Can’t remember all the secrets from Pretty Little Liars season 1? Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered with our ultimate guide to the beginning.

The #PLLEndGame is drawing ever nearer, and we’re getting ready for the end of Pretty Little Liars by taking a look back at the past seasons. Obviously, we’re starting with PLL season 1! We want to go back through every message the Liars received from A, the beginning of our favorite ships, every crazy theory, and even every seemingly meaningless moment, so we’re fully ready for the final 10 episodes.

If you’ve never watched Pretty Little Liars before, we won’t spoil anything beyond the season that we’re talking about, so feel free to watch/read along with us! Let’s dive into all of the texts, flashbacks, kisses, and secrets that made up Pretty Little Liars season 1!

Major storylines

Pretty Little Liars season 1 began on the one year anniversary of Alison DiLaurentis’ disappearance. Her four best friends grew apart in that year, but Aria’s return from Iceland, the anniversary, and the fact that they started receiving mysterious texts, brought them back together. Trying to find out who was sending the texts, uncovering what happened to Alison, and of course, the Jenna thing, were just some of the big issues that plagued the Liars throughout Pretty Little Liars season 1.

Who is A?

The Liars start receiving their first texts from A in the very first episode of Pretty Little Liars. The subject matter of each girl’s first text has something to do with their friendship with Alison.

For Aria, it’s about her dad’s affair, which only Alison knew about. For Emily, it’s about her sexuality, which she hid from everyone but Ali, whom she loved. For Spencer, it’s about her relationship with Ian, which Ali threatened to tell Melissa about. For Hanna, it’s about her being overweight, which everyone knew about, but Alison helped her overcome (and also teased her about, relentlessly so…).

The girls initially keep quiet about the fact that they’re receiving messages, since the subjects are so secret, but eventually come clean. At Alison’s funeral, they all receive the same text: “I’m still here bitches, and I know everything.”

For every havoc wreaking message that A sent to the Liars, go to the “Every A message” section of this guide, on page 3!

The messages are, at least originally, made to seem like Alison is sending them, but the Liars quickly abandon that theory and begin searching for new suspects. They actually believe, at first, that A is the person who killed Alison. Because of “the Jenna thing,” Jenna and Toby are the first to be accused.

Jenna takes a backseat, at the beginning, since the girls assume she wouldn’t be ideally suited to A’s style of surveillance. Other than Emily, who develops a friendship with Toby after he stands up to Ben, everyone pretty much stays on the Toby train until after Homecoming. At Homecoming, Toby ends up hurting Emily while he’s trying to explain “the Jenna thing,” and disappears after taking her to the hospital.

Emily panics when she passes Toby’s house the next day and sees his beat up motorcycle, with Toby nowhere in sight. Spencer is just starting to relish the fact that A is gone when they get a text from A saying, “Thanks for getting Toby out of my way,” basically confirming his innocence. Whoops. Back to the drawing board.

The next big suspect comes from Camp Mona. Hanna was uninvited from the party, because Mona received a text from A saying that Hanna got liposuction, so she bravely hides out in the woods to try to catch A in the act. She sees Noel writing, “I See You,” on Ezra’s car while he’s making out with Aria, so she assumes he’s A. He was apparently just being a creep and following Aria, but Hanna still gets hit by a car for “knowing too much.”

Camp Mona also helps the girls realize that A and Ali’s killer aren’t the same person. A leads the girls to Wright’s playground, where the “Ali + Ian” tree is standing. However, when they go back, the tree is cut down, presumably by someone different than A.

A quickly nips Hanna’s Noel theory in the bud by planting stolen test answers in his locker and texting, “A is for Alison not amateur.” This move actually ends up saving Aria and Ezra from Noel’s threats, and just adds to the confusion of who A is, and what their motives are.

After Noel’s name gets crossed off the suspect list, the Liars’ focus shifts to trying to find out who killed Alison, with A actually helping them in that pursuit, in some cases. Noel is their last, serious suspect in Pretty Little Liars season 1.

Who killed Alison?

