Pop Culture Fix: Pretty Little Liars Is Getting Rebooted by Riverdale’s Showrunner

Here’s a Pop Culture Fix I curated just for you! 

+ A Pretty Little Liars reboot is on the way from Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, which feels weird because Pretty Little Liars only ended like 16 minutes ago — and also because, well, the PLL aesthetic birthed the Riverdale aesthetic and now the Riverdale aesthetic is rebirthing the PLL aesthetic? Pretty Little Liars was already a literal nesting doll of wacky horror tropes; I guess now we’re gonna find out what happens when you fold up a ghost like origami!

+ Grey’s Anatomy is gearing up to start production on season 17.

+ JAVICIA LESLIE IS ON THE BATWOMAN SET.

+ Kat Barrell chatted with TV Line about Wynonna Earp season four, the fun parts of playing a bad guy, and what’s next for WayHaught.

+ Alex Jung is back at it — this time profiling Miranda July and chatting about Kajillionaire, missed connections, and Instagram lovers.

+ Well, Sarah Paulson in this Ratched trailer is properly horrifying.

+ Troop Beverly Hills is getting a sequel?! (What a thrill!)

+ Three POC writers quit Netflix’s Grand Army due to racist exploitation and abuse, Ming Peiffer revealed on Twitter when the trailer dropped last week.

+ Meet Quintessa Swindell, a non-binary actor about to take Hollywood by storm.

+ Netflix introduces a free, no subscription required tier for select titles.

+ The best Gabrielle episodes of Xena.

+ If you didn’t want to shell out the extra 30 bucks to watch Mulan this weekend, you can wait until December and watch it for free — “free” — with just your regular Disney+ subscription. (Related: Toward a queer Disney canon.)

+ Gina Torres has joined 911: Lone Star as a series regular.

+ Ashly Burch — who you know as the voice of queer asexual Parvati Holcomb in Outer Worlds, queer protagonist Chloe Price in Life Is Strange, queer-cause-I-said-so Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn, and queer as every character she plays with the Critical Role crew — is on the third episode of Kotaku’s Behind the Voice.

+ Meet the women behind Stacey Abrams’ new documentary, All In: The Fight for Democracy.

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

14 Comments

  1. *Sits on Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s lap like he’s Santa*
    I want Hanna an Mona to date, an I want Sparia to be canon, an I want Mona to be the fifth Liar, an I want the Pretty Little Moms to be gay, an I want Ezra to fall inta a well an drown, an I want…

  2. If they could make pll not terrible this time that would be great. Like if they actually kept track of what happened each episode instead of just making random shit up every week. I mean really, I watched every season and tried to explain to someone once what happened after season 3 and i just got lost. I honestly dont think that anyone could coherently explain the plot past that point. Seriously….. Try. I fucking dare you.

      • Yeah.. Didn’t she have an evil British twin who was responsible for the whole thing? Was she the one who stole Emily’s eggs, fertilised them with some dudes sperm and implanted them into Allison?
        And why the fuck did I ever watch a show that made me ask these questions?
        It’s been 3 years and I’m still mad.

    • If that’s what you want, Riverdale’s showrunner is the absolute last person you should want getting his fingerprints all over this thing.

      • So much this, why is anyone trusting the Riverdale showrunner? Riverdale is inarguably worse than PLL in pretty much every way!
        The good YA mystery show on CW is Nancy Drew not Riverdale. Riverdale descended into garbage directly after Season 1.

  3. I love PLL and didn’t want it to ever end (“Pretty Little Liars – Golden Girls Edition” never end type scenario) but I really don’t understand rebooting it. If it is different characters and a different concept, I might give it a watch but I’m not going to watch another “Emily”. Not going to do it. I love American shows/movies but Hollywood will beat a dead horse to death (yes The L Word, I’m talking to you). Give me a new show with a true diverse cast (different colors, SIZES and SHAPES) and I will be happy. I don’t want the same mostly, stick figure, adult playing teenagers, white cast, with their one overly attractive, racially ambiguous femme girl. Is this too much to ask for?

  4. Excited for a show whose plot never made sense to be rebooted by the people whose current show’s plot makes even less sense

    (Hannah dancing forever)

  5. The problem is, I don’t trust the (male) Riverdale showrunner to do any better a job than Marlene did and we know she had some problematic story arcs. So what’s the point?

    • A murderous transwoman and the twist being an evil twin? Yeah, that’s how you spell problematic and unoriginal.
      With what Riverdale has become I doubt the reboot would be anybetter though.

  6. Riverdale did one thing right and that was killing off the pedo teacher dating a student in season 1. So that’s the kind of energy I’m looking for in a reboot.

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