PRETTY LITTLE LIARS Season Finale: Once There Was a Girl in a Grave

Tonight was the season 4 finale of Pretty Little Liars, and it was one that fans (including myself) were waiting for, it seems like forever. Answers to so many questions that have come up over the years were answered, and many more were not. One question that definitely wasn’t answered was exactly who ‘A’ really is. In season one, the show ended with us thinking that Mona was ‘A’. Season two the red herring was Toby. And finally they threw Ezra at us. This time at least, there were no red herrings. Just a very frustrated ‘almost’ when ‘A’ almost took off the mask (s)he was wearing.

I suppose the show could be over if ‘A’ is finally revealed, although there are many other directions they could go in. It wouldn’t be the same though and I, for one, would lose interest. Part of the fun of this show is the hunt.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t yet watched the episode, don’t read any further. You’ve been warned!

What we got from tonight’s finale was everything that Alison knew about the night she disappeared. All the questions about that night were satisfied, Spencer was cleared of a possible murder, and we saw Mona as the cray-cray she was before Radley. We also discovered why Ali didn’t reveal herself to her BFF’s in the first place, and what made her come back to keep an eye on them.

This is what we know:

• Ali had been receiving threats from ‘A’ since the night of the first Halloween party that we watched. After finding a boatload of videos on Ian’s laptop, Ali decides to go on the offense and try to find out who ‘A’ is herself. By using the information from Ian’s laptop she began a process of elimination.

Alison DiLaurentis (Sasha Pieterse)
Photo: ABC FAMILY/Eric McCandless

• Ali drugged the girls with sleeping pills the night she disappeared. Spencer was hopped up on speed so the drugs didn’t take on her.
• Ali wanted to break up Ian and Melissa because she thought Ian really fell for her. Spencer gets involved and the two girls ended up arguing that night. During a scuffle, Spencer’s pills fall to the ground and Ali finds out that she’s been using. Spencer begs Ali for her silence which Ali agrees to, and tells Spence to go back to the barn and sleep it off. Spencer is cleared of murder because she was fast asleep when Ali returns later that night.
• Ali and Cece were partying in a bar where Ali first meets Ezra. By lying about who she was, she wins him and he falls for her. When he finds out that she’d been lying to him, he meets her at the barn on the mystery night and confronts her, breaking things off with her. But he had already told her he was writing a book about her, confirming what Ezra told Aria. Ezra is cleared.
• Ali meets Ian at Kissing Rock on mystery night and she threatens that if he and his friends don’t leave her alone, she’d leak what was on the laptop to everyone, and he’d go to jail. Ian tells her that if she leaked the information, it would take down many people in the town including her family. (I’d like to know what was on that flash drive, now.)
• When Ali left the barn on mystery night, and returned home, her mother was watching for her in the window of their home. She had not wanted Ali to go out that night at all. She had received a phone call that had her very, very worried about something or someone. As Ali watched her mother, Jessica’s face turns to one of horror just as someone comes up behind Alison and knocks her on the head with a rock.
• Ali remembers trying to scream out to her mother that she was still alive, but Jessica continued to bury her. Ali remembers hearing her talking to someone. She kept repeating “What have you done? What have you done?”
• Mrs. Grunwald did pull Ali out of that grave and took her to the hospital, but Ali was so afraid that she ran.
• Mona catches up with Alison on the road and takes her to a motel. She tells Alison that if ‘A’ wanted her dead, let ‘A’ thing she was really dead. Mona helps Alison disappear, but it was her revenge on Ali for all the abuse.
• Alison’s decision to stop running came when Hannah got hurt by Mona, ending up in the hospital. Alison was horrified that her friend had been hurt so badly, so she visits her in the hospital. She pulled Emily out of the smokey garage and she was there the night of the barn fire and pulled one of the girls to safety. Someone else had already pulled the rest of the girls out by the time she got there.
• The night Ian died, it was Alison who pushed him off the bell tower, but she said he was still alive after that – she saw him. When Hannah was mowed down by Mona, Alison visited her in the hospital. That was the first time Ali appeared to anyone. She told the girls that she was so worried about Hannah, and couldn’t stand it when she saw what Mona had done to her, she decided to stay in town but remain hidden.

Other things we found out:

• Peter and Veronica Hastings were covering up for Spencer because they think she killed the Alison during one of her drugged blackouts.
• Jessica DiLaurentis let the Hastings’ believe that their daughter killed Ali.
• Melissa Hastings knows that Spencer didn’t kill that girl, but she knows who did and whispered something to her father about it.
• Cece is taken into custody and when Holbrook questions her, she tells him that she knows who killed the girl in the grave. She tells him it’s the same person who is still after her friend Alison. She also tells him that Ali is alive.
• Holbrook has a photo taken the night the girls first saw Alison at the town celebration in Ravenswood. He shows it to Veronica as proof that Ali is indeed, alive.

Questions going into season 5:

• What does Holbrook know about the Hastings? Is it just the Spencer secret or something else?
• What did Melissa know and pass on to her dad?
• Who was Mrs. D protecting?
• What did the phone call tell Mrs.D? “How could this be? When did this happen? Please send someone?”
• Is Jason ‘A’ after all?
• Is there another DiLaurentis child that Ali didn’t know about? One that hated her? One that was unstable?
• Of course the final, perpetual question of who is ‘A’?

I have a theory, although I don’t know how sound it is. It sounded to me as though Mrs. D were afraid that someone she thought was under control, escaped and was now after Alison. Who could that be other than another child, whether that means Jason or someone else? Why else would she try turning the blame for Ali’s murder on Spencer, even going so far as to plant false memories in Spencer’s brain? Fans have tossed around the twin idea since season one. I’ve never read the books so if there is a twin there I don’t know about it. There are holes in my theory, of course, but it’s fun to speculate, isn’t it?

We’re also left to wonder if Ezra will survive a gunshot wound, and if Mrs. D is dead or buried alive like she did to her own daughter. We also wonder if Alison is back in Rosewood to stay. Personally, I hope so. I’d love to see all five girls working together to solve the ‘A’ problem.

I’m very curious to know what all of you other sleuths out there are thinking. Can we solve the puzzles and beat the Pretty Little Liars writers?

The show returns Tuesday, June 10^th, at 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. ET/PT.