interesting that Spencer was the one who jumped so quickly at CeCe's story about Paige: not just because Spencer always needs someone to focus on and she's just lost Garrett, but also because she seems to be the one who has spent the least time dealing with what kind of person Alison was (Hanna has befriended Lucas and Mona and learned what it meant to be the victim of the kind of cruelty Alison reserved for people she didn't care about, Emily's struggle with Alison was more severe than anyone else's because it's so tangled up in her identity, and Aria... well, I guess Aria has impersonated her when she assumed one of her secret identities?). 
  • Aria's comment that CeCe never left high school also seems important - it's not clear if CeCe was a kind of mentor to Alison, but she defnitely knows how to play power games, and what is she doing hanging out with a bunch of high school students? 
  • It's interesting to see how Pretty Little Liars, a show on ABC family, addresses serious issues without explicitly naming them. Alison's comment about the bumps on Paige's thigh only make sense after Paige explaining that she used to harm herself; and did Ashley actually tell Hanna that Officer Wilden raped her when she was drunk? (She clearly stated that she was too drunk to give consent, and the show has dealt with the finer points of enthusiastic informed consent before.)
  • Paige McCullers though. The way the episode dealt with the fall-out of the kiss between Emily and Nate was beautiful. Paige waited (sort of passive-aggressively, but still) for Emily to tell her, then provided a theory that proved she'd been thinking about the issue for a while, and at some point managed to put her feelings jealousy and being hurt aside. They talked about it and it didn't become a major conflict, and this played especially well because I think everyone was expecting a major fight, because of Paige's history and EVERY OTHER TELEVISION SHOW ABOUT TEENAGERS IN RELATIONSHIPS EVER. Emily (probably frustrated that she can't share the other overbearing fact about her life) can't help but be completely honest about this. Paige has grown so much that's she's managed to do something most people don't ever learn: how to be understanding and supportive even after being angry enough to throw away perfectly good Chinese food.
  • “Why are your friends talking about me instead of to me?” 
  • Nate, regardless of whether he did kill Maya or not, is a creep (and has been from the beginning) and Hanna calling him out on it was validating. 
  • Book spoiler: We don't really know much about Alison's motives, and I think that a lot of it is related to something that the show hasn't revealed yet. If Alison really does have a twin, and one of the two is dead, then A might be connected to whatever struggle took place between the two. /
  • Is this the first time ever that the Liars are genuinely pitted against each other since the show began (with the exception of Hanna almost revealing Aria's relationship to Ella, but that didn't feel as serious as Spencer's "A may also go by the name Paige" does)- did CeCe manage to do something that A has been failing at for more than a year? 
  • Where's Jason DiLaurentis?

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