The ‘Pretty Little Liars’ Reboot Didn’t Need That Tie to the Original Show

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Episodes 1 and 2 of Pretty Little Liars: Summer School.

The Big Picture

• Pretty Little Liars: Summer School
  premieres with a new killer and mysteries.
• The
  Pretty Little Liars
  reboot avoids romanticizing predatory relationships.
• The reboot series connection to Aria and Ezra’s relationship was not necessary at all and it’s good that it’s been retconned.

Season 2 of Max’s Pretty Little Liars reboot, Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, premiered on May 10, with its first two episodes promising a summer full of mystery, self-discovery, and a brand-new killer terrorizing Millwood. Pretty Little Liars: Summer School picks up right where Season 1 left off, but Episode 2 explains away one of the first major references to the original series, and rightfully so. After Imogen (Bailee Madison) gives birth to her daughter in the Season 1 finale, she tells Tabby (Chandler Kinney) about a couple from the neighboring town of Rosewood who are looking to adopt her baby. Their names? Aria and Ezra, as in Aria Montgomery (Lucy Hale) and Ezra Fitz (Ian Harding), from the original Pretty Little Liars series that first aired on ABC Family (now Freeform) in 2010.

Aside from the show’s basic premise and iconic theme song, there aren’t many connections between the reboot and the original, but this direct reference to one of the most controversial couples in Pretty Little Liars was possibly the worst connection that could’ve been made. Ezra famously dated Aria while he was her teacher and she was still in high school, and introducing these characters into the reboot as a married couple would have worked in direct contradiction to the themes explored in Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, which deals heavily with sexual violence and predatory behavior towards teenage girls.

Why Don’t Aria and Ezra Show Up in ‘Pretty Little Liars: Summer School?’

Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin takes significant liberties with the original show’s premise, leaning into the horror genre by turning “A” into a masked serial killer à la Michael Myers. This version of “A” still sends cryptic, threatening messages to the series protagonists, but with much deadlier consequences, and the reboot follows more closely in the footsteps of MTV’s Scream: The TV Series than the original Pretty Little Liars. Showrunners Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring turned Pretty Little Liars: OriginalSin into more of a spin-off than a sequel, with a backstory completely unrelated to that of the original series, which made the reference to Aria and Ezra all the more surprising. In the Season 1 finale, Imogen tells Tabby that Aria and Ezra are interested in adopting her baby, but in the Season 2 premiere, they are nowhere to be found. Instead, we find out Imogen’s daughter Estelle was adopted by a gay couple that lives nearby in Millwood.

So why this change? When Imogen speaks to her therapist in Episode 2, she explains that she “got a weird vibe from that Ezra dude,” and according to Bring, this change also made more sense for the trajectory of Imogen’s character, telling Entertainment Weekly, “It really felt right to us that we would be able to play story, have the baby close, have Imogen be able to be stopping by unwanted and kind of let her play out her anxieties that way.” Retconning this detail from Season 1 was absolutely the right decision considering how much Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin revolves around misogyny and sexual assault, and how it ditches the romanticization of problematic, predatory relationships that plagued the original series.

‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ Addresses Predatory Relationships Head-on

It’s been over ten years since Season 1 of Pretty Little Liars first aired in 2010, and to say many aspects of the series haven’t aged well would be putting it mildly. From toxic relationships to stigmatization of mental illness, watching (or re-watching) Pretty Little Liars in 2024 will likely make you cringe in more ways than one. This isn’t to say Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is without its own cringe factor. Like Max’s short-lived Gossip Girl reboot, clumsy pop culture references and the unnatural mixture of Internet slang into spoken dialogue are present throughout Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin as well. But in updating its premise and shifting into the horror genre, the series does provide some relevant social commentary, especially about bullying, sexual assault, and the persistence of a misogynistic culture.

The events of Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin can all be traced back to the sexual assault and subsequent death of Angela Waters (Gabriella Pizzolo) in 1999, with “A” enacting his revenge on those who were directly responsible and/or complicit in her death. In the present day, both Imogen and Tabby are also victims of sexual assault, which, in Imogen’s case, results in her pregnancy, and Season 2 is already beginning to address the lasting effects of their sexual trauma. By leaning into horror, a genre notorious for depictions of violence against women, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin takes misogyny and predatory behavior far more seriously than the original series ever did.

‘Pretty Little Liars: Summer School’ Still Needs to Address This Problematic Dynamic

The connection to Aria and Ezra in the Season 1 finale came out of nowhere and was entirely out of place considering everything the girls had just endured throughout the season, especially being introduced as potential parents to Imogen’s child. It also directly contradicts the way in which Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin addresses Wes’ (Derek Klena) relationship with Tabby, which, unlike Aria and Ezra’s relationship, is depicted for what it is: predatory and totally inappropriate. Wes, a film buff in his mid-twenties, is Tabby’s boss at the local movie theater where she works, and from the very first episode, it couldn’t be more clear that Wes is a predator. Knowing perfectly well that Tabby is a sophomore in high school, Wes constantly offers to drive her home, uses his knowledge of film and connections to NYU to lure her into his apartment, gives her alcohol, and even tries to kiss her. Tabby never indicates any mutual interest in Wes and seems to put up with his behavior in order to keep her job at the movie theater.

Their dynamic is treated much differently than Aria and Ezra’s in the original series, which ends with them married in the series finale, and Tabby’s mom even flat-out accuses Wes of grooming and assaulting her daughter. His predatory behavior made him a prime suspect, but once Chip (Carson Rowland) is revealed to be the true perpetrator behind Tabby and Imogen’s assaults, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin pretty much lets Wes off the hook. He promises to back off of Tabby, but continues as her boss at the movie theater in Season 2. As Tabby begins to process her trauma with a therapist, it’s likely that we will see her realize the true extent of Wes’ grooming, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if he ends up being one of Bloody Rose’s victims further down the line, because in this version of Pretty Little Liars, sexual predators are not romanticized, but met with deadly consequences.

Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin works just fine as a stand-alone show without any explicit connections to characters or storylines from the original series, and referencing Aria and Ezra, of all people, was an ill-advised attempt at connecting the two shows. Thankfully, Pretty Little Liars: Summer School tosses the idea of Aria and Ezra being Estelle’s adopted parents by addressing Ezra’s creepiness, and will hopefully go one step further in confronting Wes’ predatory behavior.

Pretty Little Liars: Summer School is available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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