Pretty Little Liars season 4 was the year of the DiLaurentis. When one family has so many secrets, how can you not focus on them?

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. We’ve already covered season 1, season 2, and season 3, and now we’re moving on to the show’s fourth installment! 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.

We’ll be posting one of these “ultimate guides” once a week, until season 7B premieres on Tuesday, April 18, so keep your eyes on Hypable in the coming weeks. 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 DiLaurentis drama, rehab, Ravenswood, flashbacks, reveals, that made up Pretty Little Liars season 4!

Major storylines

Pretty Little Liars season 4 begins right where season 3 left off. At the end of the third season, the Liars and Mona came back to Rosewood to find Wilden’s car in the middle of town. When they opened his trunk, they gasped at what was inside! In Pretty Little Liars season 4, we begin by finding out just what was so shocking. Wilden’s killer, Ezra’s secrets, and the life and lies of Alison DiLaurentis were some, but not even close to all, of the big ticket items in Pretty Little Liars season 4!

Who killed Wilden?

Wilden wasn’t in the trunk of his car when the Liars opened it, but the dead pig that was in there painted a pretty clear picture of what had happened. At that point, the Liars knew that Ashley had hit Wilden and that Jenna and Shana had taken him from the scene of the crime, but not much else. To ensure that nobody else even gets that far, Mona takes the memory chip out of the car’s surveillance system.

When Wilden’s actual body is found, things get a little more serious. Video or no video, Ashley Marin is still the first suspect. This is because A so generously plants her phone in Wilden’s casket, at his funeral. However, it isn’t the police who initially begin to suspect her. It’s Hanna!

After the Liars find the phone, Hanna finds a dirty pair of her mom’s shoes, which she had been attempting to clean with a toothbrush. When Mona reveals that she overheard the police talking about finding women’s footprints at the scene of the crime, Hanna starts to panic.

Things only get worse when Ashley’s alibi starts to deteriorate. Hanna had thought she’d been in New York for work at the time of the murder, but she finds a note about missing the trip at her mom’s office, and later, finds a gun in her luggage. In order to protect her mom, Hanna brings the gun with her on their college visit weekend, and attempts to bury it. Unfortunately, she’s not as stealthy as she thinks, and the police catch her in the act.

Once Hanna has been let go, Emily comes up with a plan to give the police another suspect. Mona had given Hanna the video chip from the car to prove that she had changed, so Emily secretly brings it to the police station and puts in on Lieutenant Tanner’s desk. She wants the police to know that Jenna and Shana were somehow involved. A must not have been a fan of this plan, because they replace the video with one of a person in an Emily mask, holding up a “GUILTY” sign.

Once the police determine that the gun Hanna tried to bury (her father’s) was, in fact, the murder weapon, Ashley is arrested. The police found her fingerprints on the bullets, and linked her to the crime. Obviously, the Liars aren’t happy with this result, so they break into Wilden’s apartment with a key that Emily steals from her mom’s desk, to look for clues. Unfortunately, all they find in there was a cooler full of steaks, from A, and Pam ends up losing her job for it.

Despite Ashley and Caleb doing everything they can to convince Hanna that everything’s fine, she just can’t bear the thought of her mom being in jail. So, she turns to the best liar she knows to help her confess to Wilden’s murder. Mona coaches Hanna through the process, but in the end, she confesses herself! Some of her confession contradicts the evidence that the police have, but she gets taken back to Radley, nonetheless. It’s all worth it, because Ashley gets bail, which is very generously posted by Pastor Ted.

While Mona’s in Radley, Wren tries to get her to admit that she’s lying. But Mona’s too smart for that. She tells Wren that she won’t be honest with him because she knows where his loyalties lie, and that he kept secrets from her. When Hanna comes to see Mona, Wren tells her that a blonde tried to come visit her, but it’s Wren so who knows if that’s true! Wren inserts himself into this storyline one more time when he’s the “anonymous tip” that gets Veronica removed as Ashley’s lawyer. Shortly after this, we see him coloring in a picture with a red coat. He also tells Veronica to beware of Mona, as she will turn the tables on them.

Even with Wren’s meddling, the charges against Ashley are dropped when Travis comes forward as an eye witness. And this is even after Ashley’s shoe was found in the wreckage of Emily’s house, after A drove right through it. Travis saw Ashley leaving Wilden before he was killed, and he saw a blonde with him afterwards. His description of the blonde leads the police to CeCe Drake.

Detective Holbrook and Lieutenant Tanner spend the rest of Pretty Little Liars season 4 searching for CeCe, until they find her in the finale. While Holbrook is questioning her, she tells them that she knows “who killed that girl,” and says that it’s “the same person who’s still trying to hurt my friend.”

Who is A?

