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'Pretty Little Liars' Recap: Mona Confesses To Detective Wilden's Murder; Spencer Finds A Link Between Wilden And Toby's Mother's Death

Hanna (Ashley Benson) and Mona (Janel Parrish) hatched a plan to confess to killing Detective Wilden (Bryce Johnson) in Tuesday’s installment of Pretty Little Liars, ‘The Guilty Girl’s Handbook.’

Hanna gathers with Aria (Lucy Hale), Spencer (Troian Bellisario) and Emily (Shay Mitchell) in the morning before school to find out how her mother’s arraignment went. The answer? Not well, Ashley (Laura Leighton) entered her plea of not guilty, but, because she is accused of killing a cop, she is not being allowed bail and is being transferred to a state prison until trial! A distressed Hanna tells her friends to go to school without her; she needs to be alone.

In the halls of Rosewood High, Caleb (Tyler Blackburn) corners Spencer – Hanna is not answering his calls or returning his texts and he’s worried about her. Spencer tries to comfort him, and assures him that she will make a trip home during lunch to check on Hanna. Meanwhile Emily has a college counseling session with Mr. Fitz (Ian Harding). He inspires her to contact her Habitat for Humanity supervisor to see if she’d be willing to write her a college recommendation letter. While he has her there, Fitz asks Emily if ‘A’ is threatening them again – he accurately suspects that ‘A’ might have something to do with the car that crashed into Emily’s living room – but Emily denies it. She’s not fast enough though, and it appears Ezra might be getting suspicious again.

Ezra isn’t the only one worried about a threatening presence in the girls’ lives. Aria’s brother Mike (Cody Christian) has started taking martial arts classes with Jake (Ryan Guzman), the very same instructor Aria flirted with earlier this season. Mike avoids Aria’s concern, so she goes to Jake to try to find out what’s going on with her brother. He tells her that Mike came to him and said that his lacrosse teammates were somehow ‘playing against him’. Later that night, when Aria couldn’t get a hold of her brother, she called Jake in a panic, and the two had dinner together, and even set up a movie date. But is Aria really ready to move on?

Spencer returns home to check up on Hanna, the house is empty save her mother’s new intern, a law student from Penn. The DA sent all of Wilden’s files to their house instead of Spencer’s mother’s office, and he has been sent there to organize them. Seeing a golden opportunity, Spencer offers to help. Going through Detective Wilden’s files, Spencer finds a witness statement taken by a then-Officer Wilden at the scene of Toby (Keegan Allen)’s mother’s suicide. Turns out, the orderly Spencer bonded with while in Radley had told Officer Wilden that Toby’s mother had somehow gotten up to the roof and jumped from there, not from her bedroom window as was written in the final report. Hmm… The orderly doesn’t really have any information on why Wilden would have changed his statement, all he knows is that Toby’s mother is still dead, and that is something that can never be changed.

Still, Spencer goes to her mother later that evening and presents her with the evidence, hoping that it will help shed doubt on Ashley’s guilt. Clearly, other people could have motive to kill Detective Wilden, but her mother wasn’t convinced.

Over at Emily’s temporary motel-home, mother and daughter were also going through a rough moment. After meeting with her old supervisor (Rumer Willis), Emily has her recommendation and a bonus invite on another Habitat For Humanity trip in the coming summer. When she tells her mother (Nia Peeples) the good news, Pam falls apart at the idea of being left alone without her daughter. Poor Pam, she has the very stressful job of dealing with the insurance company because of the car crash, doing everything to help her daughter get over her shoulder injury, and has to find a new job after being (basically) fired from her job at the police station!

Now, back to Hanna. Refusing to speak to her friends or her boyfriend, Hanna turns to Mona for help. She wants to ‘live a lie,’ Hanna tells her former BFF, and needs her sneakiest ally to help her convince the police that she killed Detective Wilden. She wants to turn herself in, offer up a confession, in the hopes that her mother will be released. Mona spends most of the hour coaching Hanna, asking her questions, grilling her about what the scene of the crime was like, why she did it, how it felt to pull the trigger, etc. Caleb catches them and tries to talk Hanna out of it, but her mind is made up, and she looked almost ready to do it when her plans were thwarted by the very person she had called to help. At the last minute, Mona walked into the police station and confessed to the murder herself!

The consequences of Mona’s confession are, so far, unknown, and her motivations remain hazy at best. Did she turn herself in because she’s guilty or for some other, manipulative reason? If she is innocent, is she confessing to the crime to help Hanna’s mother or does she have her own, ‘A’-like, reasons for putting Hanna in her debt?

Pretty Little Liars returns next week with ‘Into the Deep,’ airing Tuesday at 8 P.M. on ABC Family.

– Olivia Truffaut-Wong

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