The Liars welcomed Alison back into the group in Pretty Little Liars season 5. But, do they still need a leader now that A’s brought them together?

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, season 3, and season 4, and now we’re moving on to the show’s fifth 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, murders, prison sentences, and deception that made up Pretty Little Liars season 5!

Major storylines

Pretty Little Liars season 5 begins in New York as Ezra is being taken to the hospital. Alison’s return, Bethany Young, and Mona’s death were some, but not even close to all of the big ticket items in this season.

Who shot Ezra?

This question is dealt with in the season premiere of Pretty Little Liars season 5. The big A reveal after the “Ali Tells All” episode turned out not to be an A reveal at all, but an important reveal, nonetheless.

Pretty Little Liars season 5 begins in the aftermath of the rooftop madness from the season 4 finale. Ezra is being taken to the hospital, the Liars are distraught, but trying to blend into the crowd, and everyone back in Rosewood is getting word that Alison DiLaurentis is alive.

When Ezra charged up to the rooftop, he seemed to know who had followed the Liars up there. So, the Liars think that if they wait for him to wake up, he’ll be able to reveal A’s identity. The girls devise a plan to get Ali to safety, and even though they get caught in a strange cluster of black hooded A impersonators, they manage to get to the Fitzgerald Theatre. Minus Aria, of course, who remains at the hospital with Ezra.

Shana shows up at the hospital and tells Aria that Ali sent her to make sure she was safe. Aria makes it clear that she’s unwelcome, but Shana says that she’s just following orders. Shana promises to wake Aria up if Ezra improves, but when Aria wakes up she finds Shana is already in Ezra’s room. Ezra freaks out when he sees her. When he calms down, he’s able to tell Aria that Shana is A, but Shana is already gone. He’d noticed she was following the Liars, so he followed her and discovered her identity.

She appears again at the Fitzgerald Theatre, black hoodie and all. It’s revealed that she was the one who set the fire that almost killed the Liars. Alison sent her to Rosewood to ask questions, and she got answers from all the people that Alison had hurt, including Jenna, who she loves. She plans to kill Alison to get justice for Jenna, but Aria shows up and pushes her off the stage. She dies from the fall.

Alison’s return

The Liars are obviously thrilled to see Alison again when she finally appears to them, but they almost immediately start questioning her again. She sneaks off to make phone calls and is still being secretive with the girls, even after all they’ve been through to help her. When she sneaks out in the middle of the night, Emily follows her to get some answers.

She reveals that CeCe is in trouble and that she needs to help her leave town. Emily is surprised since the Liars had been pretty certain that CeCe was red coat, but Alison explains that she told CeCe to wear the coat the day that they saw her in the warehouse. She says that CeCe didn’t start the saw that almost killed Emily, but helped Alison stop it. She also reveals that Ezra was paying CeCe for information.

She then sneaks off to meet Noel and CeCe, who’d gotten out of Holbrook’s custody. They give CeCe the ticket and passport that Alison was going to use to escape. Alison is hoping to find another way out of town, but after Shana dies, she believes that she’s safe, so she makes her triumphant return to Rosewood.

When the Liars and Alison return to Rosewood, their first stop is the police station. They agree that they’re going to come clean about everything. However, on the way into Holbrook’s office, Alison gets a text from “A” (later revealed to be sent by Mona) that scares her into lying. She fabricates a story about being kidnapped and the Liars are forced to go along with it.

As soon as Mona learns that Alison is alive, she puts together a group to stand up against her. The group includes Lucas, a bunch of no-name characters (Cindy and Mindy are eventually named), Paige, and Melissa. Paige quickly leaves the group, saying that she’s over what Alison has done to her, but Melissa appears to have some sort of leadership role within the group.

After Ali’s return, Mona confronts her and traps her into a fight. When Ali comes back to school, Mona shows everyone a doctored video of the fight, causing everyone to ostracize Alison. Mona and her group continue to attempt to take Alison down for most of Pretty Little Liars season 5. Jenna and Sydney eventually join the team, as well.

When Alison is called in for a medical examination for the investigation, Emily accompanies her. The doctor finds a large scar on her leg that she hadn’t previously mentioned. She tells the doctor that she cut it on a rock when she jumped out of her kidnappers car.

After Shana’s death, A is pretty silent for the first part of Pretty Little Liars season 5. They reappear after Toby’s house explodes with a text to all five girls: Did you miss me, bitches? As soon as A reappears, Ali starts preparing to escape again. Even after A almost kills her, though, she stays in town after the Liars (other than Hanna, who’d been helping her) find out about her plan.

