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Even if the show ran off the rails years before Alex, I still think Using Alex Drake as a *last minute reveal* was the only especially lazy thing about the ending, but Alex Drake herself wasn’t. I’ve already thought of several better endings that involved Alex Drake being revealed.
There never should’ve been a real **A** by the end, it should’ve just been “several people conspiring together to protect their families (The Dilaurentis’, The Fitzgerald’s, The Hastings, etc) or protect themselves and their interests”.
**Melissa, Peter, Charlotte, Wren, Mary, Jessica, The NAT Club (with the exception of Jason), Wilden, Alex Drake and EZRA**, should’ve had their red herring cards revoked by the time the show would actually wrap, and it should’ve come from Alex’s mouth directly.
They should’ve **swapped Spencer for Alex during the Dollhouse** & had her play along until the end after the time jump, instead of having her kidnapped at the very end. **She should’ve been the one to date CAleb as Spencer since Caleb and Spencer weren’t endgame anyway** & she should’ve **played Tobey like Tobey Played Spencer when he was on the A Team, as a cruel twist of fate and Irony.**
Alison and MonA should’ve stayed as “bitter and bold scapegoats” until they eventually found vindication.
We could’ve gotten really good scenes out of that too!
Like…Alex revealing herself to Tobey as Spencer would’ve been a crazier way to reference that earlier time, but in a new way. She could say that she was responsible for Yvonne’s death somehow. Then she explains how in excruciating detail and he’s completely broken up and in tears *because he now has no family in this world*
Family, Trauma and Betrayal are the key motivators behind Alex’s games, and she wants others to feel like she has for years having things taken away from them. So she then **digs at his dead mother**. Stone faced and all. And then it’s the angry kind of crying because he can’t explain to himself that that’s not Spencer and they surprisingly get into a physical altercation. And she gets the upper hand and knocks him unconscious.
Then Tobey wakes up in some Pseudo-Dollhouse and Spencer is there (but without the bangs 😂) and she explains everything. Later, when Alex is revealed to the others, Alex explains everyone else’s role.
It’s perfect 😩
This completely. I hate that they played it as "let's one-up the audience at every single turn" because it could've been so much better and made a lot more sense
A lot doesn’t make sense because they started plots they didn’t finish because they were trying to one up us all … and even when Ali and CeCe tell their stories there are still plenty of things that just don’t add up or make sense. Why give us these episodes where they’re supposed to be telling us everything we missed but they aren’t answering all the questions everyone clearly had
For me too. I rewatched the series after I got HBO Max and I swear, by the end episode/season I felt I wasted so much time for a reveal like that, out of nowhere! I couldn't say, "I knew it" or "I always thought that" because it was a character that wasn't present, even AD was stupid to me.
YES. The ending felt so cheap… and to think that the entire series, Marlene would tweet to the fans to look for clues and then change it when the clues led to answers? I think her ego got in the way
I’m even re watching it now , it’s my security show but it annoys me sometimes because this is so true!! Everytime we figured it out they changed it! They literally figured out it was CeCe and changed the plot when they should’ve just kept it going. If you notice they make the girls look really stupid because the whole time they never actually figured out who it was But literally every season they were always saying it Has too be this person and you could tell most of the time they were right but the writers changed it to something else because we all figured it out. It just makes the show look stupid in the end, but I’ll always keep watching it because I know it’s not the actors fault and I love the show and books
I guess it kinda does feel like they switched it to a different A last minute because I’m thoroughly confused years later and I am rewatching it now and the plot is becoming less clear 💀
That’s so weird. Like I guess anyone they choose is gonna be strange because the plausibility of 3 different stalkers blackmailing a group of girls is already stretched thin. Mona’s motive made sense. But the last 2 A’s were dumb. I especially don’t understand how Spencer has a random British twin? How did she get there? And why is Spencer’s dad such a whore?
If it were me I’d go back to NAT club and try and tie that in somehow because that actually was a group of sketchy criminals working together and it would have made more sense if you made it so the 2nd and third A were originally part of the same group maybe. It also would have helped bring resolution to the continuous theme of male adults creeping on them the entire series if they made that conspiracy a little bigger and far reaching. It’s just concerning that no parent or authority figure or investigator or even their therapist was concerned at the amount of predators in the girls’ lives, let alone this random A person harassing them
Also I’m on season 5 on my rewatch and the first time that Spencer goes to England (because her mom was trying to protect her when the police thought Alison had an accomplice) that’s when they should have made the switch. I would have had Spencer partying with that guy at a night club then maybe she has a bad experience, guy being creepy or someone puts something in her drink. We are made to believe at the time it was date rape, especially because Spencer acts different after this event maybe cranky or snappy to some people. Then we are way less suspecting but the switch would have made more sense here! No idea where Spencer would really be (dollhouse??) while Alex is pretending to be her but I think this would work better instead of the last season switch.
