Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ On HBO Max, A ‘PLL’ Reboot Where “A” Torments A New Generation Of Liars

Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is definitely related to the original PLL series, which ran on ABC Family/Freeform from 2010-17. But there doesn’t seem to be a ton of connections to the original series except for one big one: A. You remember A: A hulking dude in a jumpsuit who seems to be adept with a sharp blade? He/she is back, tormenting a new set of high school girls — and this time, their mothers have reason to fear, too.

PRETTY LITTLE LIARS: ORIGINAL SIN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “MILLWOOD, PENNSYLVANIA, DECEMBER 31, 1999.” A big New Year’s party is going on in an old mill.

The Gist: We see the party from the perspective of a girl who needs help. As the countdown to the year 2000 happens, six teenage friends decide to ignore the girl, even as she begs her former friends to see her again. As midnight hits, the girl jumps from the rafters, dying instantly as she hits the floor.

Twenty-two years later, Imogen Adams (Bailee Madison), the daughter of one of those girls, is five months pregnant. She is getting a visit from Karen Beasley (Mallory Bechtel), a former friend who is now her archenemy; she wants her stuff back. Imogen’s mother gets a letter with a red “A” on it, with a flyer from the party from 1999, Soon, Imogen and Karen find Imogen’s mother dead in a bathtub, blood everywhere, including the letter “A”.

One month later, Imogen is living with Tabby Hayworth (Chandler Kinney), a horror movie aficionado whose mother was also one of the girls from that night in 1999. She decides it’s time to go back to school, but once she’s there, Karen tells her that people won’t be very comfortable with her there, because of the double bugaboo of her pregnancy and her mother’s violent “suicide.” Imogen and Tabby hatch a plan to combat Karen’s bullying by having Imogen run against her for Spirit Queen.

Other girls have run-ins with Karen: Noa Olivar (Maia Reficco), who is on probation for a drug violation, fails a test when she swears she’s clean; Faran Bryant (Zaria), who beat Karen out to play the Black Swan in Swan Lake, is accused of putting a razor blade in Karen’s slipper; and introverted coder Minnie “Mouse” Hornada (Malia Pyles) is accused of sticking a bloody rat’s tail in Karen’s bag. All of them are the daughters of the friends from the party incident in 1999, and in detention they band together with Imogen and Tabby — accused of defacing Karen’s Spirit Queen campaign posters — to get back at their common enemy.

All the while, a jump-suited, creepy figure haunts the girls and the school.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Of course, the most apt comparison to Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is the original PLL. But the setting is also reminiscent of recent shows like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Yellowjackets and Now & Then. In fact, it’s sort of like those three shows combined.

Our Take: Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is written by Riverdale showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, along with his collaborator Lindsay Calhoon Bring, so it’s not a surprise that this combo prequel-reboot is much darker and more violent than the original PLL, which aired on ABC Family/Freeform. There’s certainly a lot of goofiness in the first episode, and a lot of characters to have to deal with. But like its predecessor, PLL: Original Sin starts with a group of characters that are pretty well defined and have a laser-focused goal.

As far as we know is that this story has no linkage to PLL, aside from the fact that “A” is stalking them and their parents, so we wanted to judge this show on its own merits. But what we wonder about is just how Aguirre-Sacasa and Bring are going to connect why “A” is stalking both the mothers and the daughters. We don’t know enough about the mothers’ sins after the first episode to figure out why “A” is after them, and we’re still not 100 percent sure just why “A” is pursuing the daughters for their mothers’ sins.

We do appreciate the multigenerational twist of the PLL/Yellowjackets/I Know What You Did story, but we really think that the current group’s pursuit of the “bitchy” Karen and the fact that “A” is stalking them will never be properly linked.

There’s also the matter of Karen’s twin sister Kelly (also Bechtel) and her creepy father (Eric Johnson), who’s presence as the town’s sheriff means that the entire group of liars have crossed his path. How they each fit in is still up in the air, but we hope that it won’t confuse matters in a show where we’re already dealing with two timelines, two sets of liars and — maybe — two murder mysteries.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode. The series definitely has more gore and f-bombs than the original PLL, but we haven’t seen any sex yet.

Parting Shot: Imogen says, “I think… we should kill Karen Beasley.”

Sleeper Star: We like Malia Pyles as Mouse, because her story is a bit of a coming-of-age piece of the puzzle, as she gets to know Ash (Jordan Gonzalez).

Most Pilot-y Line: The custodian encounters “A” and says, “This is off-limits. It’s school property. Fuck this, I’m calling the sheriff,” as if that will dissuade a weird, hulking man in a jumpsuit.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Fans of PLL will enjoy Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin because it’s basically a more violent reboot of the original series. But there’s a lot going on in this series, which might get overwhelming at some point.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.