‘PLL: Original Sin’ Episode 3 Recap: “Aftermath”

For as long as there have been teen shows, viewers have debated: How much do we actually want to see the adults in these kids’ lives? Part of the appeal of teen dramas is stepping into a world that thrums with the same high octane angst of adolescence, real world conventions be damned. Who cares if their parents are having relationship problems?!

But ignoring the adults is impossible on PLL: Original Sin, whose central mystery is directly tied to generations of Millwood women and their darkest secrets. Episode 3 begins to strike a better balance between the old and the new, weaving the moms into the story as the Liars are finally forced to acknowledge their real enemy: “A.”

But first, they need to get out of Mr. Beasley’s line of fire. With Karen’s death labeled a suicide, he blames the girls for pushing her over the edge with their movie theater stunt. Dubbed “murderers,” their social pariah status is solidified when the school newspaper runs a front page story titled “Bullied to Death,” complete with school portraits that might as well be mug shots.

As the girls face expulsion or worse, their mothers are publicly drawn together, perhaps for the first time since Angela’s suicide. Better yet, their presence finally gives Faran and Noa some much-needed backstory. Faran butts heads with her high-powered mother’s demands that she move to her home in Pittsburgh, arguing that she wants to control her life “more than she already does.” Noa’s mom is coping in her own way, which Noa finally confesses to Shawn in a moment of vulnerability — she took the fall and went to juvie to cover up her mother’s own drug use.

The Liars’ actions have put Noa in a uniquely difficult position, where she’s on her last strike with both the school and the law. In a last-ditch effort to save her skin ahead of their disciplinary hearing, she invites Faran and Mouse to a private meeting with a proposal: Claim that the Karen video was all Imogen and Tabby’s idea, and they stand the chance of walking away unscathed. Still seething from getting kicked off Swan Lake, Faran is on board. But Mouse brings up an important point: What if this is all a test from “A” to see if they’ll turn on each other?

While their friends contemplate betrayal, Imogen and Tabby are left to clean up messes of their own. After deducing that her manager is holding onto the flash drive containing the Karen video, Tabby arrives at his apartment to pick it up… only to look on, horrified, as she sees that he’s set up a date night. I’d been worried about how Pretty Little Liars would address another age gap relationship, but this episode fully convinced me that Original Sin is eager to atone for the Ezra and Aria of it all. Tabby rebuffs Imogen’s mentions of her “cute” manager, coldly replying, “The manipulative one.” Describing himself as “Ari Aster’s age” (aka 36), he insists that Tabby reminds him of girls he dated at NYU, and holds recommendations to his old professors over her head should she refuse his smarmy offers to drive her home. Luckily for Tabby, she manages to avoid their Italian cinema-themed “date” unscathed, grabbing the flash drive and slipping out the door without being noticed.

While Tabby puts out fires, Imogen chooses to embroil herself further in the town’s thorny past. She checks out a copy of her mother’s senior yearbook, coming across Angela’s story and a mysterious “Y2K Survivors Club” for the first time. These revelations prompt her to seek out the scene of the crime, which still features an eerie memorial for Angela practically suspended in time. While scoping out the offerings — including a copy of The Scarlet Letter, because of course — Imogen narrowly escapes a visiting “A.”

When she and Tabby agree to stake out the warehouse the next day, they’re surprised not by a masked creep, but by an utterly familiar face: Sidney, who admits that she still swings by to pay her respects. Her arrival also gives us some much-needed tidbits about Angela herself. Sidney describes her as “one of those unlucky girls,” who lived a lonely life with a mentally ill mother until she and her friends tried to befriend her… until she jumped to her death due to “problems they couldn’t have foreseen.” Sidney claims that no one was kinder to Angela than Imogen’s mother, but based on the sparse flashbacks we’ve seen so far, that seems like a stretch, to say the least. Whatever the truth is, the look on Davie’s face as she received the Y2K flyer spoke volumes.

Although it’s still pretty early to hazard a guess to “A’s” identity, I think it’s worth questioning where Karen and Kelly’s parents were in all of this. The Beasleys’ aggression takes on a downright disturbing tone in this episode, as Mrs. Beasley even stops Karen’s funeral to tell Imogen that she hopes she’ll burn in hell and lose her own child. Poor Kelly is left to take things into her own hands, confessing to the principal about her and Karen’s prank gone awry and saving the Liars from expulsion. Meeting up with Imogen later, she admits that she feels responsible for her sister’s death and breaks down in her former friend’s arms. Could Kelly become a new ally to the girls? Or will she turn out to be as devious as any other identical twin the Pretty Little Liars universe has ever seen?

Questions of Kelly’s loyalties will have to wait, though, because the Liars finally, finally know exactly who they’re dealing with. As the five girls pay their final respects at Karen’s grave, Noa’s naive hopes that it’s all over are extinguished when they notice that all-too-familiar figure watching them from a nearby truck. Game on.

Abby Monteil is a New York-based writer. Her work has also appeared in The Daily Beast, Insider, Them, Thrillist, Elite Daily, and others.