Another Pretty Little Liars season, another sort-of handsome, ambiguously shady character to contend with. This time around, we’ve been introduced to Jonny Raymond on Pretty Little Liars, a hipster nomad artist who’s decided to live in the Hastings’ backyard barn, as if that were a place that could even potentially be inspiring to an artist (All of those equestrian details! So many tasteful tartans!).
As a refresher: we first met Jonny at The Brew or whatever Ezra is calling his new coffeehouse/book shop/sock hop venture. Jonny talks to Spencer at The Brew’s reopening party, first mistaking her for her sister, Melissa (though how did he even know who to look for, eh?), telling her that Spencer’s mom is letting him rent out the barn as a place to live. If you’re confused about how they even know Jonny, you’re right to be, but Jonny provides Spencer quickly with an answer: something about her mother suing Jonny’s grandmother’s nursing home for his family. Litigation. Neat.
Look, I’ve watched this show since the very beginning (before it got to the levels of crazy it reaches in present seasons), and there’s just no way that Jonny Raymond is not bad news for the liars. In Rosewood, handsome + mysterious = pain + suffering. Just look at Jason DiLaurentis or Detective Wilden. It’s sort of like the crazy/hot scale from How I Met Your Mother: The men on PLL can be mysterious and handsome… but once you cross over the axis, you’re in trouble. Let me tell you why Jonny should ride on out on the Vespa he arrived on:
Everyone Who Has Ever Lived In The Barn Is Evil
Let’s just talk about past precedent here. Who are the people who have crashed in the Hastings’ barn? Melissa, Wren, and Ian. Melissa, though Spencer’s sister, is a lying liar who faked a pregnancy and may or may not have killed someone (I say she did, even though the victim could be anyone — she would murder a waiter for placing her water on the table incorrectly). Ian, as we all know, was more or less A in the earliest seasons of the show, and he had an affair with Ali, who was a zygote at the time and he was like 45. Wren? Sweet, sweet, British Wren? His involvement as a doctor at Radley Sanitarium is dicey, at best. There’s more that we don’t know about him, and none of it is good. That barn is like the house from The Amityville Horror: If you live in it, bad things will happen. Look out, Jonny.
He Has Secrets… And Too Many Regrets
Jonny’s conversation with Spencer is not the first conversation he has with a liar: You see, Jonny was acting as a part-time contractor and helping set up The Brew (and I hope Ezra is paying him well because I would be like, “Hey, I’m just a barista, man. Not a carpenter”). After he asked Aria if the sign he was hanging was straight and not to lie to him so he’ll “live to regret it”, he adds that he regrets a lot and basically lives his life swimming in a sea of misgivings. Just what we need in Rosewood. Another person with way too many secrets. Hard pass.
He’s A Nomad With No Real Ties
Though we don’t know a whole lot about Jonny at this point, we do know that he’s traveled around the world. After barging into the Hastings’ main house to look for garbage/compost scraps for his art (eggshell-and-coffee-grind mixed-media collages, anyone?), Jonny gets to chatting with Spencer. He’s just way too talkative, and he mentions that he’s spent time in Italy and thinks college is a waste of time. Go back to Burning Man, hippie. Ivy League-ready Spencer firstly is enchanted by all of this and secondly doesn’t think that this guy waltzing into her life from nowhere is weird. Spencer is going through some things, clearly. With no backstory and just a handful of vague, cool-sounding stories, Jonny is totes covering something up.
Will Jonny bring more doom to Rosewood? Rumors are floating around among fans that Toby and Spencer will break up and Jonny will be her rebound: Is this the start of Spencer’s patchouli phase? Either way, it all spells trouble.
Images: Eric McCandless/ABC Family; giphy (4)