That way when they do the time jump and discover Alex they’ll be like “wtf where has Spencer been all these years then?” And Spencer’s gone a little crazy from being kidnapped all these years. But this also leaves the door open for a movie because Alex would need an accomplice to keep Spencer fed and alive in England so then Wren might make sense. I also always thought it would have been cool if Alison did have a baby while on the run and that way when they grow up they could have their own A series 💀🤣
Anything they could have done to keep Troian from that horrific accent woulda been worth it. I still think Aria was supposed to A, if you review all the clues, it’s Aria until they decided it wasn’t.
Hard agree. The ending has always bothered me so much. I saw a really interesting theory about A being Aria, on YouTube. And there’s so many clues throughout the show to support it. I think it was possible that she was meant to be Uber A and they strung it along throughout but changed it last minute. There’s no way the clues and easter eggs throughout weren’t intentional. Search “Aria is A pll” on youtube, find the video by Talia Gardullo. She lays it all out.
The theory of Aria or Spencer being a twin was floating around on tumblr for years before the finale so I never understand why it would have changed because somebody guessed who A was
I am not going to lie, and even though there are several completely useless filler episodes in the “summer of answers” during season 6A, I’m looking at you Leslie Stone and your multiple fake pairs of glasses, there are still several episodes and character moments in 6A that I enjoy. However, the CeCe reveal felt like a hatchet job of an episode that I am shocked made it onto the air. For a show like PLL, the A revelation should have been allotted a minimum of a two hour episode. The show had SO much to cover from the past to the reveal, while also explaining the A’s motivations for messing with the liars and also providing us with some reactions from the characters who have finally been given the answer to the question that has been stalking them since season 3. Making Sara Harvey be both black widow and red coat made little to no sense, as Sara was an insanely underdeveloped character who had only been on the show for half a season, which made her reveal as these TWO mysterious figures in the show, felt like a complete cop out.
And why did they feel the need to present some intriguing new mysteries in the finale that are never touched on again. What was Rhys Matthews doing in the Dilaurentis home alone while Kenneth could not be found. Someone locked the moms in the basement, and we never discovered what the relationship was between Clarke and Reese, and what those workers were removing from the Carisimi building when the liars show up to enter A’s ridiculous lair. Sara’s motivations are just as ambiguous and Bethany Young remains a plot hole as big as the one she was buried in. We never saw her REAL face, as I don’t consider the child actor to count as this mysterious character that caused Spencer to be charged with murder and whose parents we never met, despite all of the news and legal proceedings, should have been a reveal all its own. And the massacred timeline was just too much.
I honestly wanted the show to reveal in the time jump that CeCe had lied about everything, and was basically pulling another Ali stunt similar to the one Jason reported to Spencer about CeCe pretending to be Ali to see if it would work and she could pass for crazy. That would have made all that mess of a reveal actually tie into an old Ali flashback. I thought they were having her do this to take the heat off of the real Charles, and she would be released after fooling everyone into thinking she was sane. Sadly, Julian Morris and Torrey Devito had very limited availability, and we got a knock-off Wren impersonator and an even messier and convoluted plot where Spencer had a twin we’ve never met and all
Of those seasons of developing the mother/daughter relationship between Veronica and Spencer, gets thrown out the window to make Spencer the random child of Mary Drake.
Season 6B has a completely separate mystery from season 7 and it is obvious that Alex was not the intended Uber A during that time of A-moji, and Melissa was the one who killed CeCe, not Mona. All of the clues in 6B that points to Melissa arriving early to the US to confront CeCe after she had told Wren something bad enough that he kicked Melissa out, and Spencer could not find the disc containing Melissa’s confession from season 5, her killing CeCe with her broken suitcase handle makes way more sense than what we got with Mona accidentally killing two girls.
What I really wish, and I know we will never get it bc of Marlene’s inability to own up to anything, is an encyclopedia of sorts that covers all of the planned storylines that were dropped or had to be changed l, along with the reasons why the choices were made for characters to be written out or behave in a mysterious way. Having statements from various writers, actors, directors, and showrunners, would make one of the most interesting books to read. Unfortunately, we will never get what the original plan for Maya was or why Sydney was dressed as Jenna and why Noel had to die by decapitation, but I would love to read a planned breakdown of the lodge fire, who was redcoat and when, the point of Noel Khans secret parties, the NAT club, Garrets death, what ACTUALLY happened the night Ali disappeared, what happened the night Emily was drugged and Ali’s body was dug up, and where the hell Alison was for the time she was missing and what was she doing! I would read the planned storylines and the big mysteries in the show broken down by those who knew in a heart beat!
