‘Pretty Little Liars’ Recap: Mona Returns To Rosewood, Spencer And Hanna Head To Radley

Mona returned to Rosewood and Spencer’s nightmares led her back to Radley in Pretty Little Liars’ “She’s No Angel.”

PLL 6×05 Recap

Spencer’s nightmares are not improving, even with the marijuana-laced cookies she got from the Brew’s new baker. In fact, they’re getting weirder. In this episode, Spencer (Troian Bellisario) was plagued by a strange dream of a young girl dancing in an abandoned room. The tiled room was full of old furniture, filing cabinets and two old tubs. The girl, wearing a disheveled white dress, danced erratically through the room before falling onto one of the bathtubs – it was like a creepy version of Sia’s “Chandelier” video, starring none other than Maddie Ziegler herself. Spence thinks the room she saw might have been in the Dollhouse, and begins to wonder whether or not there wasn’t another girl stuck down there with them.

Mona and Lesli Stone Return To Rosewood

Hanna (Ashley Benson) woke up to find Mona (Janel Parrish) in her kitchen. She’s back in Rosewood for the first time since they were freed from the Dollhouse. Now that it’s clear Mona was never dead, Rosewood PD has opened up an investigation into the faking of her death. Mona is afraid of what might happen with the investigation, but she’s terrified of what Ali might do to her now that she thinks Mona framed her for murder. Hanna agrees to walk Mona to Rosewood PD, and the two stop for coffee on the way. At the Brew, they run into Lesli (Elizabeth McLaughlin), Mona’s friend whose court testimony helped land Hanna in jail. Lesli lashes out at Mona, saying she’s in town because of the investigation surrounding Mona’s fake death, and claims that she could be in trouble for perjury. (I find this hard to believe unless the police think Mona’s death was a huge conspiracy and Lesli was in on it. Even so, doesn’t Mona being kidnapped kind of negate that theory?) Anyways, Lesli is furious, and she walks out, leaving Mona afraid of both Ali and Leslie.

Later, Hanna arranges to meet Lesli with the hope of easing the tension between her and Mona. At their meeting, Lesli is completely different. She softens her tone and apologizes for her past behavior. If Hanna can forgive Mona, she says, then she can try.

At school, Hanna tries to talk to Spencer about Mona’s return and their run in with Leslie, but Spencer is too busy sexting Toby to pay attention. When Spencer snaps at Hanna for trying to take a bite of one of her cookies, Hanna calls Spencer out and asks her if she’s high. Spencer denies it, and Hanna lets it go, but the exchange inspires Spencer to reach out and attend an NA meeting. At the NA meeting, she runs into her old sobriety coach Dean (Nathaniel Buzolic), who encourages her to ditch the rest of her drug cookies. He also reminds her to call him if she ever needs anything.

In other news, Ali (Sasha Pieterse) is fighting with her dad, who seems to be terminally grumpy and bitter where his children are concerned. He gets especially mad when he sees Ali hanging out with her new cop friend, Lorenzo (Travis Winfrey). Lorenzo is still trying to get Ali to agree to coach the Church’s girls’ soccer team, and manages to sneak in a kiss with Ali before her dad comes home and scares him away.

Emily and Sara

Emily (Shay Mitchell) is still busy babysitting Sara (who I still do not trust AT ALL). After overhearing Sara (Dre Davis) fight with her mother on the phone, Emily suggests that maybe Sara should look into getting emancipated from her mother. She takes Sara to Caleb (Tyler Blackburn) to ask for help, but he is skeptical. Without a job or a high school diploma, Sara’s chances of emancipation are slim. She needs to show a court that she can support herself as an adult, so Caleb offers her a job at his web design company. After the girls drop off Sara’s paperwork, Sara wants to celebrate by getting a tattoo. She gets a bird flying out of a cage tattooed on her back and convinces Emily to get a tattoo as well. Perhaps one of the biggest shockers of the episode was the fact that Emily got a ‘Japanese’ character for “courage” tattooed on her hip and took the tattoo artist’s word as to it’s meaning. Have you learned nothing, Emily?

