ABC Family’s teen shows Pretty Little Liars managed to have a seven-season run telling the stories of a group of high school girls in a Pennsylvania town called Rosewood. The show presents four girls, Spencer, Hanna, Emily, and Aria as they go through adolescence living what adolescents live: Friendship, coming of age, maturity, their first love, and the like. But as it turns out, there’s another aspect, the mystery of another friend who vanished, and her name is Alison.
While the show takes us back and forth with flashbacks, one of the key components of its seven season-run is the enigmatic disappearance of Alison and her shocking eventual return in one of the seasons. Alison was a teenage queen who liked to play with everyone around her. So, let’s take a look at the show’s story to see when was it that Alison came back, the circumstances, and how did it affect the character development of the rest of the girls in Pretty Little Liars.
Meet The Girls From Pretty Little Liars
In Rosewood, Pennsylvania, four teen girls, Hanna Marin, Spencer Hastings, Aria Montgomery, and Emily Fields navigate the woes of teenage years in high school while they try to figure out how did Alison DiLaurentis, the popular girl in school, vanished without a trace.
Alison was your typical popular teenage high school girl, pretty, manipulative, and powerful, who gathered the admiration of all the girls around her. Alison’s cleverness, charisma, and ways of getting away with everything ruffled many feathers but one day, she disappears, and her being gone is the backstory of the first couple of seasons of Pretty Little Liars.
After Alison vanishes, a mysterious character named “A” starts contacting the girls with threats and scary stuff attempting to ruin their lives. We later learn that Alison had a few skeletons in her closet, and that explains why “A” also targeted her.
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What Episode Does Alison Come Back In Pretty Little Liars?
In Pretty Little Liars season 4, episode 24, “A Is for Answers,” Alison is back. But here’s what happened in detail: Firstly, Alison tells her New York City friends that Mona Vanderwaal helped her get out of Rosewood. In the pilot episode, flashbacks show that on the night of the girls’ sleepover, Alison’s mother, Jessica, knocked her out with a stone and buried her. She was found by Mrs. Grunwald, and it was Mona who persuaded Alison to hide at the Lost Woods resort, make up the fake identity of Vivian Darkbloom and leave town.
This was a pretty shocking scene at first, particularly when Mona turned out to be “A” in the sophomore season episode titled “UnmAsked.” However, helping Alison disappear made a lot of sense, as it showed how Mona was able to become more popular and get closer to the Liars. This detail also showed the way manipulative Mona could be because she knew Alison was weak and used her sense of dread of being killed to her advantage.
Alison’s Return To Rosewood Unpacked
In “Whirly Girlie,” Alison came back to Rosewood, which shocked everyone because they still believed she was gone. Over the next few episodes, Alison, the Liars, and Mona try to figure out who the cruel “A” is. Eventually, they start to think that Alison is “A” because it’s part of her “biggest game yet.”
This was a great way for actual A to make Alison feel alone. A’s plan was to cut her off from other people and move her down the social ladder. The goal was to get the Liar to stop believing Alison. On Thanksgiving, Mona seems to be killed before she can prove that Bethany was killed by Alison. Later, Alison was caught for killing both Mona and Bethany.
After she has been exonerated of the homicides, Alison goes back to Rosewood to see her scared friends. As they look for A and try to get better, Alison starts looking for A, who is her long-lost brother. As she tries to figure out why he is making her feel bad, she gets abducted and moved to Radley Sanitarium.
Alison is shocked to find out that “A” is actually her sister Charlotte, who is transgender. After hearing about what happened to her sisters, Alison and Jason put Charlotte in an institution where she gets five years of intense therapy. Alison stayed in Rosewood while Charlotte was getting better, and she later fought for Charlotte to be given to her. On the night she gets out, Charlotte seems to kill herself, but the matter later turns into a murder investigation.
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