Previously on Pretty Little Liars, everything. Literally everything. Resurrection. Ghosts. Mystery-solving parrots. People dressed as dolls. Dolls dressed as people. People dressed as dolls dressed as people. Lairs in hotels. Lairs in RVs. Lighthouses, greenhouses, haunted houses, fun houses, exploding houses. Puppets. Plays. Guns and shovels and mannequin legs. Lesbians. (Lord, the lesbians.) Cars running over people. Cars running under people. Cars crashing into living room walls. Masks of clowns. Masks of zombies. Masks on masks of Alison’s face. Texts and emails and snapchats and tweets and not a single USB drive in sight. Fashion shows. Magic shows. Asylums and churches and barns barns barns. Face transplants. Eyeball transplants. A witch from the next town over. The Great Gatsby. Lolita. To Kill a Mockingbird. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Santa Clauses. Slap fights. Ouija boards. Fireflies. Bees! Fake cousins! Jewelry made of teeth! And best of all: Mona Vanderwaal. The Adrenalized Hyperreal Dobby Jesus Slytherin Reckoning. The Truth. The Way. The Life.

Alison’s lawyer has some bad news for her: No one believes anything that comes out of her mouth and so her best bet is going to be to take a plea bargain for Mona’s murder, in which she gets a sentence of 15 years and she’ll only be in for ten. The catch is she has to name her accomplice and the police are pretty sure it’s Hanna. I’m pretty sure it’s not legal to — you know what? Never mind.

My friends Nic and Nic and Heather (for real!) figured out that Ali’s lawyer is Ross’ girlfriend, Julie, from the second season of Friends.

Isn’t that just kick-you-in-the-crotch, spit-on-your-neck fantastic?

Rachel and Ross had already been married and divorced five times before I was born, so.

Melissa finally shows up at her London apartment to rescue Spencer from the clutches of Colin Bollocky Wankshite. Spencer is still panicked about getting home due to her luggage bleeding all over the place, but she’s determined to make the flight anyway.

Spencer, get off the computer! Mom said to stop you from reading any more lesbian fan fiction!

You and what army?

Melissa: You can’t go.
Spencer: Why?
Melissa: Because I love you.
Spencer: LOL no for real why?
Melissa: Because mom got you an interview at St. Andrew’s.
Spencer: Whoa, that’s actually practically Hogwarts.
Melissa: Yeah, remember how Fucking Johnny shit-talked Hogwarts. I’m glad mom killed him. Now if she’d just murder Toby too.
Spencer: Excuse me, I love him.
Melissa: Eh, whatever.

At Rosewood High, Emily rehashes the Varjak/Cyrus thing with Aria. To wit: Cyrus is a guy who cut Ali in some basement and took all her money, when she was dead. And then when she was back to being alive, he turned himself in for kidnapping her, but Ali wouldn’t name him as her kidnapper until exactly 24 hours and one second after the cops arrested him, at which time he was already out of jail and on the lam. First stop: Getting paid by Ali in a wig in the forest. And then Cyrus showed back up in a Rosewood dive bar in the woods and bought some blood from Mike and rode his electric scooter around pretending it was a Harley and then someone named Varjak smashed into his scooter with a truck and set him on fire and then a mummy killed him in the hospital.

I am not going to let Spencer get away with trying to be gayer than me! I have been gay since DAY ONE.

Oh man. Day one was like a million years ago. Remember Maya? Remember SEAN?

Emily wants Aria to check in with Ezra and see if he knows anything about Varjak and/or Cyrus from all the “research he did for his book,” which is what we are calling his systematic stalking now. You know what I was thinking about the other day? Remember when Ezra snapped at Emily about “Some people have real problems!” the literal day after a car crashed into her living room and so she was sleeping in the bedroom of — not one, but two of — her dead girlfriends? And that motherfucker knew it! Because he knew everything! And he still had the audacity to be like, “My high school girlfriend is taking away this kid I’ve known for five minutes who actually isn’t even my child and so some people have real problems, Emily, unlike you.”

