Emily ( Shay Mitchell) suffers an injury that ends her swim career, which complicates her college application process.Īfter finding several new clues, the girls believe that Alison may be alive.
Aria ( Lucy Hale) tries to break free from her feelings toward Ezra ( Ian Harding) by pursuing a relationship with Jake ( Ryan Guzman). Spencer ( Troian Bellisario) helps Toby ( Keegan Allen) with finding answers about his mother's untimely death while trying to keep him from falling victim to "A"'s schemes. Meanwhile, Hanna ( Ashley Benson) deals with her mother's arrest and trial. The girls work to find out who A is in hopes of finding Wilden's murderer. Being last seen with Wilden before his murder, Ashley ( Laura Leighton) is made a prime suspect and arrested. The first half of the fourth season focuses on the aftermath of Detective Darren Wilden's murder. The premiere was watched by 3.37 million viewers while the finale watched by 3.12 million viewers. The fourth season garnered positive reviews from critics and averaged 2.74 million viewers an episode, down from the previous season, and a 1.1 demo rating, even with the previous season. Ella Montgomery ( Holly Marie Combs) and Byron Montgomery ( Chad Lowe) left the main cast. It introduces new characters to the story, including Detective Gabriel Holbrook and Lieutenant Linda Tanner, played by Sean Faris and Roma Maffia, who are brought in to investigate the deaths of Detective Wilden and Detective Reynolds. The girls begin looking for answers that could lead to Alison's whereabouts while dealing with the aftermath of Detective Wilden's murder and "A" intervening in their personal lives.
The season continues from where it left off in the third-season finale, where the girls were rescued from the burning building by who they believe is Alison. The season concluded its broadcast on March 18, 2014. The season consisted of 24 episodes, which were filmed between March 14, 2013, and November 2, 2013.
The pages of that unfinished book are probably a good place to start looking for answers, but A has those, and it looks as though Spencer will be out of the crime-solving game for a while just so she can get some much-needed sleep.The fourth season of the American mystery drama television series Pretty Little Liars began airing on ABC Family on June 11, 2013. So what do we know? Unless the writers have completely lost the plot and gone power mad reading online theories, there’s much more to Ezra’s story than what he told Aria here. The notion that this has happened before, and wasn’t just a plot by Ezra/A to set her up and divert attention, means that Spencer is now a suspect in Alison’s disappearance, and the ‘big secret’ that has been teased should be on its way soon. Parallel to this big A-related story was Spencer’s slow decline into drug dependency, something that has been brewing ever since she tried to solve her first mystery while still doing her school work, and that ‘intervention’ between the four girls was probably my favourite moment of the episode. The moral of the story is – don’t sleep with your teacher.Īs surprisingly convincing as Lucy Hale was in the pivotal moment in which Aria finally opened her eyes, the episode, again, belonged to Spencer. As a twenty-something fan, it’s easy to forget that the majority of Pretty Little Liars’ audience are young girls, and the notion that their loving, ‘epic’ romance could be deceptive and abusive is an admirable one to throw out there.
This long game the show has been playing with Ezra character and his romance with Aria might be something constructed after the fact (the writers have admitted that he didn’t become A in their minds until the beginning of season three) but, watching it now, it really is a marvel. The inherent issue with Ezra’s character has not only been put in the spotlight this season, but it has been acknowledged by the writers and pointed out to those more naïve fans.