Here’s How ‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ Connects to the Original Show
Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is not officially a sequel, nor a reboot, yet somehow it is both. The liars are different, the town is different, the traumas are different, but a few things remain the same. Most notably “A.” The villain at play in Original Sin’s town of Millwood, is the same that haunted the original series’ town of Rosewood.
Fans of the original series can expect a vastly different story on-screen, but the opening credits sequence is an immediate blast to the past. The new series opens with the same tune, “Got a secret, can you keep it? Swear this one you'll save. Better lock it in your pocket, taking this one to the grave. If I show you then I know you, won't tell what I said. 'Cause two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.”
In case you need a quick refresher, The original Pretty Little Liars were Spencer, Aria, Hanna, and Emily, four high school friends connected by Alison DiLaurentis, a friend who (spoiler alert?) died at the start of the series, presumably at the hands of “A.” Seven more years of chaos ensued.
The first episode of the new series opens in the year 1999 at a Halloween party. Then, it flashes forward 22 years after that fateful night to find our new set of "liars." The girls of Original Sin are connected not by a mutual murdered friend, but by their mothers, a group of (now grown-up) high school friends seemingly in part responsible for the tragic events that occurred two decades earlier at the aforementioned Halloween party. The franchise has never been a parent-free zone, and as the original series progressed, the elder liars became more and more involved in the story and the scandals. It seems this new series is passing go, collecting $200, and tying in the parents from the jump. Talk about generational trauma.
The show’s creator, Robert Aguirre-Sacasa spoke to TVLine about the brand new universe, and how it connects to its predecessor while standing on its own. "We're fanboys and fangirls," he said. "We love this stuff. We love when characters [from other shows] pop in, we love the crossover episodes. At least at the beginning, however, the team did want to really establish our town and our girls without being in the shadow of that original, iconic franchise."
According to Aguirre-Sacasa, the two series’ connect more than we might think, aside from both of them having a villainous "A." "Once you hit episode 6, the Easter eggs—and more than Easter eggs—start coming fast and furiously, up to literally the last moment of the last episode."
Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is available to stream on HBO Max, but in case you lost your friend's friend's mom's login details, we've got you. HBO Max released the full first two episodes to YouTube, and they are 100 percent free to watch. Thank us later.
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