At this point, Ali’s kidnapping story starts falling apart. Tanner starts questioning her about Shana’s death, and even Pam Fields is doubting her story. To ease everyone’s doubts, she stages an attack with Noel Kahn, at Hanna’s house. Seeing how much he’s helped her, you’d think Noel really cared about Alison, but Emily discovers differently when she hears him listening to incriminating audio of Alison, and he reveals that he’s keeping them as insurance if she ever turns on him.

Things actually start to look up for Alison when the Rosewood PD arrest Cyrus Petrillo. He confesses to kidnapping Ali, and his story matches her’s perfectly. The Liars tell Ali not to identify him as her kidnapper, thinking it’s a trap from A. Ali tells them that Cyrus gave her the scar on her leg when they lived together in an abandoned basement and he stole all her money. When Tanner takes her to the basement, she IDs him, but he’s released just before she does so. It’s later revealed that Ali set the whole thing up to make people believe her story.

Following the Cyrus drama, the Liars start to seriously consider cutting ties with Ali and telling Tanner everything, but A reminds them that they’re all in it together. When Ali volunteers for a polygraph, they ask Mona for help. Unfortunately, that doesn’t turn out so well for Mona (see “What Happened to Mona?”).

Ali proves that she doesn’t need the Liars when she shows up to her Ice Ball with a whole new posse. Strangely enough, this posse includes Cindy, Mindy, Jenna and Sydney. When the Liars confront Jenna and Sydney, they claim that they only got involved with Alison to protect themselves. Aria also sees Alison kissing Detective Holbrook at the Ice Ball, explaining how she’d been working the police so effectively, and how CeCe escaped. Holbrook soon gets suspended from the force, for his poor judgement.

While Alison is preoccupied at the Ice Ball, Spencer and Hanna snoop around her house, using maps provided in Mona’s will (later revealed to be a trap by A). In the house they find correspondence between Alison and someone else in the classified ads, a letter from Bethany Young to Alison about visiting on Labour Day, and a Holly Varjak passport. Most of this was planted by A, but it just adds to the girls’ suspicion, especially when Hanna’s attacked in the house.

Strangely, Alison wins her friends back when she’s arrested for Mona’s murder. She tells them that she couldn’t have killed her, because she waiting for Cyrus at the time. When Mike basically confirms that she’s innocent, they decide to help her.

What happened to Bethany?

Melissa comes back to town the night that the Liars are in New York and it’s immediately evident that she has a big secret. She confides in her father and keeps hinting that she wants to come clean, but he tells her that not even her mother can know. The secrecy of this, combined with Peter’s past lies, eventually causes Peter to move out of the house.

When it’s revealed that Bethany Young is the girl in Alison’s grave, some of the focus switches to her murder. Eddie Lamb starts the investigation off by dropping off a drawing at Ezra’s door. The drawing was done by Bethany Young, and features Mrs. D being stalked by a monster in her yard.

Once the Liars know that Bethany was a Radley patient, they go back to the sanitarium. While Aria’s volunteering in an art class, she meets a girl named Rhonda, who was Bethany’s roommate. She accuses Aria of stealing her drawing. Aria later sneaks into her room and steals Bethany’s entire book, which includes drawings of Marion Cavanaugh falling and Jessica with devil horns.

While Aria’s handing out art supplies, Spencer and Mona use their knowledge of Radley’s hallowed halls to locate some files. They determine that Mrs. D was having an affair with Bethany’s father! From a tape in Mona’s bedroom, they also learn that she complained about an “evil bitch who gets people to do whatever she wants.”

While the Liars are investigating Bethany, the Rosewood PD is investigating the Liars. They build a case claiming that Spencer killed Bethany, thinking she was Alison, to “gain favor with the group’s leader.” They eventually arrest her, but she gets out on bail. The evidence that got her arrested was a statement from Mrs. D that had previously been covered up by Wilden. The charges against her are dropped when Alison’s arrested for Mona’s murder.

In the end, both investigations were for nothing. When things start to heat up with all of the murder investigations, Melissa leaves town and gives Spencer a video, explaining everything. She buried Bethany, thinking she was Alison, and thinking that Spencer had been the one to kill her.

What happened to Mona?