As soon as Alison’s body is found, Detective Wilden is hot on the case. From day one, he’s just as corrupt and shady as you remember him! He wastes no time before starting to sketchily show up at the high school to question the girls, without lawyers present, exploiting Hanna’s mom’s love for her daughter, and making grand accusations.

Luckily, the FBI eventually take over the case. They come into the school after receiving a piece of the infamous, “I know you wanna kiss me,” video. This video leads to the first murder suspect, as Ali is wearing Toby’s sweater in the video, which surprises all of the Liars. Things only get worse for Toby when the girls discover his “901: Free at Last” tattoo, since that’s the day that Alison went missing.

Toby eventually explains to Emily that 09/01 is the day that he ended things with Jenna, and that he went to see Ali that night to thank her for freeing him from her clutches. He plans to run away but hopes to meet Emily to explain further, first. The police find him as he’s waiting for her, outside of the church, and arrest him.

Toby is soon released because the blood evidence on his sweater was “corrupted”, and from then on out, after the Liars receive the full “I know you wanna kiss me” video from A and realize that Alison was seeing Ian Thomas, the suspect list for Ali’s killer is basically whittled down to one.

The evidence against Ian begins piling up. They find out that he was at the Hilton Head resort the same weekend that Alison lied about being there, he and Melissa elope and Spencer begins to believe that the marriage has been forced, and Spencer’s laptop gets stolen from the school gym, where Ian works, and is returned with the video deleted.

Because of all the evidence, the Liars don’t hesitate to act when they find an old trophy of Ian’s with blood on it in a props box, at school. They turn it into the police and begin to feel like they finally have closure. Of course, closure doesn’t exist in Rosewood, so the next day, the police show up to the school and inform the girls that the trophy had rat’s blood on it, and accuse them of lying.

Since Spencer was the one who turned in the trophy, and the one who called the Hilton Head to get the information, the police take a special interest in her. They find out that she lied about seeing Ian the summer that Ali went missing. They get a search warrant against her, and begin to treat her like a suspect! Spencer’s mom tells her that the search warrant is just a scare tactic, but they end up finding threads from Toby’s sweater in Spencer’s friendship bracelet. Ian, pleased by the new suspect in the case, tells Spencer to run away, but our girl Spence sees right through him, knowing that would make her look more guilty.

Things look pretty dire after the trophy incident, but when Emily finds a key that Ali surreptitiously hid under the snowglobe she gave her, everything changes. The key leads the Liars to a storage locker which holds a flash drive with more of Ian’s videos. The videos incriminate almost everyone in the town, in one way or another, especially Ian for taking them all.

They text Ian to tell him that they have the videos in an attempt to trap him. Emily, Hanna and Aria invite Garrett (Emily’s former friend/neighbour, now Rosewood PD) to come along to the park where they told Ian to meet them, as they believe he’s on their side, and wait for Ian to show up. Unfortunately, someone else shows up to retrieve the flash drive, because Ian is at the church, with Spencer.

Ian was supposed to take Melissa to the church, but didn’t show up, so Spencer had to take her. On the way, they get in a car accident, and since Melissa’s pregnant, they rush her to the hospital. Melissa was also pregnant the weekend that she, Ian, and Alison were all at the Hilton Head. Melissa and Ian were there to get an abortion.

Spencer goes to the church to get Melissa’s phone, and Ian is there waiting for her. He’s extremely angry about the videos, and actually tries to kill Spencer in the bell tower! He doesn’t confess to killing Alison, but says that “she just hit her head and she never woke up.” A hooded figure pushes Ian off the platform, and he gets caught up in the ropes. Spencer thinks he’s dead, but when the police go into the tower, he’s gone, leaving everyone thinking that the Liars are, well, liars.

The Jenna thing

We first hear of “the Jenna thing” when Jenna arrives at Alison’s funeral. The Liars were surprised to see her, as she had been away at a school for the blind in Philadelphia, but she returns to Rosewood High, after the funeral.

We quickly find out that “the Jenna thing” happened when Alison was still around. Ali claimed that Toby was spying on the girls through her bedroom window, and although the other girls were hesitant, she threw a “stink bomb” into his garage.

