Well… they’re still slowly crawling through that underground tunnel. It’s tough navigating without magical gusts of wind to push you through. Or possibly they stopped to upload pictures to instagram.
The Liars finally get to where “Help me” was vandalized on the wall and see Hanna’s hat nearby.
They assume the worst and follow her trail.
Elsewhere, Miranda is also in the mansion! I guess her uncle lives there.
Meanwhile the Liars finally pop up in the mansion.
They meander around The Piano Room where they spot some sheet music. Maybe Miranda’s uncle plays that piano and was also the one who composed all this A+ spooky music. It really is quite a spooky soundtrack.
Intern Grace informs me that the music playing is the same as the sheet music on the piano, entitled “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to be a Soldier.” For those of you playing at home you can feel free to play the video below to get the full spookiness for the remainder of this recap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fhjT93Xa3U
Remember when I said we’d check back in with Hanna? Well we do because she gets rescued! Through a happy coincidence Miranda opens the phone booth door and lets her out!
Miranda quickly realizes that Hanna is Caleb’s Hanna and instantly becomes vindictive and jealous. JK she has no personality so the two just join up and lope along the mansion some more.
The two wander into a room full of coffins, at which point Miranda has a flashback to her childhood. I guess her parents’ funeral was here. Turns out this mansion is actually just an unnecessarily large funeral home. You know how Rosewood has their flashbacks in dim technicolor? Well Rosewood is always dimly lit through a grainy filter so here flashbacks are in grayscale!
Aria and Emily get separated from Spencer but fortunately the two find a room full of bottles. Thank god, because I think we could really all use a drink at this point. Also the room has an open jagged window at one end!
So what do you do with a jagged broken window just waiting to fall down? Duh! You stick your head out it!
Was I supposed to be nervous here? I mean, the writers can’t honestly think I would believe they’d kill off a main character via decapitation. It just seems unlikely. More likely than pairing Emily up with a hot butch dyke, but still unlikely.
Elsewhere, Spencer takes some time for self care and nurtures her love of horticulture. I was hoping that she would get accidentally injected with a gamma-radiated plant poison thus causing her to morph into her new super villain alter ego Poison Ivy League.
So there Spencer is just minding her own business trying to find her dead friend when she gets attacked by the Gas Mask Guy! Remember, we’re now pretty sure this gas mask guy is actually EzrA because Pretty Little Liars finally realized there’s nothing not creepy about a twenty-something year old sticking it to one of his students.
The two wrestle for a minute, and Spencer manages to cut Gas Mask’s right hand but, because of the patriarchy, he knocks her to the ground unconscious.
Gas Mask stands over Spencer with huge garden shears like he’s going to lop her perfect face off, but for whatever reason doesn’t do anything to her. Again, the threat of decapitation of a main character just doesn’t do anything to progress the story.
Outside, Miranda and Hanna reunite with Caleb. It’s pretty intense; Caleb and Hanna have been separated for like a full two hours.
Back inside the Liar terrarium, Aria and Emily find Spencer. They shake her back to consciousness (because that always works). Just then, the three hear Ali’s voice screaming for help and run towards it. They run all the way into an office in which there is, no surprise, just a recording of Ali screaming.
With impeccable timing, Mrs. Grundle chooses this opportunity to walk in. Turns out this is her office because every person in Ravenswood is required to have one normal job and one part-time creepy job. It’s written in the bylaws.
Mrs. Grundle informs the Liars than the recording of Ali was actually from “a session” Alison had with her in which Alison freaked out from contact with the spirit world or maybe trauma from her past. Remember, Mrs. Grundle is a psychic and this show has gone supernatural. No, but seriously.
Mrs. Grundle  is like GTFO and so the Liars shamefully sulk back outside. They try to leave this horrible awful town where only bad things happen. You know, as opposed to their normal town where only bad things happen. Unfortunately, the Liars soon realize that their car has a flat tire!
No one has AAA, so there’s only one option: Emily has to channel every ounce of dyke in her and get that shit fixed!
While the Liars debate whether or not Emily secretly attended a Butching it Up workshop at A-Camp, Caleb, Miranda and Hanna go digging around in a nearby graveyard. Hanna is super convinced she can get them all into the secret passageway, but instead they just find a grave with Miranda’s name and face on it.
With that, Caleb is all prepared to get the fuck out of Ravenwood and rededicate every minute of his day to Hanna. Instead, Hanna’s like “No, go with this pretty girl to find her family.” Yeah, said no lesbian ever. This is so out of character. Regardless, the two have a tearful lesbian goodbye and I do sort of miss Caleb already. Oh God, now I’m the lesbian.
Hanna lets Caleb frolic off and Hanna now magically knows where her friends are. She walks towards them and on the way sees the potential Red Coat twins. They are not Red Coat twins.
When Hanna finally gets back to the other girls, the tire is still flat and Emily is just repeatedly explaining that she can only change the tire if by “change” you mean “fuck” and by “tire” you mean “enormous strap-on dildo”.
Just then, EzrA drives up to the rescue! No one bothers to ask what the hell he is doing in Ravenswood or why he won’t take his right hand out of his pocket.
EzrA gives the girls a ride home and it’s sort of like, “Welp. I guess that’s over.” Except then it’s not! Right after he drops them off they see a Red Coat again! Right there in Rosewood Spencer’s backyard!
Who the fuck is it? Because if it’s another mask-wearing A I will seriously lose my shit!
And then it’s actually Alison! It actually is! For real! She’s alive/back from the dead/her own twin!
Alison hangs around just long enough to say that she wants to come home, needs the Liars’ help and that her previous encounters with the Liars were real. To be honest, it was sort of anti-climactic. After years of viewers being like “Alison’s alive” and the PLL writers saying “She’s definitely dead” an then all of a sudden they’re like “Psych we TOTALLY got you!” Except everyone already knew, you know?
Before Alison can say much there’s a rustle in the bushes. It turns out to be Ezra just returning Aria’s cell phone. Notably, he STILL HAS HIS RIGHT HAND IN HIS POCKET! How did he drive home like that?!
Of course, when the Liars turn around, Ali is long gone. Because she’s scared of EzrA. Because he’s a bad guy. Because they really did trick us with that one.
That’s it for Rosewood this week! Thanks for trekking through this Ravenswood advertisement with me! Good luck crafting your Red Coat costumes and I will see you right back here in January where we’ll learn where the hell Ali’s been and what it means now that she’s back. Maybe.