Mona believes she’s made a break in the case, so she tells the Liars to come over. When they get there, however, Mona’s nowhere to be found. In her place, is a large amount of blood, scattered all over the house. The police rule that Mona Vanderwaal was murdered. The Liars immediately think that Ali is responsible, since Mona had been helping them take her down when she died. Spencer tries to get Jason to back them up, but he says Ali was with him at the time.

Emily and Spencer stupidly go to Mona’s house to plant Ali’s hair at the scene, but thankfully, they find a hidden camera. When they get the footage, the see a blonde girl attacking Mona. When Jason’s asked to review the tape, he says that it could be his sister, and that he lied about being with her at the time of the murder. This leads to Alison being arrested, which the Liars help with.

When the police investigate Mona’s house, Toby finds his family’s knife. He doesn’t tell his fellow officers, but shows Caleb and Spencer, instead. Toby wants to put it back where he found it, but Caleb and Spencer go behind his back to destroy it, thinking it could be used to incriminate any of them.

Because Mona is the smartest person in any room, even from beyond the grave, she set her computer up to help the Liars solve the mystery of her death. They receive texts with GPS coordinates when her laptop is moved and the encryption is broken. They go to the location, which turns out to be a storage locker. In the locker is the laptop, bags of bloody clothing, and a large, stinky barrel. When they dig a littler deeper, the find out the storage unit is rented in Hanna’s name.

Hanna freaks out when she learns that A is trying to set her up, so she begs Caleb to help her move the locker’s contents. Of course, because A is trying to set her up, the police show up while they’re attempting to do so, and the locker is empty except for the barrel and some drops of blood, which is later said to be Alison’s.

The Liars meet Leslie Stone when she comes to the Brew, looking for Hanna. She claims to be a close friend of Mona’s, and says she’s in town to help her mom. She tells Hanna that Mike was angry with Mona the night that she died, and she’s concerned that he might have hurt her. Aria gets concerned when she sees Mike leaving gumdrops on the dock near their house, and when she finds out that he visited Alison in prison.

When Aria confronts him, he tells her that Mona had a plan to smear her blood all over her house and to make Alison look responsible. She was going to do this to earn A’s trust and learn their identity, since A wanted Alison locked up. Mike thought the plan had worked, but Mona keeps missing their meetings, so he’s getting worried.

Mike gets the name “Hank Mahoney” from Alison, which leads the Liars to Cyrus, who’s in the hospital due to a car accident. He tells Aria that it wasn’t an accident, and gives her the name, “Varjak.”

With this name, a series of lawyers, cabins, pizza receipts, and classified ads leads the Liars to a phone number. When they call the number, all they hear is violin music, which Hanna says Mona used to play. The Liars go to Mona’s house, but it’s already been ransacked. All they find is a note with a series of phrases including, “Chandeliers rituals.”

Alison’s offered a plea deal to name her accomplice, who the police believe to be Hanna. She doesn’t end up taking the plea, but Hanna is arrested anyway, when they find her blood on Mona’s clothes from the storage locker.

At Alison’s trial, after Leslie Stone shows up as a surprise witness, all of the Liars are arrested. At the end of Pretty Little Liars season 5, the four Liars are being driven somewhere to be separated. However, their van is hijacked, and they’re brought to the dollhouse and it’s revealed that Mona’s alive!

Who is A?

Everyone has their own reaction to Ali’s return, but Jason’s is one of the strangest. The Liars see him cleaning out his car in the middle of the night, and Ali notices him staring at her in her room while he thinks she’s sleeping. When Spencer does some snooping, she notices that he threw out a bag from a New York bakery, and they begin to wonder if he’d been following Alison.

The Liars start to think that Jason could be A when Hanna finds an email of Mrs. D’s. Before Mrs. D’s body was found, Ashley was charged with looking for clues regarding her whereabouts, so Hanna had access to her computer. Her email read: “I can’t protect you anymore,” and was never sent. Who would Mrs. D protect after they murdered her child, if not her other child? After Mrs. D’s body is found, the Liars think he might have killed her to avoid getting caught.

Spencer soon confronts Jason with the email, and after confirming his alibi for the night Jessica was killed, they start to believe his innocence. The Liars don’t have another serious suspect until they believe that Alison could be A! Unfortunately she gets arrested and the texts keep coming.

There aren’t really any more serious suspects in Pretty Little Liars season 5 until the dollhouse, when they discover that A is actually Charles!

For a refresher on the friendships and relationships in Pretty Little Liars season 5, 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 5.