She said she knew nobody was inside, but it turns out, Toby and Jenna were both inside, and whatever Alison threw in there caused a huge fire. Jenna went blind from the accident, and Alison blackmailed Toby into taking the blame. Alison knew that Jenna and Toby, who were step siblings, were in a romantic/physical relationship (we later found out that Jenna was forcing him into it), and threatened to expose him. Toby went to juvi and didn’t return until after the funeral.

Jenna, for good reason, is not the biggest fan of the Liars, and makes her contempt for them pretty evident. The girls spend a lot of Pretty Little Liars season 1 being nervous when Jenna enters a room, and also wondering if she’s actually blind, or just pretending.

The Liars find out about Jenna and Toby’s relationship when Hanna steals Toby’s file from their psychiatrist’s office. Jenna finds out about the file, and even though she doesn’t like that Toby and Emily are friends, she begs Emily to keep the contents secret. She states that “Toby is troubled,” and that she wouldn’t want the truth about him getting out. Aria had already thrown the file into the river, so Emily tells her that it’s been destroyed.

Because of Jenna’s dislike of the Liars and Alison, the girls are shocked when Jason DiLaurentis informs them that Jenna wishes to speak at Alison’s memorial dedication. Jenna also told Jason that Spencer was the one who threw the stink bomb into the garage, the night that she lost her sight.

During her speech, she reveals that Alison came to visit her in the hospital after the accident. She talks about how everyone misunderstood Alison, but that she was the strongest person she knew. At the end of Pretty Little Liars season 1, we find out that Alison actually went to blackmail Jenna with Ian’s videos, and to determine if she was A, so unless Jenna was still afraid of Alison, we’re not really sure what she was talking about.

When Toby tries to escape, to avoid arrest, it’s Jenna that turns him in. She says that she wanted to avoid him looking guilty, but when she comes on to him, it looks like she just wanted to keep him close by. Toby rejects her, and tells her that he’ll never touch her like that again.

Toby was never exactly on “Team Jenna,” but after this, and after Spencer begins tutoring him, he fully joins the Liars’ side. He finds a braille message printed out of Jenna’s computer and gives it to Spencer to decode. The message contains the number 214. He overheard her talking on the phone about Spencer, when he found it.

214 turns out to be Caleb’s locker combination! Jenna paid Caleb to “make himself available” to Hanna, to try to find out where Ali had hidden a key. Hanna slaps Jenna when she finds out, and it’s pretty amazing, because nobody messes with our Haleb! The key that Jenna was looking for, which the Liars eventually found, was for the storage locker that held Ian’s videos.

Following the discovery of the videos, the true reason for Alison’s visit to Jenna is revealed to the Liars. Jenna came back to Rosewood, once Ali’s body was found, because she could. Ali made her promise to stay away because she was jealous that Ian also made videos of her.

In the Pretty Little Liars season 1 finale, we find out that Garrett and Jenna are in a relationship, and they talk about how they’ll “lose everything if this video gets out.”

Who is Alison?

We meet the Liars on the night that Alison disappears, and then promptly fast forward one year. We don’t get to spend much time with Ali, in real time, but we learn about her through flashbacks of that night, as well as through other memories the Liars shared with her.

The night that Ali disappeared, she showed up to Spencer’s barn full of life and mischief. She pranked the girls upon her arrival, made slight jabs at their weak spots (telling Emily that she loved the new Beyoncé video “a little too much”), and encouraged the girls to tell their secrets. “It keeps us close,” she said, famously.

Once the Liars were asleep, Ali slipped out. We know she met with Toby and he saw her get in a car with “some guy,” and we know she met with Ian. That’s about as far as we get in Pretty Little Liars season 1. Hanna, Aria and Emily wake up to Spencer returning to the barn, saying she heard Alison scream. We also know that Ali and Spencer fought, earlier that night, about telling Melissa the truth about Ian. Spencer was, apparently, the only one that stood up to Alison, and she was a little bit afraid of her, for it.

In other flashbacks, we see Alison making fun of “Loser Mona,” right before discovering Byron’s affair alongside Aria, kissing Emily in the library and then later rejecting her, pressuring Spencer to tell Melissa about her and Ian, and encouraging Hanna to purge after binge eating.

