Aria is guiltily drinking coffee, when she is joined by the rest of the girls. No indication as to whether she accepted Ezra’s proposal (like anyone gives a fuck). Hanna is convinced Elliott’s alive. Spencer wants to fire Hanna as the Liars’ resident theorist. She wonders if Jenna is grooming her new GFF Sarah to be her “seeing eye dog.” Ableist much, Spencer? Ali walks in, wearing the now-clean red jacket. Emily tries to be coy about it, asking her where she got it. Ali pulls no punches, saying it was a gift from AD and looking like she wants to kill the girls.
I see Aria is having a Regret Special.
Spencer follows Ali, trying to explain how they sold her out for the greater good. Ali is totally not buying that bullshit. Spencer tries to make it better by pointing out that Hanna was the one responsible for running over Elliott and ridding them of him. Ali gets a message from Mary Drake, announcing that Detective Sexy is at the house with an update. Spencer follows her. Meanwhile, at the café, Emily laments not following Ali. They get a group text from Spencer, and you would think they would have text-messaging PTSD by this point, but they just joke about it. Ezra runs into Aria and Emily and glares at Aria before moving on. I guess that proposal didn’t go well.
Aria should be glad Ezra’s eyes can’t shoot laser beams.
At Ali’s, Detective Sexy announces that Elliott’s real name is Archer Dunhill. He’s British, which we already knew, and wanted in his home country for theft and fraud. They haven’t tracked him down yet, but Detective Sexy theorizes that the train ticket and the rental car in Elliott’s name are decoys. Spencer is clearly livid that her paper-thin cover was seen through. The police thinks Allison is still in danger. Spencer follows the detective out, and he only answers to Marco with her. She awkwardly tries to make the situation less awkward, and he stares at her ass while she leaves.
I love how Spencer has no idea where she should be in this situation.
Aria listens to a voicemail from Ezra from the night before. In it, he asks about whether she got home okay after she left upset and begs her to call him. Hanna is still at the café, on the phone with Lucas going over her “business plan.” Apparently, she omitted several parts, like projected financials and other important things (her response to this, “I’m not a fortune teller.”). Lucas tells her that her plan is worthless, which he should have known ahead of time. I hope this season ends with Lucas joining Team AD because Hanna ran his business into the ground. She gets a text message from Aria asking to meet, which is the only excuse she needs to drop her business call. Hanna is about to call Aria, but the burner phone she inexplicably keeps on her rings. Elliott/Archer tells her to make sure someone is dead before burying them.
Wow. Lucas wasn’t exaggerating about Hanna leaving entire sections blank.
Aria tries to convince Hanna that the call was a fabrication by Mary or Jenna. Hanna leaves in a huff, right when Aria gets another call from Ezra. She doesn’t pick up, and we cut to Ezra getting her voicemail. He is at Emily’s bar, though why he’s there and not at the coffee shop he owns is anyone’s guess. Emily knows something’s up with him. She spots Sarah heading up the elevator to the floor where Jenna is staying.
A little early, Mr. Fitz, don’t you think?
Spencer is at the creepy resort that Mary owns, and when she opens the door, Mary is there with a crowbar. If she’d actually hit her, that would have made this episode a million times better. Mary tries to convince Spencer that she’s not in cahoots with Elliott anymore, when they here noises outside. Mary hands Spencer the crowbar, but they don’t find anything.
Mary Drake was READY.
Aria finds Hanna in front of the police station, but Hanna reassures her that she didn’t do anything stupid. There’s a first. After talking about how they wish their lives were more boring, Aria reveals that Ezra proposed. She says she didn’t say no, but that she needed to think about it. She doesn’t want to marry someone if she’s at risk of going to prison. Hanna throws her fake engagement ring out on the street, and Aria is so much more concerned for the loss of the ring’s value than Hanna’s announcement that she broke her own engagement. Hanna tells Aria that she and Jordan weren’t meant to be, but that Aria and Ezra totally are, showing that she has terrible judgment. As they head out, the camera pans to a creepy bald guy wearing sunglasses in a nondescript black car.
For someone constantly being kidnapped and playing amateur detective, Hanna sure has time to get her nails done.
Caleb shows up at the bar to chat with Ezra. He says he considered heading back to DC, but the magnetic pull in Rosewood wouldn’t let him. It’s super weird that they’re having a bro chat about relationships while drinking, when Ezra was his teacher, too. Upstairs at the hotel, Emily is hand-delivering a drink order, because that’s a thing hotel bartenders do. Jenna is playing the flute, but doesn’t recognize Emily’s walk. Emily takes that to mean that she can’t hear anything at all and walks over to Jenna’s computer to spy on stuff. WTF, y’all! Is Emily really this dumb?! No wonder AD has to help her pass her college classes. As expected, Sarah walks in right then, announcing Emily’s presence and super shadiness. Jenna tells her to mind her own business. Emily wants to know how she knows Archer’s real name.