The Liars spend some quality time with the original A at the beginning of Pretty Little Liars season 4. Mona is with them when they escape from the fire, and she even seems to join the group for a while. The night that they find Wilden’s car, she even gives the Liars a lot of valuable information.

She tells them that she was the one who put the car in Hanna’s garage, that Shana and Jenna knew each other for a while, that Shana’s in love with Jenna and that they’re both afraid of Melissa, that she thought CeCe was Ali when she came to Radley, and even that Lucas gave Emily the massage! It was a lot to take in, all at once!

Mona takes the chip from Wilden’s car because she’s still desperate to find out who red coat is. She needs to know who stole the game from her. Because five heads are better than one, she brings the Liars to her lair. There, she tells them that it her who groped Hanna on the Ghost Train, pretending to be Caleb. She also says that Wilden and Melissa were both the Queen of Hearts, but that it was Wilden who tried to hurt Spencer.

When the girls exit the lair, they find what are basically younger versions of themselves, playing with dolls of themselves. They say that Alison gave them the dolls, and that she started playing with them shortly after the RV lair moved into the trailer park. We don’t see these girls again in Pretty Little Liars season 4 because Hanna and Mona move the RV to somewhere more safe, and then Toby steals it!

Jenna and Shana continue to be huge suspects in Pretty Little Liars season 4. The first sign of trouble is when Emily sees a burn on Jenna. The Liars are also suspicious of her at Wilden’s funeral when she’s lead in by somebody, despite the fact that she’s supposedly able to see. Luckily for Jenna, the “woman in black,” who’s later known as the “black widow,” appears to take the heat off of her. We later see her again in A’s lair with a burn mark on her Ali mask. The Liars initially suspect that this woman is Melissa, but after Wilden died, Melissa allegedly moved to Washington.

The Liars find one of the Alison face masks in Ali’s things, and decide to visit the company that’s stamped on the back. The store owner says he put out an ad looking for a model, and Ali answered the call, as she was desperate for money. She also had him make masks for her friends, “so they could look like her.” While at the mask shop, Hanna finds a mask of Melissa’s face. To figure out why Melissa had one made, they set a trap for her by leaving one in her suitcase when she returns to town.

After the trap, the Liars see Melissa at the mask shop, destroying all of her masks. Spencer confronts her, and she says that she “traded her face for answers” about when Ali’s mask was made. She tells Spencer that she helped Wilden because she was afraid of him, and that her intention has been to protect Spencer all along. She says that she sent Jenna and Shana to watch them on the night of the fire, to see if Alison appeared. She also reveals that Wilden started the fire. After this incident, Melissa leaves for London.

Caleb and Toby get heavily involved in the hunt for A in Pretty Little Liars season 4. Their first step is to track the plane that red coat flew in on, the night of the fire, as Toby has some important information about it. The employee at the landing strip says that he can’t help them, but the boys realize that the lighter that A left by Toby bears his initials. NW, for Nigel Wright. When confronted, he reveals that he was paid to fake a flight plan for CeCe Drake. While they’re there, Caleb steals Nigel’s phone which has many calls to New York on it.

Toby then traces the number to an empty apartment, which is traced to a P.O. box in Philadelphia. Caleb finds a cable bill in the P.O. box that’s attached to a physical address! When they go there, they find a girl who’s mad at CeCe, but who hasn’t seen her for a while. She knows who the Liars are, calling them the “four other she-devils” who were friends with Ali when she pushed someone down the stairs at a Frat party, resulting in CeCe getting kicked out of U. Penn. When we finally check in on CeCe, she has a red coat and pictures of Alison in her bedroom. Next, we see her in a black hoodie listening outside of Ezra’s door.

Back to Shana, Spencer sees her inside Wren’s apartment, which is packed up, as if he’s ready to move. Later, Emily finds a slip that Shana leaves at the Brew, which says, “Send to Wren Kingston c/o Melissa Hastings.”

During one of the Liars’ many trips to Ravenswood in Pretty Little Liars season 4, Aria participates in “The Great Charlemagne’s” magic show, which A lead them to using packaged clues. While Aria’s safe on stage, A steals Emily, off stage. They put her on a conveyor belt, moving toward an operating saw, but they eventually stop it before she gets hurt. When Aria uses her sweet karate moves against A, they (CeCe) fall off a balcony. Aria tries to save her, but she fails. The Liars think she’s dead, but of course, when they look again, she’s gone.

Also in Ravenswood, Ali secretly leads the Liars to a lair which holds big boards/timelines, computers, suits, and bank statements with two payments to CeCe Drake. There’s pictures of everyone on the board, including all of the Liars and basically everyone they know. There’s also a party invitation on the board which says “Tonight, Alison, 11 p.m.” While they’re there, Hanna grabs one of Ali’s journals. At the end of the episode, we see Ezra in the lair, looking very angry!

