Pretty Little Liars fans have been on quite the rollercoaster over the past five seasons. With Big A allegedly being revealed in just a week (I’ve been burned before), the writers have me thinking about their wrap up: How will Pretty Little Liars end? The show has two whole seasons until their previously announced series finale, and, boy, can a lot happen in two seasons. I just don’t see the whole thing just stopping.
There’s been too much pain and too much heartache and too many hoodies for A to just drop the game and leave the liars alone. A has dedicated a lot of (wo)man-hours to ruining the liars’ lives: That’s quite the commitment. When the liars head off to their respective colleges, does A retire? Does s/he just move to Boca Raton and call it a day? Doubtful. I, like many PLL fans, have constructed my own ideas of how the series will come to a close, and, as it always does, everything comes back to Mona.
Simultaneously both the orchestrator of all this horror and the perceived victim, Mona has been playing everyone in Rosewood like a fiddle since she popped up all pigtailed on our screens. After many hours of soul-searching and avoiding open windows (lest I end up like Toby’s mom), I’ve decided that Mona will decide how this all ends… because she’s still in Radley.
I don’t mean to go all St. Elsewhere on you here (the show was a long-running hospital drama that ended by telling the audience everything they’d seen for the past six years was imagined by an autistic boy staring at a snow globe. Seriously.), but Pretty Little Liars will end with Mona in Radley, because she’s been in Radley since she was committed at the end of Season 2. Everything that has happened since then has been made up in Mona’s mind. I know this seems unlikely, but just take this journey with me. I promise everything will be OK.
It’s been long established that Mona absolutely hates Ali and the liars. After all, before she disappeared, Ali made outcast Mona’s life a living hell. Mona hates Spencer, Emily, and Aria because they are friends with Ali and because they took Hanna away from her as soon as all of this A business started, leaving Mona all alone once again. Mona is high-strung, a genius, and extremely volatile. Add some pressure or distress you’ve got yourself a perfect cocktail for some crazy.
Mona is completely capable of all of the depraved stuff we’ve seen from A for the past three seasons, from collecting the liars’ blood and stuffing a note in Hanna’s tooth to giving Emily a creepy (but well done!) massage and blowing up Toby’s house. And what better way to become an all-powerful, omniscient narrator than to make everything up in your head? She’s been plotting and planning since day one, so I’m willing to bet that Mona would really have four seasons worth of dastardly deeds all pent up.
Things have taken a little bit of a turn this season. Since Mona faked her own death, all of the attention has been on her, or, really, the lack of her. At first, the liars were trying to track down her killer, and now, given Mike’s confession that she orchestrated her disappearance, they’re just trying to find her. Forget Ali: Mona’s the main focus of Pretty Little Liars. The only time that Mona was ever first and foremost in the liars’ minds is when she was trying to mow them all down with her car (guys, remember when they went glamping?).
Now, Mona is ruling the roost: She’s the one who is desired by everyone else. They miss her! They love her! They have to save her! Where is she? The liars have never spent this much time thinking of Mona and, sadly for Mona, the only way she can get that time dedicated to her is to make it all up, rocking slowly back and forth in her room at Radley. And that, my friends, is how Pretty Little Liars will end.
Images: Eric McCandless/ABC Family; Giphy (3)
