‘Pretty Little Liars’ Series Finale Recap: A.D. Identity Revealed

Pretty Little Liars ended on Tuesday, and the identity of the mysterious A.D. was finally revealed.

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS SERIES FINALE RECAP

PLL was on the air for seven years, and brought fans on a journey of twists, turns, and network name-changes. The episode began with the girls drinking coffee at night, talking about Mona’s trip to prison before Lucas walks by in a white tux and Jenna appears in a circus outfit. Turns out we’re in Mona’s dream, and she wakes up to someone in her room. “I never would have guessed it was you,” she says. “Are you here to kill me?”

The scene cuts to a year later with Ezra and Aria, who are wandering about on the week of their wedding, excited that their book might soon become a movie. Then we see Emily feeding her twin babies, but Ali seems a little off in the background. Ali meets up with Emily’s mom without Emily’s knowledge, and they discuss Emily being “taken care of.” “Like I promised you, I will always be here for her,” Ali says, but the tone is a bit creepy.

Then we move onto Spencer, who recently bought a horse. She speaks with Melissa at the stables, where Toby joins. We learn Ali is teaching English at Rosewood High School, and is not faring well. First of all, she is teaching Ezra and Aria’s book in class, and a student accuses the authors of stealing from Nicole. Another student calls Ali a “lesbo,” and another says, “I could bury you… but then it wouldn’t be the first time someone buried you alive, would it?” Not secrets are safe in this town.

That last girl, Addison, is making a name for herself, unsurprisingly, as the school bully. She puts a doll wearing a hearing aid in the locker of a deaf student, and puts a knife through its chest. She encounters Jenna, who is also a teacher at Rosewood, and makes fun of her for being blind, but Jenna has the perfect response – “I may not be able to see, but I can smell a bitch a mile away.”

Later, all the couples are out to dinner for Ezra and Aria’s bachelor/bachelorette party, but in the morning Aria cries to Spencer that she can’t marry Ezra because she just found out she can’t have children. Then Melissa takes off a mask, and it’s none other than Mona. She explains she did it as a test to see if she could wear the mask.

Later, we follow Spencer to the prison to visit Mary, whom she hasn’t seen in weeks. The scene ends with Spencer telling Mary she needs her help. That night, everyone is together again at the rehearsal dinner. Some girls from the high school are catering the dinner, and Emily tries to tell them not to be friends with Addison the bully. “You don’t say no to someone like Addison,” the girl says. “She’d have to be dead first.” Spinoff clue?

The moms talk about the basement incident, not telling how they got out, but it seemed like an ordeal. Aria is finally able to talk to Ezra about her fertility troubles, and he is angry that she didn’t tell him sooner. And then we finally figure out why Ali had been acting so weird. Emily asks after she saw her mom slip something into Ali’s purse, and she admits she was planning a proposal. But she decides to do it off the cuff now that Emily knows, and it’s very sweet.

Next we see, Spencer is at home and hears piano music. “Toby? Is that you?” she asks innocently, before being punched out by Mona. When she comes to, she’s on the floor of a makeshift jail cell. She looks into the mirror on the wall, but her reflection doesn’t follow her movements. Finally it’s clear that there is another Spencer – a twin sister. And that’s not all, but Spencer’s mom Mary Drake is there as well. “We didn’t think you’d wake up so soon,” she tells her.

There’s a brief cut at the hotel where Ezra asks someone to keep a secret before running into Spencer. And then cops tell Ali and Emily that Mary has escaped. Back in the cell, Spencer asks questions. A flashback informs us that the twin’s name is Alex Drake (A.D.!). Apparently Alex has been pretending to be Spencer for a while, and rattles off various times she’s succeeded, including sleeping with Spencer’s boyfriend Toby. “After Charlotte’s death, I needed closure,” she explains. She begged Wren to shoot her so she can match the gunshot scar that Spencer already sports, wanting to take over her life completely.

Then she admits she killed Wren because he knew Alex separately from Spencer, and her plan would never work. We skip to Aria’s wedding, where Alex (as Spencer) holds one of Emily and Ali’s twins, and says, “You have your daddy’s eyes. I knew Wren would make pretty babies.”

Back in the cell, Spencer and Mary share a meal, and Mary tries to convince Spencer that Alex is worth trusting. Mary reveals that she had had twins and only kept one, sending Alex off to a wealthy British family, where she “would live a Cinderella life.” Turns out her adopted parents didn’t like that Alex had “issues,” and sent her off to an orphanage. But she ran away at 10 years old.

Suddenly, we find Ezra in the cell with Spencer. He followed Alex there, thinking it was Spencer, and is now missing his wedding day. After all this, Alex returns and admits all this to-do is about Toby. “He settled for Yvonne, and now he’s free to be with his one true love: me,” she says with crazy eyes. A few flashbacks later, we see Charlotte tell Alex that Spencer and the Hastings are “toxic” and not to trust them.

Alex goes out to find Toby at the stables, but Spencer’s new horse knows the difference between Spencer and Alex and freaks out. She also meets with Jenna, who can tell that something is off with “Spencer.” She calls Toby quickly to warn him.

Within a few minutes of discussing with the whole gang, everyone is on board with the evil twin theory. They all have their reasons to believe that Spencer is not Spencer, but the whole thing is a bit of a stretch. “Out of all the insane theories we’ve jumped to, Spencer having an evil twin has to be the most insane,” Emily says, and yet still, they all easily agree.

Back in the cell, Alex knocks out Mary when she tries to stop her from killing Spencer. The rest of the gang (plus Mona) are on their way to find Spencer. They discover the dungeon is in a house that Toby built. Meanwhile, Spencer and Ezra manage to half-escape using a bobby pin Spencer picked off of Mary. Still, they are stuck underground. They run into Alex on their way. “It’s not too late to be family,” Spencer tries, but obviously it is.

In possibly the most cliche moment of the episode, Toby finds them carrying a gun, but can’t tell the twins apart, as they are wearing the same clothes. Toby asks which poem was her favorite from the book he gave her, and of course, only Spencer knows. Mona already called 911, so a cop comes shortly thereafter to take Alex away. They had already caught Mary.

The show wraps up with Ezra and Aria getting married in the chapel with the bell tower, where every other murder and funeral occurred. Showrunner I. Marlene King does a fun cameo to shush an attendee whose cell phone goes off during the ceremony. In the last scene with all the ladies present, they talk about their future plans – marriages, babies, and honeymoons galore.

Nearing the end, the show takes us to Paris, where Mona is a shopkeeper. She goes to the basement to coo at her dolls, and we see Mary and Alex dressed up in the background, prisoners. Since it was Mona who called 911, it appears she paid someone off to kidnap the pair.

Freeform sets up a spinoff series even more with the very last scene, when they stick in a scene with the high schoolers, exactly mimicking the opening scene of the series, but this time with Addison. “She’s gone.” they say about the bully.