Mary Drake's Past May Explain An Old 'PLL' Mystery

We finally found out a little bit of backstory on the highly anticipated Pretty Little Liars twin Mary Drake, and it turns out that Jessica DiLaurentis' sister has an even more chilling past than anyone could have expected. After learning in the Season 6 finale that Mary was a former patient at Radley Sanitarium, Pretty Little Liars finally unveiled why Mary was sent away, and it hardly bodes well for the Liars. According to Mary's file, she went to Radley for the first time after a kid she was babysitting died on her watch. That was all the info we got in the premiere episode about this tragic event, but I think the show might have already introduced us to the child that Mary was watching when tragedy struck. Could Mary have been babysitting the twins from the Halloween episode?

When I heard that Mary had been involved in the death of a child she was babysitting, my thoughts immediately went to the blonde twins from the Season 2 Halloween episode, "The First Secret." To recap, these twins are from a scary story that Alison tells Hanna's babysitting charge. In the story, the two blonde twins are playing with dolls, when one girl gets jealous and stabs the other with a knife, killing her. It's later suggested that Alison's scary story could have been true, as one of the girls from the story visits Hanna's mother, Ashley, in ghost form.

In the story, Alison makes it clear that the parents were away when this happened — but who would leave children that young alone? Maybe there's more to that tale than Alison knew. The scene physically looks like it took place years ago, so what if the events of the Halloween story actually took place when Mary was a teenager? Maybe it was Mary who was asked to babysit the twin girls, only to be blamed when one of the twins kills the other. Of course, the death might not really be Mary's fault at all — maybe a jealous Jessica accused Mary of being involved in the killing, when Mary's only crime was not paying super close attention to the clearly troubled twin.

It sounds like we have a lot Mary's backstory to unpack in Season 7, and I wouldn't be surprised if she's connected to Pretty Little Liars storylines that go way back to before anyone even knew she existed.

Image: Eric McCandless/Freeform