‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ Episode 9 Recap: “Dead And Buried”

Never trust the nice guys. Perhaps it’s not so shocking that the thuggish Sheriff Beasley is the same guy who attacked Angela all those years ago. But as Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin hurtles towards its finale, some of the most disturbing answers concern the show’s everymen: From Marjorie’s drug dealer to disturbed grieving father Steve to, most importantly, Chip. Tabby’s seemingly harmless cinephile best friend could be behind the horrific assaults that she and Imogen survived earlier that year, and in this episode (titled “Dead and Buried”) that ends with a stolen body, he’s still the most horrifying component.

Still reeling from their discovery of Joe’s body, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin Episode 9 opens with the Liars coming clean to their moms about their brushes with A. In return, they demand the truth about what really transpired between themselves and Angela. What follows is essentially a recap of all the hazing viewers have already witnessed in the ‘99 flashbacks. But Davie’s absence hangs heavily over the women’s confessions, which does nothing to ease Imogen’s mind about who her mother truly was. How can she reconcile the warm, generous mom she knew with the teenage ringleader who seemingly played a key role in driving a girl to commit suicide?

For now, she can’t. So Imogen throws her energy behind another pursuit: Confirming what really happened the night of her mom’s death. Given the murderous lengths that A has gone to, she’s eager to cling to her suspicion that Davie’s grisly demise might not have been a suicide after all. When the coroner tells her she’ll need to get Sheriff Beasley and a legal guardian’s permission to exhume the body, Imogen pays a trip to her off-the-grid father. He’s kind but distant, insisting that he didn’t have the capacity to look after her when she was a girl (he also lives by the local quarry, which is admittedly not the best playground for a kid). Davie struggled with depression, he says, until she pledged to do better for Imogen. Sidney was also always meant to take care of Imogen in the event of a tragedy, but she and Tabby had no idea their moms were friends until now?! Sure, Original Sin writers.

Unsurprisingly, the Liars’ Y2K meeting has drudged up plenty of mommy issues all around. Marjorie tells Noa she wants to get clean without rehab, sending her to Shawn’s house for a few days while she detoxes. She agrees to pick up her mom’s pizza place shifts and miss a little track practice in the meantime, another sacrifice that doesn’t escape her boyfriend’s notice. It’s more than a little hypocritical for Shawn to say this when he’s actively doping, even if he ultimately promises Noa he’ll stop. He might have more of a conscience than his fellow jocks, but I’ll say it! I want better for Noa, especially since she caps off the episode by driving her mom’s dealer away from their apartment with a bat.

But hey, at least Mouse’s dangerous exploits with Steve finally came to an end. Fed up from mitigating Elodie’s disastrous first meeting with Ash and fending off Shirley’s requests to set her up on lesbian dating apps, she’s eager to recruit her resident fake dad to engineer one good meet-the-parents night with her boyfriend. But Steve is ultimately unable to commit to the bit, storming off after Mouse calls him Dad. The next day, he calls her at school, undone, with devastating news: Rachel’s remains have finally been found. Mouse ditches class for one last ill-advised meeting, which is easily their most disturbing encounter yet — nearly catatonic with grief, Steve presses her to dress in Rachel’s clothes in a seedy motel room.

Ironically, it’s her sudden disappearance that makes Ash successful in “parent trapping” her moms, as he and Mouse fantasized about earlier in “Dead and Buried.” Thanks to a tracking app on Elodie’s phone (not that weird!), they’re able to come to her rescue and an emotional Mouse embraces her moms, promising that “the game is over.” Throughout this season, I’ve been skeptical of Original Sin’s ability to explore Mouse’s longing for a dad without implying that LGBTQ+ families aren’t whole in and of themselves. It was messy, but hopefully her realization that she already has a loving if flawed family like her friends do will lead to even more nuanced Elodie-Shirley moments in a potential Season 2.

If only Faran had been granted more time to tenuously reconcile with Corey following their Swan Lake blowup. Instead, that happens mostly offscreen as she’s once again tasked with Kelly Watch. But at least she gets to enjoy her decision to sport her natural hair at school before everything goes south! During her break from ballet, Faran decides to take on an independent study project choreographing an Adam and Eve reimagining starring Kelly and Henry.

But Kelly is quickly unraveling under her father’s withering gaze. After he point-blank admits that sometimes he wishes she’d died instead of Karen, she turns to self-sabotage — first impulsively kissing Henry during a Faran-less rehearsal, then resuming her cutting habit. It’s enough of a relapse for Faran to put aside her own momentary anger and pull Kelly aside, telling her that maybe they can break the cycle. And of course, part of breaking that cycle involves dealing with her asshole of a father. Faran takes it upon herself to confront Sheriff Beasley about Kelly herself, even letting slip that she knows about his community service hookups.

It’s enough to scare him, but more troublingly, he responds by needlessly arresting her own father. Faran rushes to Kelly’s house for help, where we get another bombshell: Tom Beasley is the guy who raped Angela in high school… while he was dating Davie. With the sheriff this angry with the Liars headed into the finale, he might wind up being almost as threatening as A.

Then there’s Tabby, who might just have it worst of all in this episode (and A literally stole Imogen’s mom’s corpse). Disturbed by her daughter’s close relationship with Wes, Sidney bursts into the movie theater accusing him of her rape, even threatening to cut his dick off if he messes with her ever again (as an Aria/Ezra corrective, that was gorgeous to me!) As Sidney points out to Tabby post-outburst, it would make sense — 9 times out of 10, rapists are someone you know. The statistic gets Tabby thinking not about her creepy supervisor, but about Chip. He admits that he’s dating Imogen only because she wouldn’t give him a shot, and later, she remembers his attempts to forcibly kiss her the night Imogen was assaulted. She’s still unsure of whether he attended that terrible summer bonfire by the episode’s end, but just like Skeet Ulrich in Scream, the sensitive guy in a horror story can wind up being the worst.

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