‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’s Showrunner Explains the Credits “Set the Tone” for a New Direction

If you were to rank all the elements that made Pretty Little Liars so much fun, its opening credits would rank high on that list. The Pierces’ “Secret” was the perfect balance of flirty, feminine, and disturbing, marrying the dark message of this song with images of our little liars applying lipstick and buckling strappy heels. So when it came time to make Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, a sequel series that also serves as a reboot, nailing these new opening credits was essential to creators Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring.

“It feels like we spent so many months talking about opening credits because, obviously, the original opening credits are so iconic,” Aguirre-Sacasa told Decider. “I believed that it was important to have opening credits because it would set the tone for this new expansion of the Pretty Little Liars universe into the horror slasher genre.”

There currently isn’t a full version of the new credits online. But the first teaser for Original Sin contains most of the visuals that appear in this new introduction as well as creepy tease of the remixed version of “Secret”:

Much like Original Sin itself, the new opening credits feel like a complete Pretty Little Liars remix. The new version of “Secret” includes creepy pauses between lingering notes of a piano and screeching noises that wouldn’t feel out of place in American Horror Story. The visuals have been updated as well. Long gone is the cutesy getting ready montage. In its place are scenes of the masked “A” in their workshop as they pin pictures of our new crop of liars, stab out photographed eyes, burn paper, and tug on a strand of pearls as if plotting to use them as a murder weapon. The whole time “A” can also be seen sewing something leathery and creepy. It’s a sequence that truly heightens the lyrics “Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.”

“Obviously, the song is so iconic, so we thought, ‘Oh, you know, what is a creepy a horror, really edgy kind of version of that?’ But most of it was to set the tone and to pay homage to the original,” Aguirre-Sacasa said. 

New episodes of Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin premiere on HBO Max Thursdays.