On tonight’s season premiere of Pretty Little Liars, Mona is finally put to rest and the Liars try to avenge her death.
Tonight’s episode of Pretty Little Liars opens up on the day of Mona’s funeral — three months after her death. As the girls exit the church, a floral dress-wearing Ali walks up to Mrs. Vanderwaal. She tries to tell Mona’s mother one more time that she had nothing to do with Mona’s death, but Mrs. Vanderwaal won’t hear it and slaps her right across the face.
The Grunwald Effect
After the funeral, Hannah heads back to Mona’s house with Mrs. Vanderwaal. As a parting gift and a thank you, she hands Hannah one of Mona’s stuffed animals. She heads back home and meets Caleb where they are trying to figure out how to find Mona. Hannah suggests they get in contact with Carla Grunwald, but Caleb is not having it and doesn’t want to get involved in all of her craziness.
Emily and Paige are at Emily’s house trying to soak up as much time together as possible before Paige gets shipped off to California. Emily vows to take her to the airport and be the person to see her go.
That night, Aria is in town and we can see she is opening a letter from a college she applied to. The news isn’t great and to add insult to injury Ali comes up behind her in order to make amends. Aria obviously wants nothing to do with her, but Ali does seem genuine when denying her involvement in Mona’s death.
Finding Mona’s body gets fast-tracked when Spencer finds out that Bethany Young’s family is trying to get her bail revoked. In order to use all of their resources, Hannah meets up with Grunwald despite Caleb’s ill wishes, using the stuffed animal that Mrs. Vanderwaal gave her. Is she supposed to use its scent to find the body? We do learn the stuffed dog’s name and that Mona’s body isn’t in Rosewood and that she is buried somewhere in the ground.
Framing Ali
Spencer and Emily head over to Ali’s house in order to talk to Jason and convince him to tell her the truth about Ali’s alibi. She pulls the “sister” card, but it’s a no go. Meanwhile, Emily steals Ali’s hairbrush so she can plant it in Mona’s house and pin the whole thing on Ali.
When Ali comes home, Jason asks her why she was gone on Thanksgiving and where she actually went. So she was gone after all. It’s not looking good for Ali, that’s for sure.
When they go to plant the evidence, however, they discover something even better. There is a camera system set up in the vents. Realizing they can’t be the ones to tell Mona’s mom, they enlist Hannah for help.
Aria goes to Caleb’s new apartment where he is using decryption software in order to hack into Hannah’s files. He’s quite the code master and Aria wants to take full advantage of that in order to find out why she’s not getting into any of the colleges she applied to.
After a quick lesson, Aria heads to pick up Mike, but when she gets there she only finds “A” and a staple gun. Though she hardly looks like she’s fighting back, which is a bit fishy. “A” manages to steal all the data she just got from Caleb and they run out immediately.
Later that day, Grunwald bumps into Ali around town and they have a relatively awkward exchange. As Ali turns to leave, Grunwald grabs hold of her arm and just stares straight through Ali’s eyes and into her soul. We’re not sure what that’s really going to do, but we’ll go along with it for now.
At the police station, Jason is looking over the tapes found in Mona’s house with the cops. They show Mona being killed but don’t get a good look at the killer’s face. Jason takes this opportunity to tell the truth about Thanksgiving.
In barely any time at all, the cops show up at Ali’s house and arrest her on the scene with the Liars as an audience.
Because of the arrest, Emily misses bringing Paige to the airport but rushes there in order to say goodbye. Emily thinks because Ali has been arrested Paige will now stay. Paige, however, has other plans and has made the decision to leave Rosewood for good. We have to admit, it’s even more heartbreaking to see Paige leave on her own accord instead of being forced. Poor Emily.
At least things are looking up for Spencer, who the police now believe is innocent. Does anyone else think that Toby being involved in the case is a conflict of interest? We do get to see him in a police uniform, so we guess it’s all right.
The episode ends with the girls actually having a nice moment together and discussing their future underneath a beautiful sky of fireworks. But wait, the fireworks spell out “A.” Oh, girls, you should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy.
