Pretty Little Liars “Of Late I Think of Rosewood” Recap + Review

Pretty Little Liars #5YearsForward left my jaw dropping the same way it has after every episode the past five years.

The first episode of the mid season premiere under Freeform is finally back after four months, and I’m not sure why it took me forever to get around to watching it. For someone who religiously watched the show since day one, two days late is too long. I began the episode without any expectations and avoided any sort of spoilers or reviews.

Joseph Dougherty made me feel nostalgic within the first two minutes of the episode and I may have gotten some chills. They did a good job introducing the story line and weaving in together all the characters that we’ve known to love, and maybe even hate. Alison, who is now an English teacher at Rosewood High, writes a letter to her friends hoping to bring them back to Rosewood in order to have Cece released from the hospital. The girls, or should I say, ladies are back and we see what they have been up to the past five years. Spencer is in D.C. following her mother’s footsteps, Aria Montgomery is in the publishing industry in Boston, Hanna is engaged and in the fashion industry in New York, and Emily isn’t living the life she thought she would in California after her father’s death. Our favorite boys, or men are back as well. Toby is building a house, but for who? Ezra is depressed after Nicole (Emily’s friend from Habitat for Humanity) was dragged off by revolutionaries. Caleb Rivers visits Hanna and we’re not really sure what went down. Mona is back and she’s on a mission to keep Cece off the streets until she realizes how horrible it feels to be locked up. It looks like the girls are here to stay after 5 years away from Rosewood when Cece is thrown from a tower, made to look like she committed suicide.

The girls are five years older, but really only four months older since we last saw them in “Game Over, Charles”. Aside from the obvious, drink in hand (we get it, they’re older now!), the hair, the shoes, the career paths, the ring and the bling, we can see that the writers really wanted us to get that the girls have matured. I wouldn’t say the same thing about Emily though, who continues to dress the same as she would in high school, which is a reflection of her struggles. Radley Sanitarium is no longer the place it used to be, it is now a hotel, the go-to-spot for the girls to get hung over. I was most impressed by Lucy Hale’s performance when she spoke out about how she was still terrified about A. Despite her honest confession, Cece is dead and we have new episodes to look forward to. But who is this new ‘Big Bad A’ that I. Marlene King speaks about? I’m not very good at theories, considering I’ve been wrong for the past five years, so I guess I will leave that up to you.