Anyway, Aria says she doesn’t want to talk to Ezra about his “research” right now because she’s on a roll of being actively involved in this season’s mystery and he always ruins it.

On the way out the door to go to school, Hanna hears her mom and Veronica Hastings talking law things in the kitchen. For example, Alison has been offered a plea deal if she’ll say Hanna was her accomplice for Mona’s murder. Well, Ashley defends Hanna against that. And so Veronica tells her she’s been visiting Ali in jail. And Ashley defends Hanna against that too. And so Veronica says the thing about the storage locker in Hanna’s name with the barrel full of bodies inside. Hanna doesn’t hear if her mom defends her against that one; she grabs her backpack and skedaddles on out the door.

I don’t know, Veronica. I told Ella I’d wait.

But if you really think we have a shot.

I promise you we can be gayer than any of our kids.

At school, Emily tries to reassure Hanna that Alison would never lie to the police and implicate Hanna and save her own ass. Man. Man. I would never date Emily. Like with Spencer, you know you’re getting paranoia, occasional delusions/drug-fueled daydreams, unquenchable competitiveness, and she’s always going to be correcting your grammar. With Aria, you know you’re getting someone who wears raptor fangs as earring and someone who can turn literally any conversation into a thing about her. But you know those things going in. Emily is such a pendulum of emotion! Everything’s so black and white! Everybody is Good Guys or Crackpots! One day she’s smooching you and defending you with her Nate-stabbin’ pocket knife, and the next day she’s dumping you or throwing your ass in jail, and the next day she’s back to assuming you couldn’t even tell a white lie! It’s a good thing she’s the prettiest person on earth.

After dealing with Hanna’s worries, Emily turns her attention back to Aria, who is making plans to have dinner with Andrew after they k-i-s-s-e-d last week.

What? These are pants!

They aren’t skin color! They’re way pinker than skin color! I don’t look naked!

Emily: What about Ezra?
Aria: What about him?
Emily: WHOA WHAT. Have you been brainwashed?
Aria: Unbrainwashed, actually. I might still be dating A, though. Andrew might be him.
Emily: Oh, okay, well that’s good. Ask Ezra about his “research,” will you?
Aria: I kind of like you better when you mind your own beeswax.
Emily: Beeswax! Maybe that’s what’ll hold my empanadas together!

In London, Colin arrives home with some tickets to see a play at the Royal Shakespeare Company. He’s like, “Are you into Hamlet?” And Spencer is like, “Family members murdering each other and ghosts showing up to call out the people who killed them while everybody gets spied on and manipulated and blackmailed by their best friends and moms and the whole time the main guy goes crazier and crazier because he doesn’t know who to trust and suddenly he’s staging this play within the play like a person tripping balls on a whole bucket of Adderall? You don’t even know how into that I am.”

Look on the bright side. At least you’re not cursed with dying over and over.

After school, Hanna goes to Calebzra’s apartment.

Hanna: Well, my ass is going to jail.
Caleb: No, babe, everything’s going to be okay.
Hanna: The D.A. said Ali can get half time in jail if she’ll just say I killed Mona too.
Caleb: Oh. Well, you’ve always looked good in orange.

Ashley shows up at Caleb’s and she is piiiissssed. She tells Hanna to get in the car right now! They are going home and on the way Hanna is going to explain about the bodies in the barrels and visiting Alison in jail! And weirdly, but awesomely, Hanna does tell her the truth. Kind of. She explains about the storage locker thing. Ashley is like, “Why did you not just tell me that? I know Emily can’t talk to Pam about this kind of stuff because Pam is dead. And Aria can’t talk to Ella about this kind of stuff because Ella moved to the Galapagos after that Donut Castle chef tried to molest you. And Spencer can’t talk to Veronica about this because Veronica is a robot. But I am a regular human mom who has robbed a bank; I’d like to think you can count on me to understand.”

