Pretty Little Liars Season 6, Episode 12 recap: Charlottes Web

August 05, 2024

“Pretty Little Liars” has gone to some dark places over the years, but these may be the darkest days yet.

It’s no surprise that everyone has a secret (or two). This is Rosewood after all. But in the wake of Charlotte’s murder, the secrets seem to be piling up pretty quickly. Here’s what we learned, in this week’s rather sad episode, about the Liars and their possible connections to Rosewood’s latest crime.

Miss a previous recap? Read them here.

Emily is sick and hiding it (along with many other things).

Emily may have the most secrets of the group, but it doesn’t look like she had anything to do with Charlotte’s murder. It’s clear that she’s told some pretty elaborate lies to get her mom and friends to believe she graduated from Pepperdine. Was that a fake graduation photo she was trying to put out of view at her mother’s house? In even more alarming news, Emily appears to be suffering from some sort of illness. She was having blood drawn at Hollis Medical Center, where a nurse advised her to stay in Rosewood so that she could complete her treatments in one place.

Upon leaving the center, Emily tried to pay for parking, but her credit card was declined. Her parking is paid for by The Brew’s baker-turned-manager, Sabrina — also known as the girl behind Spencer’s misguided pot brownies. We still don’t know what is wrong with Emily, but in a visit to her father’s grave, she reveals that after he died, she struggled in school. After failing two classes, Emily lost her scholarship. “I know that I messed up and I’m going to fix it,” Emily said tearfully. “I am fixing it.”

That tear-jerker of a scene was interrupted by Sara Harvey appearing at Charlotte’s (nearby) plot, which made Emily run away. Sara was apparently badly burned during the whole A reveal, so the cops have taken her off of the suspect list, but Emily is still terrified of her.

Spencer wrote a really weird paper at Georgetown.

Spencer seems to be fighting some serious (and mutual) feelings for Caleb. She and Caleb apparently ran into each other on a train platform in Madrid, which led to them spending some quality time together. We’ll find out more about these two next week. In other Spencer news, she’s worried that the renewed attention on her and the Liars will cause her mom to lose the state senate election. “You’re not a liability Spencer. You’re my daughter,” Mrs. Hastings reassured her.

Spencer’s not directly implicated in Charlotte’s murder, but she’s worried about a rather specific paper she wrote for a criminology class at Georgetown. It recalled the murder of a bride, who was found dead, in a suspected suicide, holding a bouquet. Her neck was broken before she was thrown off a building. The details matched the description that Lorenzo gave to Ali about Charlotte’s death.

Hanna keeps saying she’s really happy, but I’m not so sure.

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This week’s episode introduced us to Jordan, who showed up to surprise his fiancée with all of her favorite New York foods. Maybe he hopped an Acela train, but I still doubt the fettucine from Balthazar would have held up on the trip from New York. Jordan knows a lot about what happened to Hanna in high school — she tells the girls that she shared her past when she knew she was falling in love with him. Here’s what else we know about Jordan: he has a dreamy Australian accent. His large family is wealthy enough to have an “estate” in The Hamptons (where he hopes to marry Hanna). And he works at a magazine in a role that allows him to scoff at the notion of deadlines. Is it just me or does Hanna seem kind of meh about their upcoming wedding?

Granted, Hanna’s got a lot going on. Ali invited everyone over for dinner at her house, where Jordan met Caleb. Hanna’s fiance and ex were good sports, putting a table together and chatting away like old pals. Jordan revealed that Hanna still has Caleb’s old table. Ali asked everyone to say grace, which led to Hanna grudgingly holding both Jordan and Caleb’s hands, as Ali said a passive-aggressive prayer that alluded to her suspicions about her friends being involved in Charlotte’s murder. Ali was especially suspicious of Aria, who missed the dinner completely and avoided Ali’s multiple calls.

As it turns out, Hanna woke up to hydrate on the night that Charlotte was killed (Han’s still the smartest one of the bunch even if she says “Swedish Syndrome” instead of Stockholm). Because of this, Hanna knows that Aria left the hotel that night. When Hanna inititally confronted Aria, she didn’t have much to say.

Aria left the hotel the night of Charlotte’s murder. With Ezra.

While the rest of the Liars agreed to stay in Rosewood to support Ali after Charlotte’s murder, Aria rushed back to Boston for work. She’s working for Ezra’s publisher, who is anxious to get Ezra’s follow-up to “Ostinato.” Ezra is in a really bad place following Nicole’s disappearance and wants to give back his book advance and be done with it. Aria has apparently been on a mission to convince Ezra to keep at it. Aria was in Boston long enough to get lectured by her really intense boss and for us to meet Liam, who is as adorably geeky as we’d expect. In a reminder that this is not real life, Aria and Liam shared some kisses by their adjacent open-office cubicles. Aria’s boss was going to put Liam in charge of getting Ezra back on track, but Aria convinced her she could handle it: “I know this author. I can get through to him better than anyone else.”

After being in Boston for like five minutes, Aria returned to Rosewood and went straight to The Brew to check on Ezra. After confirming that Ezra does in fact have at least a first draft written, Aria asked the important question: “Where did you go?” Ezra said that he went home, but Aria didn’t seem convinced.

The Liars confronted Aria about her whereabouts and she explained that she did meet up with Ezra because she couldn’t sleep. They talked about what Aria had said at Charlotte’s hearing and what a shock it was to see Charlotte get released. While walking around Rosewood in the wee hours of the morning, they actually did see Charlotte, walking into the church. Ezra became visibly angry and went on a rant about how “people like Nicole go missing and Charlotte gets to go free.” Security footage from the hotel shows that Aria returned to the hotel alone, which points to Ezra as a pretty likely suspect. Spencer also revealed that she talked to Ezra after writing that Georgetown paper, which means he knew the murder case’s very specific details. The Liars agreed that Aria would also look guilty should the police ever see the hotel footage, so Hanna erased it.

In the episode’s final scenes, we saw Ali revise her statement to the police to say that she believes one of her friends could have been involved in Charlotte’s murder. Presumably, it’s Aria that she suspects, but the show might throw us a well-staged loop. Back at the cemetery, a visitor greeted as “Sir” placed flowers on Charlotte’s plot. Looks like we have another Rosewood homecoming to look forward to. My money’s on one Jason DiLaurentis.

Lingering questions: Did Ezra kill Charlotte? Is Hanna really going to marry Jordan? And how mad will she be when she finds out about Spencer and Caleb? What’s going on with Emily? And was that Jason at the graveyard?

Read previous ‘PLL’ recaps

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