We also see flashbacks of all five girls, together. It’s clear that Ali is the ringleader of the group, and that the rest of them admire and adore her. Despite knowing how forceful and manipulative she could be, they all still feel that way until they remember the night when Alison took them all to a frat party. They thought Ian had pushed a girl down the stairs, but begin to wonder if it was actually Alison who did it, because she was jealous that she was spending time with Ian.

In Pretty Little Liars season 1, we do see Alison in one scene that’s not a flashback. When Hanna’s in the hospital after getting hit by A’s car, she sees Alison in the middle of the night. Alison tells her that together, the Liars already know who A is. She also says that “telling the truth to the wrong person at the wrong time is how I ended up where I am. Take it from me, you’re always better off with a really good lie.”

Love and friendship

Pretty Little Liars season 1 is where all of our favorite ships began! Well, I guess unless you’re a Spaleb shipper. Romance, friendship, and love have always been central themes in Pretty Little Liars. All of the Liars have had more than their share of kisses, over the years, but let’s look back at some of their first ones.

Aria’s love life

For Aria, it all begins (and hopefully ends) with Ezra. I’m sure you need no reminder, but they meet in a bar in Pretty Little Liars episode 1, talk about Iceland and writing, and immediately hit it off (and also immediately make out).

Things get complicated for Ezria pretty quickly when Aria discovers that Ezra is her teacher. The beginning of Pretty Little Liars season 1 consists of them trying to decide if they should go for it, or not, all while knowing that they probably shouldn’t.

Of course, they do go for it, anyway, and things go pretty well up until Ezra reads a text from A on Aria’s phone about Aria getting to “do the teacher.” Thinking Aria is telling people about him, and worrying for his career, he breaks up with her.

Ezra goes away for a while to try to find another job (although Aria doesn’t know that) and she goes on a date with Noel Kahn, as a favor to Hanna. They actually kind of date for a few minutes, but Ezria reunites in the car at Camp Mona, after A gives Aria Ezra’s “B-26” poem, and Noel Kahn’s been sketchy ever since. His sketchiness begins with trying to blackmail Ezra into giving him a better grade. Luckily, he’s thwarted by A, when stolen test answers are found in his locker.

Things go fairly smoothly for Ezria until Aria finds pictures of Jackie, Ezra’s ex-fiance, on his computer. He manages to ease her mind, but when he gets a new job at Hollis College, and Aria finds out that Jackie is also a teacher there, she accuses him of lying to her.

Emily’s love life

When we first meet Emily, she’s dating Ben No-Last-Name, and denying her sexuality. She starts hanging out with Maya when she moves into Ali’s old house, and the two immediately become close. Emily breaks up with Ben when he tries to force himself on her in the girls’ locker room at school, when Toby jumps in and saves the day. After that, Emily and Maya go to Noel Kahn’s party together, and they share a steamy kiss in the photo booth.

A steals the pictures from the photo booth and puts them in Emily’s chemistry book (among other places), and Emily starts freaking out about being outed. She tells Maya that she needs some space to figure things out, and Maya, very sweetly, says that she’ll wait.

Emily’s forced to confront her feelings at Homecoming, when Hanna finds out about her and Maya (thanks to A). She decides that she wants to pursue something with Maya, and asks her on a date. Things go well until Pam, who’s still struggling to come to terms with Emily’s sexuality, finds a joint in Maya’s bag and she ends up getting sent to “juvi camp.”

Emily and Maya keep in touch, but communication becomes more and more strained as time goes on and Emily starts to worry. Enter, Paige McCullers. Believe it or not, Paige started off as a sweet, encouraging, swim captain, but within about 10 minutes of realizing that Emily was getting all the attention, she turned against her.

She starts off by making pointed comments about Em’s sexuality, and escalates to trying to drown Emily in the pool! Sweet, right? Emily’s just getting used to her new enemy, when Paige shows up at her house in the middle of the night. She says she’s sorry and that she hates herself, then drops out of the “swim-off” the two were supposed to have.