I know that sexuality is a spectrum, but social biases codify sexual attraction, contrary to the biological facts, mom.

Hanna is properly chastised.

I mean, I guess the good thing about Emily is she is so stubborn about righting her wrongs when she realizes she believed the exact wrong thing about the people she loves. She’s got a fire in her as she zigs and zags around town getting into everybody’s business and trying to crack the case of Mona’s murder so Ali doesn’t have to stay in jail anymore. She goes to the bookstore to ask Ezra is he knows anything about Varjak. He tells Emily he doesn’t know who Varjak is and there was nothing about that guy in his “research” and can they just drop it. So okay, fine. Emily has another idea. She wants Ezra to take his white male ass over to Mona’s lawyer’s office and find out what the deal is there. Was he working for Mona? Was he working for the person who killed Mona? Is he just another grown man who moved to this town to get his grimy paws on underage girls? Bro-to-bro, Emily wants Ezra to go find out.

Oooh, saucy. But I’m trying to be a little more butch right now.

LOL Spencer you. are. not. gay.

Melissa lends Spencer some clothes to wear to Shakespeare, and they are reminded that they never got to do this stuff when the lived in the same house in America because Melissa was always marrying guys that “researched” Spencer and her friends in their underwear in their bedrooms with video cameras, and Melissa was always having to bury the dead bodies of the people Spencer maybe killed in the yard. They cross their fingers behind their backs and promise never to lie to each other again, but to be Elizabeth/Jane Bennet-levels of awesome to each other, in terms of sisterhood, from now on.

Ezra goes to Mona’s lawyer’s office like Emily asked him to, pretending to be interested in franchising his coffee/book shop that has been in business for five minutes and employs a single teenager as the chef, barista, checkout clerk, janitor, accountant, inventory manager, CEO, social media technician, book club organizer, structural engineer, and bouncer. Emily is to bookstores what Wren Kingston is to hospitals. The lawyer offers up some terrible advice, and then Ezra turns on him and starts demanding answers about Mona. And so he is summarily escorted from the premises.

Look, it’s none of my business, but your hair is kind of Varjak-ish today.

Don’t you dare tell ME about Capote.

Outside, he hides in the bushes with Aria and Emily and watches the lawyer drive away. They decide they should do a stakeout on him.

They tail him out into the woods to this gated house, and the whole time Ezra and Aria are just blah blah blah who is Andrew. (Because Ezra sees a text from him on Aria’s phone because all the men on this show help themselves to reading Aria’s phone.) They blah blah blah about it for so long that they miss the part of the stakeout where they arrive at the house and Emily gets out of the car and rushes through the gate on foot. They get trapped outside.

Emily rolls her eyes and tells them to find another way in if they can, she guesses, or whatever.

Run faster, Ezra!

You should have worn workout pants like me!

THEY’RE NOT PANTS.

Things are going pretty good for Spencer in London. She hated the modern retelling of Hamlet but she’s old enough to order beer legally in the United Kingdom. And oh, she does! She orders and drinks and orders and drinks and orders and drinks drinks drinks. And then she plays some darts with Colin. Spencer sure does like to get drunk and intense with British men. Remember when she danced for Wren that time? They play darts until they can’t stand up anymore and then they stumble home in the rain and make out in Colin’s apartment. Spencer smartly decides to call it a night before things get too horizontal. (ALSO TOBY IS STILL YOUR BOYFRIEND SHUT IT DOWN.)

No offense, but I’m just trying to surround myself with the gayest people right now.

I made out with Kurt Hummel.

Things are not going pretty good for Ali in jail. Somebody ransacks her room and scrawls on the wall that she should take the plea deal. And then when she’s ironing (???) the jail uniforms, a girl glares menacingly at her. And then she gets so freaked out by something that she screams like a banshee! Turns out she was getting tortured by the glaring girl with her own iron! When that’s over, she calls her lawyer and asks if taking the plea deal for first degree murder means she can get to a “safer jail.” Um. No, Ali. Probably not.