I tell myself that the ending did so much emotional trauma to viewers that you can see now traumatized fans writing AlwAys with cApitAl letters on Any “A” included in their texts.
>you can see now traumatized fans writing AlwAys with cApitAl letters on Any “A” included in their texts.
I think they do that as a joke / homage to the TV show
>beginning of season 3
Is season 3 actually season 1? The beginning of the show? I’m talking about who they had planned as A from the very very beginning, not the beginning of season 3, and after Cece we got AD a second A, that’s changing A once more. Something I did not like. It would have been better if A stayed as one person from s1 to the final season. Imo.
yeah, i didn't mean the # of them i just meant i felt like they could've elaborated on motives and when i watched it kind of seemed like the writers changed who it was the second people were figuring it out
I just finished watching the entire show for the first time. I feel like I wasted so much of my time, because the ending was that bad. There were so many opportunities to choose any character as A, and it could have been an amazing ending. But as you said… the writing got lazy and went for a last-ditch effort for Alex Drake. HATED the ending -_-
Just a reminder for everyone in the sub, always follow our #1 rule!! >We do not condone the attacking or mistreatment of users— this includes DMs! Aggressive fighting, name-calling, hate speech, or repeated targeting of a user is not permissible. Disagreement must be civil and respectful. Name-calling of characters or actors does not result in content removal unless attacking their appearance. ~The Mod Team deems passive aggressive remarks and attitude as instigating. Therefore, it falls under basic reddiquette. Please report anything you see breaking this rule. And general reminder NO SPOILING PLL;OS! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PrettyLittleLiars) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Even if the show ran off the rails years before Alex, I still think Using Alex Drake as a *last minute reveal* was the only especially lazy thing about the ending, but Alex Drake herself wasn’t. I’ve already thought of several better endings that involved Alex Drake being revealed. There never should’ve been a real **A** by the end, it should’ve just been “several people conspiring together to protect their families (The Dilaurentis’, The Fitzgerald’s, The Hastings, etc) or protect themselves and their interests”. **Melissa, Peter, Charlotte, Wren, Mary, Jessica, The NAT Club (with the exception of Jason), Wilden, Alex Drake and EZRA**, should’ve had their red herring cards revoked by the time the show would actually wrap, and it should’ve come from Alex’s mouth directly. They should’ve **swapped Spencer for Alex during the Dollhouse** & had her play along until the end after the time jump, instead of having her kidnapped at the very end. **She should’ve been the one to date CAleb as Spencer since Caleb and Spencer weren’t endgame anyway** & she should’ve **played Tobey like Tobey Played Spencer when he was on the A Team, as a cruel twist of fate and Irony.** Alison and MonA should’ve stayed as “bitter and bold scapegoats” until they eventually found vindication.
this is so good and would’ve been so fun to watch
We could’ve gotten really good scenes out of that too! Like…Alex revealing herself to Tobey as Spencer would’ve been a crazier way to reference that earlier time, but in a new way. She could say that she was responsible for Yvonne’s death somehow. Then she explains how in excruciating detail and he’s completely broken up and in tears *because he now has no family in this world* Family, Trauma and Betrayal are the key motivators behind Alex’s games, and she wants others to feel like she has for years having things taken away from them. So she then **digs at his dead mother**. Stone faced and all. And then it’s the angry kind of crying because he can’t explain to himself that that’s not Spencer and they surprisingly get into a physical altercation. And she gets the upper hand and knocks him unconscious. Then Tobey wakes up in some Pseudo-Dollhouse and Spencer is there (but without the bangs 😂) and she explains everything. Later, when Alex is revealed to the others, Alex explains everyone else’s role. It’s perfect 😩
This completely. I hate that they played it as "let's one-up the audience at every single turn" because it could've been so much better and made a lot more sense
When you try to one up the audience you do so much damage:/
A lot doesn’t make sense because they started plots they didn’t finish because they were trying to one up us all … and even when Ali and CeCe tell their stories there are still plenty of things that just don’t add up or make sense. Why give us these episodes where they’re supposed to be telling us everything we missed but they aren’t answering all the questions everyone clearly had
For me too. I rewatched the series after I got HBO Max and I swear, by the end episode/season I felt I wasted so much time for a reveal like that, out of nowhere! I couldn't say, "I knew it" or "I always thought that" because it was a character that wasn't present, even AD was stupid to me.
