After seven seasons of dead ends, dollhouses, disappearances, and more black hoodies than I owned in my high school “emo” days, Pretty Little Liars is coming to a close. It’s all over from here, folks, with the mystery and intrigue wrapped up in a big, red, A-sized bow (well, most of the mystery, anyway). Because I am still processing it all myself, I’m going to send it out there into the universe — what does the Pretty Little Liars ending mean? Obviously, spoilers ahead for the Pretty Little Liars finale.
When the show first premiered on what was then ABC Family, I thought it was great, but I never thought that it would grow legs like it did. I’m sure that none of the cast and crew did, either — it was cool and edgy and zeitgeist-y in a way that probably only The O.C. was a half-decade before it. Everybody was watching it, and thanks to social media and its sharp increase during the Pretty Little Liars years, everyone was talking about it. I could never relate to the characters — they were definitely too archetypal in the beginning — but I was drawn in like Aria to inappropriately big, dangly earrings and older men. And now it’s all over!
Let's talk about the very last scene of the finale — it featured Willa, Addison, and the other current teenagers from Rosewood High School (aka the mean girls, aka the popular girls), and they were all sleeping in a guest house on a thundery night, much like the Liars were in the finale. When the sleeping girls wake up, Addison and Willa are gone. Willa comes back, only to reveal that she can't find Addison. And she thought she heard her scream.
Is Pretty Little Liars setting us up for a spinoff? That last scene is the very first scene of the whole series, and the last few episodes of Season 7B have done a great job of setting Addison up as the next Alison of Rosewood (even their names are similar). It wouldn't make sense to introduce a character like Addison unless the show was planning to use it, so I'm smelling this full-circle scene as a way to set the stage for something more. Because we can never really have too much Pretty Little Liars.