Aria’s love life

Ezria wasn’t in the best place in the back half of Pretty Little Liars season 4 since Aria found out that their relationship began as a way for Ezra to get information for his true crime novel. That being said, watching someone get shot tends to put things in perspective, so Aria only cares about Ezra’s recovery at the beginning of Pretty Little Liars season 5.

Even though she’s desperate for him to be okay, she’s still not fully ready to forgive him. After the shooting, though, they start talking again and he helps her get through her guilt over killing Shana. They finally kiss again after Ezra shows her his scar from Shana’s gunshot. She’s hesitant to jump back into things, but in the end, these crazy kids just can’t stay apart.

Things are great with Ezria until Aria gets rejected from every college, including her safety school, Talmadge. Ezra tells her that the reason she got rejected is because his ex, Jackie, works in admissions there. As a last ditch effort, Aria writes a brutal account of how she squandered her high school years by dating an older man. She doesn’t fully mean it, but she does begin to realize that she missed out on a lot.

She eventually gets into Talmadge, but A starts threatening her with the letter, saying they’ll show it to Ezra. Aria proactively shows Ezra herself, and he commends her tenacity. However, after digesting the contents of the letter, he tells Aria that he doesn’t want her to resent him, and they agree that she should enter college as a single woman. They break up but agree that they’ll find a way to stay in each other’s lives.

Aria starts hanging out with Andrew after he catches her copying off of his test. He starts tutoring her, and they kiss after A makes Mike’s weight bench collapse, causing Aria to fall. He’s suddenly always around when the Liars need someone, but he also shows up in some suspicious scenarios, and is oddly clingy. The two are still seeing each other at the end of the season, but Andrew is seen as a sketchy character.

Emily’s love life

Emily and Paige are separated at the beginning of Pretty Little Liars season 5, but they start hanging out again when Emily helps Sydney train. Paige warns Emily to keep her distance if Alison comes back to school, because people are “preparing.” Not wanting there to be animosity between her two friends, Emily brings Paige and Ali together. Alison apologizes, but not much ever comes of it.

Alison and Emily start spending a lot of time together, and Alison admits to Emily that their kisses weren’t just “for practice.” They kiss again during a sleepover, one night! Soon after that, Mona shows everyone the video that she doctored from the mausoleum, and Emily gets upset with Alison. They have another sleepover, but Emily just stays up all night watching Ali sleep. After Alison IDs Cyrus, seemingly forcing them all into one of A’s traps, Emily says she’s done with her for good.

Paige and Emily get back together soon after this, and things are going great, until Paige’s parents force her to move to California. Adorably, Emily meets Paige at her gate when she’s leaving and asks her to stay, but Paige says she’s tired of the Rosewood drama and wants a fresh start.

When Emily can’t handle catering for the opening of the Brew, Ezra hires a professional chef to help out. Emily is initially annoyed at Thalia, since she stole her job, but they start bonding when Emily realizes that Thalia is actually kind and helpful. Thalia soon expresses interest in Emily, and they start hanging out.

Unfortunately, Emily soon finds out that Thalia’s actually married. She tells Emily that she married her high school best friend and that they have an understanding about this sort of thing. However, when Emily meets her husband, his story doesn’t quite match. Emily gets upset, but it soon becomes irrelevant because Thalia and her husband separate.

Hanna’s love life

Hanna is dating Travis at the beginning of Pretty Little Liars season 5, but that all goes out the window as soon as Caleb comes back to town. They immediately fall back into their perfect Haleb love, but things actually get pretty dark for a while.

With Caleb so messed up from Ravenswood and Hanna dealing with the return of Alison, they start drinking heavily and forsaking their responsibilities. Together, with a little prodding from Spencer, they figure it out and get themselves back on track.

Spencer’s love life

Toby is a full member of the fabulous Rosewood PD in Pretty Little Liars season 5. You’d think that’d be helpful to the Liars’ cause, but it actually causes a lot of fights between Toby and Spencer. When Spencer steals the knife that Toby found, he tells her that she can no longer tell him everything, which drives a wedge between them.

Spencer meets Johnny when he moves into the Hastings’ loft. He’s an artist, working at the Brew, and they have some fun times vandalizing public property together. She kisses him after one such act of vandalism. She also kisses Wren and Melissa’s roommate when she’s in London!

At the end of the season, Toby tells her that he’ll always choose her over his work and Spoby is back on.

Other notable relationships

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

Every message from A

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Every A scene

What’s your favorite memory from ‘Pretty Little Liars’ season 5?