Could Ezra Be The New Villain?

We're this much closer to the premiere of Season 6B of Pretty Little Liars, and yet we're still so very far away from learning the identity of the new villain. As we learned in the Season 6A finale, Cece Drake — a.k.a. Ali's secret sister Charlotte DiLaurentis — revealed that she was the mastermind behind the A game, but decided to hang her hoodie up and seek professional help so she could have a real relationship with her sister. In the flash forward at the end of the episode, it was revealed that Charlotte wasn't who we would be running from in the second half of the season: the new Big Bad is a guy, and he may be one we already know. Could that mean that so-called "Uber A" is Ezra Fitz? He's certainly not the same person we knew in the new season.

Though Ezra did not appear in the flash forward, the actor who portrays him, Ian Harding, did reveal a lot of details about his future on the Pretty Little Liars special "5 Years Forward." In the special, Harding revealed that Ezra followed Nicole, Emily's humanitarian friend, to Thailand, but that his life wasn't all charity work and rainbows. Harding said that something tragic happened to Ezra, and that his new happiness was taken away "very suddenly and very violently." As a result, Ezra turned to alcohol to cope. That's not all: the promos for the new season show a very angry Ezra, one who screams at the Liars and tells them to "get out" of his apartment. He's hardly the sensitive writer type we've seen for six seasons on this show.

Ezra's recent personality shift could just be a part of his general character arc, but it also might be a hint that something is seriously wrong with this guy. Could things have gone so south for Ezra that he decides to pick up where Charlotte left off and harass the girls as the new "B?" There's one big clue that suggests it's possible.

According to creator I. Marlene King's interview with MTV News, the new villain on Pretty Little Liars is motivated by "a death," and will stop at nothing to find out why someone died and who is responsible. We already know that Ezra lost something in his life, and from the way Harding was discussing Ezra's trauma, it seems that this something might just be a person. Perhaps Ezra is the one who becomes the new villain because he believes that the girls are somehow responsible for the death of a person that he loves.

Would the show turn Ezra into the ultimate villain? It's not outside the realm of possibility, but we'll have to wait and see just how different this new Ezra Fitz really is when the series returns in January.

Images: ABC Family; Giphy (2)