This whole time, Ezra and Aria are wandering aimlessly through the woods looking for a way to help Emily’s who is still trapped inside the gated mansion.

Aria: I think we should split up.
Ezra: #EndOfEzria?!?!?
Aria: Well, yeah, but I just meant in the forest right now so maybe one of us can find a way past the gate.
Ezra: I heard you got into SCAD.
Aria: Yup.
Ezra: Have you ever been to Savannah?
Aria: No, Ali’s grandma lived real close by in Hilton Head, though, so I’m looking forward to four years of finding doll heads washed up all over the beach.

They are useless when they are teamed up together. Aria has been dang Nancy Drew this season without him around! While the lawyer is inside his house, Emily roots around in his trash and finds a pizza receipt for Varjak, who ordered one large pizza, one salad, and one order of garlic bread. She snatches the receipt, knocks over all the trash cans, waits for the lawyer to leave, then scoots out the gate behind him before it closes again.

What the…

I guess I’ll just throw away this leftover pizza.

MONSTER.

Outside, she explains to Ezra and Aria about the receipt and about how Mona’s lawyer is also Varjak’s lawyer and was inside the house packing up Varjak’s gold bars and hand grenades.

Jailhouse.

I heard you and Ashley are going to try to be gayer than me and Emily.

I’m sorry, Ali, but Spencer is gayer than you.

Veronica: What?
Ali: I called you here to — hang on one second, the bandages covering my horrific injuries have slipped. Okay, there were go. I have called you hear to ask if you think I should take the plea bargain.
Veronica: And live the rest of your life knowing you put Hanna, the most innocent of all you guys, behind bars?
Ali: If I tell the truth, I go to jail for life. If I lie, I got to jail for ten years. Do you see how fucked this all is and how come I had to fake my own death in the first place?
Veronica: Look, whatever, I am only doing this so Spencer can get into college.

Caleb shows up at Hanna’s with some shitty news. Toby told Caleb that Tanner told him that she was getting a warrant for Hanna’s arrest. Hanna’s got two options: Run for it (she’s savvy, but wouldn’t last a week on the streets like Ali had to do), or come completely clean about all the A stuff. She’s got all the texts on her phone, right? All she has to do is show those texts to Tanner and everything will be okay! Hanna is stressed to the max and doesn’t remember that they tried this plan a hundred times in season one and it always made things worse, so she agrees to turn herself in.

I’m here to report a fashion crime. My friend Aria, she thinks she’s wearing pants.

“Mess with bae, you’re gonna pay. – Spencer”

Guess what happens when she gets to the police department and asks to see Tanner? Mmm hmm. A deletes all the texts off of her phone and all the other Liars’ phones, talking about, “Let’s start over!” Whoops! If only there had been other, physical evidence A’s existence! Or if only they knew how THE CLOUD WORKS.

Aria and Emily get the call that Hanna has been arrested, so they call Spencer, who tries to get on a jet plane and come home and fix everything, but — surprise! — her mom and Melissa have been lying to her about St. Andrew’s, even though Melissa just pinky-promised to stop lying. There’s no St. Andrew’s interview. They only said that so she wouldn’t know Melissa is holding her hostage. She can’t go home to Rosewood because if she does she’ll end up in jail for sure.

Just spit it out! What are you hiding!

Okay, don’t be mad. I was trying to get back at you for Ian and Wren.

And I made out a little bit with Aria.

Aria and Ezra breakup for real while Emily calls Tony’s to prank Varjak with 100 anchovy pizzas.

And Hanna is in jail. She walks the jail walk and glares at Ali when she passes by her cell. But Ali is just as surprised as anyone that Hanna is in there. Tanner issued that warrant because she found Hanna’s blood on Mona’s clothes, but neither of them know that yet.

Thanks to Nicole (@PLLBigA) for the screencaps and for being the best and for sharing her actual Big A theories with me. I hope she’s right!

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