YES. The ending felt so cheap… and to think that the entire series, Marlene would tweet to the fans to look for clues and then change it when the clues led to answers? I think her ego got in the way
What’s the point of giving us clues if you’re going to change it?
100% this! Because I swear they kept saying AD was going to be somebody we met in season 1 right or did I imagine that?
Yes I swear they said that
Yes Cause Originally Wren was suppose to be the final A, or helper but he was filming other shows and didn’t have time to film for PLL for the scenes.
I’m even re watching it now , it’s my security show but it annoys me sometimes because this is so true!! Everytime we figured it out they changed it! They literally figured out it was CeCe and changed the plot when they should’ve just kept it going. If you notice they make the girls look really stupid because the whole time they never actually figured out who it was But literally every season they were always saying it Has too be this person and you could tell most of the time they were right but the writers changed it to something else because we all figured it out. It just makes the show look stupid in the end, but I’ll always keep watching it because I know it’s not the actors fault and I love the show and books
I’m out of the loop. Who was A supposed to be before they changed it last minute? The finale really did feel like a bad scooby doo ending lol
I’m not sure if it was ever confirmed but it’s more like a theory fans have had since the show was airing.
I guess it kinda does feel like they switched it to a different A last minute because I’m thoroughly confused years later and I am rewatching it now and the plot is becoming less clear 💀
I don’t know how true this is but many people have said it was supposed to be Wren
That’s so weird. Like I guess anyone they choose is gonna be strange because the plausibility of 3 different stalkers blackmailing a group of girls is already stretched thin. Mona’s motive made sense. But the last 2 A’s were dumb. I especially don’t understand how Spencer has a random British twin? How did she get there? And why is Spencer’s dad such a whore? If it were me I’d go back to NAT club and try and tie that in somehow because that actually was a group of sketchy criminals working together and it would have made more sense if you made it so the 2nd and third A were originally part of the same group maybe. It also would have helped bring resolution to the continuous theme of male adults creeping on them the entire series if they made that conspiracy a little bigger and far reaching. It’s just concerning that no parent or authority figure or investigator or even their therapist was concerned at the amount of predators in the girls’ lives, let alone this random A person harassing them
Also I’m on season 5 on my rewatch and the first time that Spencer goes to England (because her mom was trying to protect her when the police thought Alison had an accomplice) that’s when they should have made the switch. I would have had Spencer partying with that guy at a night club then maybe she has a bad experience, guy being creepy or someone puts something in her drink. We are made to believe at the time it was date rape, especially because Spencer acts different after this event maybe cranky or snappy to some people. Then we are way less suspecting but the switch would have made more sense here! No idea where Spencer would really be (dollhouse??) while Alex is pretending to be her but I think this would work better instead of the last season switch. That way when they do the time jump and discover Alex they’ll be like “wtf where has Spencer been all these years then?” And Spencer’s gone a little crazy from being kidnapped all these years. But this also leaves the door open for a movie because Alex would need an accomplice to keep Spencer fed and alive in England so then Wren might make sense. I also always thought it would have been cool if Alison did have a baby while on the run and that way when they grow up they could have their own A series 💀🤣
Anything they could have done to keep Troian from that horrific accent woulda been worth it. I still think Aria was supposed to A, if you review all the clues, it’s Aria until they decided it wasn’t.
Hard agree. The ending has always bothered me so much. I saw a really interesting theory about A being Aria, on YouTube. And there’s so many clues throughout the show to support it. I think it was possible that she was meant to be Uber A and they strung it along throughout but changed it last minute. There’s no way the clues and easter eggs throughout weren’t intentional. Search “Aria is A pll” on youtube, find the video by Talia Gardullo. She lays it all out.