After Ali reveals herself to the Liars in Ravenswood, they start to wonder who’s actually buried in her grave. They’re lead to Sara Harvey, who went missing around the same time. When they meet with Sara’s friends, however, the dates don’t match up. All Sara’s friends have to say about her is that she was a manipulative bitch, basically.

Once we see Ezra in the lair, the Pretty Little Liars viewers are all aboard the Ezra train. We start seeing his secret actions, which make him look shadier and shadier. We see him listening to an old tape of Alison, snooping in Hanna’s house, and lying to Aria so he can go spend time with his surveillance equipment.

It doesn’t take Spencer long to figure things out when she visits a pub that she recognized in Ali’s journal. The journal passage talks about an “older boy” who ordered boysenberry pie and beer. When Spencer goes there, she sees Ezra there with that exact order. Also, the beer he’s drinking is called “Board Shorts ale.” Adding fuel to the fire, they find Ali’s journal, which was stolen from them, in Ezra’s desk, with some passages changed.

Knowing that Spencer’s on to him, Ezra attempts to discredit her by telling Aria that she’s relapsed in her addiction to pills, which is true. When the Liars confront her, they find Wren’s prescription pads in her purse, which definitely doesn’t help her case. It doesn’t work for long though, because Aria soon finds Ezra’s pages to his Alison story in a copy of Carnivore’s Delight, at his cabin. So, he was just writing a “true crime” novel, after all. Once Aria reads the pages, she finds out that Ezra suspects Mrs. D of being A.

Mona later reveals that she knew about Ezra’s book. She wanted to stop him, as some parts would incriminate her, but they worked out a deal where she would answer questions, and he would edit out parts about her.

The next time they hear about A, it’s from Ali! She tells them that she took Ian’s videos to try to shut A down. She first took them to Jenna, then she ruled out Toby and Ezra, then threatened Ian with them. She also drugged the girls on the night she disappeared so she could rule them out. She even told Byron what she had on the tapes. The last person she saw before disappearing was Mona, who picked her up after she’d been buried alive. Mona told her it would be safer if she let A think she was dead, and convinced her to leave town.

Just as Ali’s about to leave again, since they couldn’t figure out who A was, A shows up with a gun. They fire, but Ezra shows up and gets in the way!

Ali is alive!

At the beginning of Pretty Little Liars season 4, the Liars already suspect that Alison is alive, since they saw her helping them during the fire. While they still doubt themselves, they get more suspicious when Mrs. D moves back to town and starts setting up Ali’s old room with all of her old things.

Mrs. D also keeps a bird out on her porch, which keeps repeating the same tune. Mrs. D says that the bird spent a lot of time with Alison. Although A lets the bird out soon after it arrives, Spencer still manages to figure out that the bird is singing a phone number. They trace the number to Cicero college, in Ravenswood, so they go to investigate. They find a solitary pink phone in a strange, empty room in a sorority house, and they also hear about the house’s former house mother, Ms. Grunwald, who they guess Ali was calling.

The Liars eventually find Ms. Grunwald, but she claims that she didn’t know Alison. Someone who did know Alison, and who knows she’s alive, is Jenna. The Liars throw a party for Emily so they can confront Shana and Jenna about what they know, since they overheard a conversation the two were having. They don’t give up any info, but at the end of the night, Jenna’s lying face down in the middle of the lake, nearly dead. Spencer asks Shana if she thinks Ali did that to her, but Shana says Ali’s dead, and that CeCe Drake is the person they’re afraid of.

When the girls find evidence that Ali’s alive at the Ravenswood lair, they obviously can’t pass up a chance to see her. However, Ms. Grunwald changes her previous tune, and tries to stop them. She tells them it’s dangerous for them to chase after her, and that she lied to protect her. She had been helping Ali “see” who was threatening her, as she has psychic abilities. She tells them to leave, because someone is watching them, hoping they’ll lead him to Alison. We now know that she was simply talking about Ezra.

Of course, they go to the Ravenswood party anyway, and while Hanna’s locked in a phone booth, she sees Ali up against the glass. They also all hear her screaming, but then find a voice recording of her in the house. However, all pretences are dropped when they follow Ali at the end of the night, and she reveals herself to them! She says that she wants to come home but that she needs their help. Then, Ezra shows up and she’s forced to leave.

Then there’s a bunch of failed attempts at finding Ali until Shana approaches Emily. She reveals that she’s known Ali since she was three, and that she came to Rosewood to try to figure things out, for her. Shana tells Emily to stop looking for her, as it’s too dangerous. Later, however, she tells Emily that Ali wants to meet her, alone.