Next, Paige jumps into Emily’s car, uninvited, and kisses her, saying, “don’t tell.” Eventually they have some real conversations and Paige can admit that she likes Emily, but not in public. They do go on one date, but it’s out of town, and they keep it pretty PG. Emily likes Paige too, but is concerned that a secret relationship would make her feel like she’s back in the closet, so things don’t go much further with Paily in Pretty Little Liars season 1.

Through flashbacks, and Emily’s own admission, we also see that Emily was in love with Alison. They kissed once, in the library, and Alison always played with her emotions (hiding the fact that she loved Emily too). When Emily tried to kiss her again, Alison rejected her, and Emily wrote a mean letter to her, before she disappeared.

Hanna’s love life

At the beginning of Pretty Little Liars season 1, Hanna is dating Sean Ackard. It’s a classic popular guy/popular girl pairing, but before Alison disappeared and Hanna changed up her look, Sean was the guy she always pined after.

Hanna views “getting” Sean as a huge accomplishment, but still feels inadequate since he won’t sleep with her. Sean is waiting for marriage, but Hanna thinks he still sees her as “Hefty Hanna,” despite him trying to convince her otherwise. She tries to seduce him at Noel Kahn’s party, but he rejects her, yet again, so she steals his keys and crashes his car.

That obviously put a damper on their relationship, but they eventually reconcile and Hanna accompanies Sean to his “Real Love Waits,” club, where she meets Lucas. The two become fast friends, with Lucas helping Hanna sell her belongings for extra money, but it’s clear that Lucas wants more from her.

This leads to Lucas and Sean fighting at Hanna’s surprise party, and Hanna and Sean ultimately breaking up when A pays Hanna to dance with Lucas at the Dance-A-Thon. Even with Sean out of the picture, Lucas still can’t catch a break, since Caleb shows up shortly after the break up.

Hanna finds out that Caleb, the school’s resident hacker, is living at the school because of his bad foster home situation. Being the perfect little ray of light that she is, she invites him to live in her basement, where her mom won’t find him. He’s planning to go to Arizona to find his mom, so it’s only a temporary situation.

Things heat up between Hanna and Caleb when Hanna’s forced to jump into the shower with him, but also just because they grow to really appreciate and respect each other. Neither of them is what the other would’ve expected. When Ashley finds out about Caleb’s staying there, Hanna and Caleb both leave and tent out, where after months of frustration with Sean, Hanna finally loses her v-card to Caleb.

After Caleb helps Ashley out of a sticky situation with Ms. Potter’s “nephew,” she invites him to stay. At this point, Caleb calls someone and says “I can’t do this anymore.” It turns out, that someone was Jenna, who had paid Caleb to spy on Hanna. Hanna finds out and promptly ends things, saying she can never trust him again.

Caleb leaves for Arizona, but not before writing a letter for Hanna. Unfortunately, he delivers the letter to Mona, who throws it in the trash without telling her BFF.

Spencer’s love life

Spencer’s romantic life on Pretty Little Liars begins with her sister’s fiancé, Wren. They form a connection because they’re not quite as uptight as the rest of the Hastings clan. Wren kisses her, Melissa sees, and she gives him the boot. Wren continues to be shady as hell when he tells Spencer that he “fell for the wrong sister,” and shows up at her house in the middle of the night.

Then, there was Alex. The ball boy at Spencer’s country club. They have a cute little romance, but eventually break up because of interference from others. Melissa, angry that Spencer stole her Russian Revolution essay, tells Alex that Spencer only brought him to Homecoming to make their parents mad. A puts the final nail in the coffin when they accept a prestigious job offer on Alex’s behalf, and he thinks Spencer’s responsible.

Spencer gains some sympathy for Toby when she, herself, is suspected of Ali’s murder. She responds to his request for a tutor, and although Jenna puts a stop to that pretty quickly, they continue to talk and work together. They end up spending the night in a hotel because they think Jenna’s in the next room. They adorably play Scrabble, and share their first kiss in the morning.

They are told not to speak to each other anymore when the case against Spencer starts getting more serious, but they’re clearly still very connected to each other at the end of Pretty Little Liars season 1.