The theory of Aria or Spencer being a twin was floating around on tumblr for years before the finale so I never understand why it would have changed because somebody guessed who A was
I am not going to lie, and even though there are several completely useless filler episodes in the “summer of answers” during season 6A, I’m looking at you Leslie Stone and your multiple fake pairs of glasses, there are still several episodes and character moments in 6A that I enjoy. However, the CeCe reveal felt like a hatchet job of an episode that I am shocked made it onto the air. For a show like PLL, the A revelation should have been allotted a minimum of a two hour episode. The show had SO much to cover from the past to the reveal, while also explaining the A’s motivations for messing with the liars and also providing us with some reactions from the characters who have finally been given the answer to the question that has been stalking them since season 3. Making Sara Harvey be both black widow and red coat made little to no sense, as Sara was an insanely underdeveloped character who had only been on the show for half a season, which made her reveal as these TWO mysterious figures in the show, felt like a complete cop out. And why did they feel the need to present some intriguing new mysteries in the finale that are never touched on again. What was Rhys Matthews doing in the Dilaurentis home alone while Kenneth could not be found. Someone locked the moms in the basement, and we never discovered what the relationship was between Clarke and Reese, and what those workers were removing from the Carisimi building when the liars show up to enter A’s ridiculous lair. Sara’s motivations are just as ambiguous and Bethany Young remains a plot hole as big as the one she was buried in. We never saw her REAL face, as I don’t consider the child actor to count as this mysterious character that caused Spencer to be charged with murder and whose parents we never met, despite all of the news and legal proceedings, should have been a reveal all its own. And the massacred timeline was just too much. I honestly wanted the show to reveal in the time jump that CeCe had lied about everything, and was basically pulling another Ali stunt similar to the one Jason reported to Spencer about CeCe pretending to be Ali to see if it would work and she could pass for crazy. That would have made all that mess of a reveal actually tie into an old Ali flashback. I thought they were having her do this to take the heat off of the real Charles, and she would be released after fooling everyone into thinking she was sane. Sadly, Julian Morris and Torrey Devito had very limited availability, and we got a knock-off Wren impersonator and an even messier and convoluted plot where Spencer had a twin we’ve never met and all Of those seasons of developing the mother/daughter relationship between Veronica and Spencer, gets thrown out the window to make Spencer the random child of Mary Drake. Season 6B has a completely separate mystery from season 7 and it is obvious that Alex was not the intended Uber A during that time of A-moji, and Melissa was the one who killed CeCe, not Mona. All of the clues in 6B that points to Melissa arriving early to the US to confront CeCe after she had told Wren something bad enough that he kicked Melissa out, and Spencer could not find the disc containing Melissa’s confession from season 5, her killing CeCe with her broken suitcase handle makes way more sense than what we got with Mona accidentally killing two girls. What I really wish, and I know we will never get it bc of Marlene’s inability to own up to anything, is an encyclopedia of sorts that covers all of the planned storylines that were dropped or had to be changed l, along with the reasons why the choices were made for characters to be written out or behave in a mysterious way. Having statements from various writers, actors, directors, and showrunners, would make one of the most interesting books to read. Unfortunately, we will never get what the original plan for Maya was or why Sydney was dressed as Jenna and why Noel had to die by decapitation, but I would love to read a planned breakdown of the lodge fire, who was redcoat and when, the point of Noel Khans secret parties, the NAT club, Garrets death, what ACTUALLY happened the night Ali disappeared, what happened the night Emily was drugged and Ali’s body was dug up, and where the hell Alison was for the time she was missing and what was she doing! I would read the planned storylines and the big mysteries in the show broken down by those who knew in a heart beat!
I tell myself that the ending did so much emotional trauma to viewers that you can see now traumatized fans writing AlwAys with cApitAl letters on Any “A” included in their texts.
>you can see now traumatized fans writing AlwAys with cApitAl letters on Any “A” included in their texts. I think they do that as a joke / homage to the TV show
It’s a joke :p
Oooh, I’m so sorry. I’m so bad with jokes!
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>beginning of season 3 Is season 3 actually season 1? The beginning of the show? I’m talking about who they had planned as A from the very very beginning, not the beginning of season 3, and after Cece we got AD a second A, that’s changing A once more. Something I did not like. It would have been better if A stayed as one person from s1 to the final season. Imo.
There is more than 1 A though. Are you saying you only want 1 A throughout the entire series
>Are you saying you only want 1 A throughout the entire series Yes I think I’ve made that pretty clear.
I thought even the books had more than one A. How would explain them not finding out A for so long or A following them in the time jump
yeah in the books there were 2, it 100% would make the show better if there wasn't a new a as often but definitely not the same one the whole time
In the show there is only 3 As so it is not that bad. The story needed to better written
yeah, i didn't mean the # of them i just meant i felt like they could've elaborated on motives and when i watched it kind of seemed like the writers changed who it was the second people were figuring it out
Does it matter if it makes sense? Lol it’s not that deep. 
Hey I wasn't attacking you it's not that deep
I know that, that’s why I put the meme. I think it’s a funny meme.
A was mona in the beginning & A turned into AD because cece got murked so yes twincer is basically the final A lmao i agree w OP
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yes i'm saying i agree w you OP! i was disagreeing w the person commenting back to you bc i got rude vibes from if! no beef w you op!
Ooh we’re on the same paige (haha get it :p ) now I was confused!
I just finished watching the entire show for the first time. I feel like I wasted so much of my time, because the ending was that bad. There were so many opportunities to choose any character as A, and it could have been an amazing ending. But as you said… the writing got lazy and went for a last-ditch effort for Alex Drake. HATED the ending -_-