Shana takes Emily to do just that, but just as Ali is going to give Emily some information, Spencer shows up, not trusting the situation. They still decide to use Emily again though, when Shana asks Emily to get some money from behind a poster in Ali’s room. She’s successful, but when she tells Paige about Alison, Paige goes to the cops before the money can reach Alison, and tells them she’s alive. At the bridal show at Ali’s house, the Liars finally manage to get in touch with Ali through email. She sends them an address to meet her, leading to the infamous, “Ali Tells All.”

Spencer had been worrying that she had hurt Ali, or the girl who’s actually dead, because her drug habit lead her to only remember pieces of the night. When she found out that CeCe and Mrs. D had witnessed her holding the shovel that night, and when her father reveals that they actually hired the PI to investigate her, not Melissa, she panics.

After Noel meets the Liars (because he has secrets too) and brings them to Ali, she tells Spencer that the last time she left the barn, Spencer was asleep, so she couldn’t have hurt anyone. Even so, the Hastings still have a tough time at the police station. Holbrook is purposefully separating Veronica and Peter, and Melissa even came back to town once Toby came(?) and informed her about Spencer’s drug problem. Peter’s panicking, but Melissa assures him that Spencer didn’t kill her, and then whispers something in his ear!

Meanwhile, Ali explains what actually happened. After ruling out all of her suspects, she was walking back towards her house. She just saw her mother in the window when she was hit on the head from behind, and the rest is history.

Although Ali is alive, her whole family isn’t so lucky. Pretty Little Liars season 4 ends with a dead Mrs. D being buried in a grave!

For a refresher on the friendships and relationships in Pretty Little Liars season 4, go to page 2. To catch up on every message from A, every A scene, and more, go to page 3!

Love and friendship

All of the Liars have had more than their share of kisses, over the years, but let’s look back at some of their best ones from Pretty Little Liars season 4.

Aria’s love life

Since Aria and Ezra aren’t together at the beginning of Pretty Little Liars season 4, he takes a permanent job at Rosewood High. She’s not thrilled about having to see him everyday, but things get easier when she starts dating her adorable karate instructor, Jake.

While Aria’s getting cozy with Jake, Ezra’s having some serious drama with Maggie and Malcolm. Maggie wants to move to Seattle for school, and it turns out Ezra doesn’t actually have any parental rights because, well, he’s not actually Malcolm’s father! Maggie had an affair while they were dating. Ezra still wants to stay in Malcolm’s life, but it just doesn’t work out.

When Ezra is desperate to talk to Aria about his problems, they start bonding again and secretly get back together. That is, until the whole “true crime novel” fiasco hits. Aria realizes that the whole beginning of their relationship was basically a sham, since Ezra always knew who she was. He claims that he really fell in love with her, though, and he kind of proves it when he takes a bullet for her at the end of the season!

Emily’s love life

Paige and Emily start off the season by planning to go to Stanford together, after high school. Things are looking great, until Emily gets an injury that will keep her out of the pool for a while, causing her to lose her chances at a scholarship.

Despite this, they manage to stay strong until Emily tells Paige about Ali. When Paige goes to the police with the secret, both because she cares about Emily and because she doesn’t care about Alison, Emily says that she can never trust her again.

Hanna’s love life

After A messed things up for Caleb and his father at the end of Pretty Little Liars season 3, he spends the beginning of season 4 reconciling with him. When he returns, he dives head first into all of the Marin family drama. Since Ashley was sporting an orange jumpsuit, at the time, there was a lot of it.

Despite all the drama, Haleb is good. Then, Ravenswood happens. Because Tyler Blackburn got his own spinoff Hanna tells him to stay there and help Miranda, he leaves town. When he comes back, Hanna accuses him of cheating on her and they break up.

When Travis steps in to help Ashley, Hanna develops feelings for him. They go on a couple dates, but she’s so distracted by everything happening with A and Alison that it doesn’t go that well. She even ends up kissing Holbrook, she’s so messed up!

Spencer’s love life

Toby and Spencer go on quite the journey regarding Toby’s mother in Pretty Little Liars season 4. Toby steals A’s lair at the beginning of the season, because A promises him information, and they deliver. Spencer’s upset that she’s lying to her friends, but she knows it’s important. He keeps getting clues, but eventually, Spencer thinks it’s wrong that he’s trusting A. A eventually gets him into trouble, too, when they set him up to make it look like he’s stealing a car.

He finds out that his mom didn’t commit suicide, and that a big pharmaceutical company is paying people off to say that, to protect Radley. Peter Hastings initially wants to help Toby take Radley down, but eventually changes his mind due to Mrs. D’s influence. Toby takes a settlement, saying that he’s happy knowing that his mom didn’t choose to leave him.

The two go through a rocky patch when Spencer relapses into her addiction, but they’re ultimately strong at the end of the season.

Other notable relationships

Miss something in the major storylines? Go back to page 1! Or, continue on for every message from A, every A scene, and what we know now.

Every message from A

You can click on the table to make sections of it bigger!

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 4?