Through flashbacks, and Spencer’s own admission, we also see that Spencer had a relationship with Ian after be broke up with Melissa, in the past.

Other notable relationships

Minor storylines

These topics took up a lot of screen time in Pretty Little Liars season 1, but aren’t overly important to the main plot of the show!

Emily’s coming out story

Emily telling her mom that she thinks something’s wrong with her is probably the second most heartbreaking thing to ever happen on Pretty Little Liars. The most heartbreaking thing, is how her parents react when they actually find out about her sexuality.

Pam receives the pictures of Emily and Maya kissing from A, but basically ignores them until Emily actually tells her parents that she’s gay. At first, they try to be supportive, but she overhears them talking about how “wrong” it is, and Pam eventually just outright says that it makes her sick to her stomach. Throughout all of it, Emily remains strong and confident, and actually says she’s ashamed of her mother, at one point.

Pam shows the first signs of coming around when Nick McCullers (Paige’s dad) shows up at the school and accuses Emily of getting preferential treatment because of her sexuality. Pam stands up to Nick, on Emily’s behalf, and says that she’s trying to understand.

On a more positive note, Hanna also receives the pictures from A, and tries to gently help Emily out of the closet. When Em eventually tells the Liars about her love for Alison, they’re nothing but supportive.

Hanna’s shoplifting

Somehow, Hanna and Mona have been getting away with some pretty significant shoplifting in their small town of Rosewood, for the entire year following Alison’s disappearance. Hanna eventually gets caught, and her mom starts dating the oh-so-creepy Detective Wilden to help her get out of trouble.

Ashley puts an end to it when she sees Wilden taking Hanna’s bracelet from her bag. Hanna admits to her mother that she started shoplifting to get her dad’s attention, since he left them for another family.

Hastings family values

We get our first taste of the Hastings’ intensity when we find out that their idea of a “game” is one upping each other with regards to their achievements. Spencer has always felt pressured to live up to her family’s high expectations and to follow in Melissa’s footsteps as a prodigy.

This pressure leads her to steal one of Melissa’s history papers on the Russian Revolution. She wins an award for it, and because of the award, her parents barely care that it’s plagiarized. Melissa, on the other hand, is still a little pissed about the Wren thing, and this latest offense only adds to the growing tension between them. Melissa and Spencer start to warm up to each other again once Melissa gets back together with Ian, but it’s never what we would consider a close sibling relationship.

Alison’s memorial

The girls originally just want to put up a private memorial to remember Alison, but decide that they should do it in a public place, so everyone can see. They arrange for a bench and a fountain to be put in the park, right in the town square. Jason comes back to Rosewood for the dedication and is pretty mean to the Liars, favoring Jenna’s side of things over theirs. After the dedication, though, he gives the Liars Alison’s bracelet. They’d already received one from A, but Jason said it was found with her body.

The day after the memorial is dedicated, it’s destroyed. Detective Wilden accuses Emily of destroying it, since there’s pictures of her at the scene of the crime. In reality, she was just there crying over the destruction. We soon learn that it was actually Lucas who destroyed the memorial, since Alison was mean to him and he didn’t want to be reminded of that everyday.

Hanna’s financial struggles

After being deserted by Hanna’s father, Hanna and Ashley are struggling to keep up with the lifestyle to which they’re accustomed. Hanna tries to help out by selling her things (and eventually doing more drastic things for A), but Ashley doesn’t want her to have to do that.

Ashley works for a bank, and has one client, Ms. Potter, who comes in once a year to check her Safe Deposit Box. Counting on this regularity, Ashley takes out a small “loan” from Ms. Potter’s funds. When Ms. Potter dies, Ashley thinks she’s in the clear, since she had no living relatives.

A man shows up claiming to be her nephew, so Ashley pulls her classic move of going out with him to get out of trouble. While Ashley is trying to get a feel for who he is, Caleb determines that he’s a fraud, and Ashley simply lies about how much money Ms. Potter had.

Every message from A

Every A scene

What we know now

Warning: This section contains spoilers from later seasons of Pretty Little Liars.

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You’ve been warned!

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What’s your favorite memory from ‘Pretty Little Liars’ season 1?