While Emily is busy getting inked, Sara sees a text from Aria (Lucy Hale) on Emily’s phone. It’s a photo of a shadowy, hooded figure. Aria took a trip with her new photo friend Clark (Titus Makin Jr.) to take photos out in a junkyard outside of town. Clark is trying to win a photo contest to secure an internship at an LA magazine (a hint as to what Aria’s future might hold?) and he asks her out to dinner while the two are outside taking photographs. She turns him down politely, explaining to him that she’s not dating at the moment. He apologizes and reveals that he knows the trauma she’s been through – he recognized her from the news – and is cool being friends. The two resume taking photos, Aria of creepy dolls and Clark of other junk (and, occasionally, of Aria), when Aria feels someone watching her. She runs after a hooded, shadowy figure, but sees nothing. Later, in the dark room, she sees a hooded figure in one of Clark’s photographs – could it be A?

Hanna And Spencer Go To Radley

Clark’s A photo is what Aria sent to Emily, and all the other girls, along with a message: “Is A a girl?” When Sara confronts Emily about the photo, she runs off, freaking out about how Emily was keeping her search for A from her. She’s seen a hooded figure, Sara tells Emily, watching her from afar. Emily manages to calm her down enough to tell her that A threatened to hurt Sara, and she was keeping her in the dark for her own protection. Moreover, she reveals that the girls are closer than ever to finding out who A is and why he/she kept them in the Dollhouse. Their conversation is interrupted when they spot a shadow of a hooded figure and run.

Meanwhile, Spencer and Hanna decide to pay another visit to Radley to investigate. Neither of them are convinced Charles really died, so they go hunting for clues. There, they stumble upon the room from Spencer’s dream – with the same dirty, tiled walls and empty bathtubs. They find old files for Charles DiLaurentis, recording his death and a record of a work order for the courier who was in charge of transporting Charles’ organs. Spencer seems pretty certain this proves Charles is, in fact, dead, but I’m not convinced, and I doubt Hanna is either.

Hanna goes looking for more files, but instead finds a gross Resusci Anne doll resting lifeless in the dark water filling one of the tubs. It’s a doll used to teach CPR, but it’s corpse-like qualities are enough to scare Hanna to death. She screams, and they hear a noise. When they hear the noise again, they decide to go investigate and find Mona, standing in a side room clutching a folder in her hands. Mona tries to get away from Spencer and Hanna without telling them why she was there, but Spencer merely grabs the file from Mona’s hands. It’s the file for Lesli Stone, who, it turns out, was at Radley much longer than either of them. Mona didn’t meet Lesli randomly in the street, she met her in Radley. Moreover, Lesli was there long enough to know Charles, and she was roommates with Bethanny, the girl who was killed and buried in the DiLaurentis backyard – who was dressed like Alison on the night of her disappearance.

When the girls regroup to go over their findings, Hanna is ready to go with a new theory: Lesli is the A captured in Clark’s photograph – “That’s a bust, and it’s Lesli Jones.” And the girls agree there’s only one thing to do: catch her in the act.

Meanwhile, Mona calls Lesli to tell her that the girls know about her time in Radley, and Leslie loses it. “I asked you to do one thing for me, Mona. One thing! You always screw everything up!” she yells.

The episode ended with a shot of a gloved ‘A’ hand making a doll wig with pink and black hair – an Aria wig.

Pretty Little Liars returns with new episodes on July 14, leaving us with two weeks to think about some burning questions.

What is the truth about Sara? (Am I the only one who thinks Emily is just a bit too trusting when it comes to her?) Does she have some kind of connection to Radley? Why aren’t the girls more suspicious or eager to find out about Sara’s past? (Coincidentally, where are those girlfriends who were so concerned over Sara’s disappearance a few seasons ago?)

Is Lesli on the A Team? I do not think she’s A, mostly because showrunner I. Marlene King said Charles is A on Twitter, but she’s definitely involved somehow. What I can’t figure out is why Mona would be helping her at all, instead of joining Hanna and the girls with their investigation into A.

Where the hell did Andrew go? And what, if anything, did he find out about A while he was supposedly trying to help find the girls? What was the point of the evidence found against him? The journal? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Pretty Little Liars airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on ABC Family.

Article by Olivia Truffaut-Wong

Olivia Truffaut-Wong was born and raised in Berkeley, California, where she developed her love of all things entertainment. After moving to New York City to earn her degree in Film Studies, she stayed on the East Coast to follow her passion and become an entertainment writer. She lives on a diet of television, movies and food.

Click here for the 2015 CMT Awards: Best Dressed Slideshow