Throughout our time dutifully and faithfully watching the six seasons of Pretty Little Liars many secrets have been made, kept, and leaked. To hold us over on the off season while we patiently wait for new episodes, we follow all of our liars on every social media platform imaginable, read blogs by directors and producers, and bide our time with reruns. This January our waiting will be over; the liars return to the screen after a five-year jump in Rosewood time. As we are well aware, five years can bring some major differences so you’ll want to be caught up and ready to go for the season 6B opener, scheduled to air on ABC Family (soon to be renamed Free Form) on January 12th. We’re about to take you through the important details, liar by liar, that you’ll need to know before watching the first episode.
Aria Montgomery:
From the beginning of the series, Aria has been involved with Ezra Fitz. The two found out that he was her literature professor in high school, and decided to keep their relationship a secret (but how long can secrets be kept in Rosewood, anyway?). After many twists and turns, Ezra and Aria finally decided to call it quits for good in the season 6A finale. Actress Lucy Hale reveals that after the time jump, we will find Aria going to college in Boston as a writing major. While Aria is at school, Ezra goes to South America to work with Habitat for Humanity. When he loses that job, Ezra treks back to Rosewood and, according to actor Ian Harding, becomes an alcoholic. We will see Aria in a publishing job, where she meets her new boyfriend Liam, and ends up working with an old flame (do you even need to ask?). All of this novelty leaves us wondering: Aria’s whole life has basically turned around, but is she ready to let go of everything that happened in her past?
Hanna Marin:
Hanna had a tricky past as she had to navigate through her parents’ divorce, the disappearance of the liars’ frenemy, Alison, and the stress of finding and losing love. Between the end of 6A and the beginning of 6B, Hanna and Caleb move to New York together (yay!), where Hanna pursues her love of fashion at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Caleb continues his tech jobs. The two ultimately split up (not yay…) due to the demands of Hanna’s post-FIT job and all of the traveling it requires. Hanna’s job led her to Europe where, as actress Ashley Benson tells us, Hanna meets her fiancée. We’re still holding out hope that she’ll come back to Rosewood, lock eyes with Caleb, and never leave his side again, but we’ll see how that plays out.
Spencer Hastings:
Spencer was a go-getter from the very first episode of PLL. She was always goal oriented but had sometimes found herself lost in love, trauma, and even drug abuse. After applying to several insanely high level schools, Spencer decided to go to Georgetown in Washington, D.C. and leave all things Rosewood behind—including Toby. After six years together, the couple grew apart. Toby stayed in Rosewood on the police force and Spencer became a lobbyist working on Capitol Hill. Toby didn’t lose out on everything though. He inherited a big sum of money from the house that “A” burned down and bought three acres of land to start building his dream home. How can a woman stay away from a man with that kind of ambition (a.k.a. Derek Sheppard, Noah Calhoun, need I say more?)?
Emily Fields:
Always the emotional one, Emily was so loyal to her friends and loved ones throughout the whole series. She ended up falling in love with a girl on her swim team, Paige, and was devastated when Paige moved out to California with her parents. After the five-year jump, we learn from actress Shay Mitchell that Emily got accepted to Pepperdine University in Malibu, conveniently just a couple hours from Stanford (Paige’s school). Emily’s academic career is short lived and she drops out after her father dies. Emily picks up bartending in California and comes back to Rosewood with what showrunner Marlene King calls “the biggest secret” of all the liars.
Alison DiLaurentis:
Well, Ali is definitely not A, which basically fooled all of us. Ali ended up being alive after years of the audience and all of her friends and family believing that she was long dead; but she came back with more secrets than most of us could keep track of. Eventually Ali took her misguided teen years and used them as incentive to become a teacher at Rosewood High. Ali is also happily married (here’s where A comes in) to her sister’s psychiatric doctor. Wait … Ali has a sister?! Yes. Yes she does. A turned out to be CeCe Drake, who was formerly Charles DiLaurentis. After going through years in Radley Sanitarium, which is now a hotel, Charles decided on a sex-change operation, became CeCe, and started ruining the liars’ lives.
So what brings all the girls back to Rosewood after they worked so hard to forget all that happened there? Ali asks them to testify in court and say that they no longer feel threatened by Charlotte. But one lone liar does still feel threatened—Mona. We learn that Mona majored in political science at Duke, but she’s come back to try to speak with CeCe (we don’t know why yet) before her hearing.
In short, a lot has changed with the little liars in the five years since we’ve seen them. The actors and actresses from PLL tell us that the show will be “classy, juicy, deceptive, edgy, sadder and badder”, “scary as hell”, and “unlike anything you have seen before”. We can’t wait for January 12th to find out what the cast has in store for us in season 6B!