Emily is fired.
Jenna’s explanation earns us a flashback. She says she was friends with Cece, though there is no indication of where/when they would have met to become such close friends. In the flashback, Jenna is sitting across from Archer and Cece. He answers a phone in an American accent, and then instantly reverts to his British accent. Cece calls him Archie before he leaves, and they kiss. Jenna tells her she’s had no luck finding her birth mother. Cece announces that Allison is coming to meet Archer, and that she’s her only chance of getting out. Back in the present, Emily wonders how Jenna met Cece, and Jenna says she reached out after reading about her. Totally normal. They hurl more accusations back and forth, and Sarah finally kicks her out. She gets very close to revealing something, but Jenna stops her.
Life is great! I’m in love with my still mentally ill patient who psychologically tortured teenagers for five years.
Caleb visits Spencer to apologize for leaving. This whole non-relationship is very boring, and I am so done with it. He tells her his boner is confused about whether it likes blondes or brunettes better, and Spencer makes a less-than-convincing case for herself. They say goodbye, but we all know he’ll be around for a while, since he has just been freed to pursue Hanna.
Wait, what were we talking about? I’m totally high right now.
After being sold out by her friends, Ali has taken up her role as master manipulator again. She begins her reign of terror with Mary, asking her to clarify her story after going through her stuff. Ali questions where Cece would have come up with the last name Drake. Mary pulls up her shirt and shows off her C-Section scars. Lady, nobody wants to see those, not even for dramatic effect. Her sob story dampens Ali’s anger at her a little.
I’m glad you’re home. I’ve been menacingly twirling this ballerina necklace for hours.
Aria goes to Ezra’s to let him know that she totally does want to marry her former high school teacher, but there’s this thing hanging over her head. She decides to tell him about Elliott. Back at Ali’s, Emily has clearly told her what happened, because Ali is drowning her sorrows in wine. She laments about how Cece lied to her (as she had established was her MO from the beginning, but sure, this is super surprising). She talks about her first kiss with Elliott, and how they came up with the idea of bringing Cece home with them. Emily apologizes to Ali for selling her out and leaves. Outside, she sees a cop car, and the bald guy from earlier is in. But wait, there’s more! There’s a close-up and he is wearing a mask! Dun DUN DUN!
Ali’s so done with Emily, she banished her to the other side of the room.
Hanna has told Spencer about her broken engagement, and they are also drowning their sorrows in alcohol. This episode is so depressing. Hanna talks about her weird-ass dream in the cabin of doom. They get a phone call on the burner phone from Elliott, calling them stupid for turning Ali in and leaving her home alone. Hanna calls Ali to ask if the police is still outside because Elliott is coming for her any second. Ali goes outside and asks the cop to come inside. It looks like he’s wearing an Ezra mask, but it’s hard to tell in the dark. Ali reassures Spencer that she’s safe, even though I am now questioning her intelligence for not being able to tell he had a mask on.
Maybe karma from the Jenna thing is causing Ali’s eyesight to fail. This dude looks like a character from Polar Express.
Ali heads to her room, where Elliott has had to time to write HONEY I’M HOME in red paint on the walls, and gets tackled. She asks if it’s Elliott, and he throws her against her vanity mirror, then runs away when he hears sirens. The police arrive, followed by Hanna and Spencer. Aria gets a call from Hanna saying that Ali’s okay, and Ezra looks like he totally regrets this proposal business.
Pretty quality work for 30 seconds.
Emily is on Allison duty, so Ali sets the mood by putting a record on. She says Mary was meeting with a contractor during the attack, so she couldn’t possibly be responsible. Ali apologizes for pushing her away, and Emily comforts her. Back at Ezra’s, everybody has clearly lost their minds in between this scene and the last, because Ezra decides to propose again. Aria, knowing she has no chance of anyone ever being this crazy again, immediately accepts. Meanwhile, Sarah is getting the fuck out of Rosewood and is met by someone threatening on her way out.
I’ve made a huge mistake.
Spencer and Hanna look for Elliott’s grave out in the woods, which is super smart when somebody is threatening your life. They decide to dig up the grave to figure out if he’s still there, and find his decomposing body. Eurgh. Back at the hotel, a distracted housekeeper walks into what is clearly Sarah’s room while listening to music on her headphones. The shower is running, and her hands are sticking out of the tub. The maid opens the curtain to find Sarah’s body. We finish the episode with a night-vision image of Spencer and Hanna trying to refill the grave they just dug up (I find this way funnier than was probably intended), and the camera pans out to a whole bunch of masks and a box labeled CHARLOTTE BOOKS. Yup, we’re back to those endings again.
How did she not see all the blood by this point? The curtains are open.
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