“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” follows five high school girls in Millwood, Pennsylvania, as they try to uncover an age-old secret that binds them together while being stalked by a killer. The first three episodes show how history repeats itself after 22 years and introduces us to each of the five girls and how they come together to make a bully pay for her actions. This, in turn, is what brings them face-to-face with the past. “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” is gripping by all means, with elements of a crime thriller, and does justice to the “Pretty Little Liars” franchise, which is rated as one of the best thrillers ever.
Spoilers Ahead
Episode 1: Recap Summary
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” episode 1 opens on Y2K eve. A visibly shaken Angela Waters rushes inside a warehouse where a Millwood High rave party is in full swing. She asks for help from many of her female friends, but none of them speak to her. She ultimately makes her way to the top of the stage and jumps to her death. Five girls, who befriended her, are stupefied and keep staring at Angela’s dead body covered in blood, her cold eyes staring back at them.
Fast forward 22 years, and we have Imogen Adams (Bailee Madison), Tabitha Hayworth (Chandler Kinney), Noa Olivar (Maia Reficco), Faran Bryant (Zaria), and Mouse Honrada (Malia Pyles) who are students at Millwood High. One night, Imogen’s mother, Davie (Carly Pope), receives a flyer with a note on it that tells her that she “can’t ignore the past forever.” That very night, Imogen and Karen Beasley (Mallory Bechtel), who is no longer Imogen’s best friend after Imogen apparently kissed her boyfriend around 6 months earlier, find her dead in the bathtub.
With her mother no more, Imogen, who is also carrying a baby inside her, is taken in by her friend Tabitha and her mother, Sidney (Sharon Leal). One day, as Tabitha, accompanied by Imogen, drops off a spare key at Imogen’s house, which is on sale now, we are given our first glimpse of the certain someone, the stalker, who is inside the house and stares at the girls. The girls are unaware of it as of now.
As Imogen and Tabitha arrive at school, they meet Karen, now an aggressive bully, who is running for the “Spirit Queen” contest. We also come across Faran, Noa, and Mouse, all of whom are equally disinterested in Karen and share the same hatred towards her. Faran has been given the lead in an upcoming ballet performance. Noa is serving community service for doing drugs. Tabitha does a part-time job at a neighborhood theater. All of these girls, except Imogen, receive weird texts from an unknown number. Noa even sees the ghastly stalker (whom we mentioned earlier) during a community service session.
When Imogen arrives at her now abandoned house to take a picture of her fetus, she comes across the flyer that her mother received before dying. Meanwhile, Tabitha and her boss at the theatre where she does a part time job, Wes (Derek Klena), encounter the stalker too while returning home at night. The next day, Imogen walks up to Karen and confronts her in the school canteen for approaching the principal regarding Imogen’s “delicate condition” (her pregnancy) and how some of her classmates are “triggered” by her presence. This confrontation is observed by Tabitha, Noa, Faran, and Mouse. Imogen then declares that she will be running against Karen for the “Spirit Queen” contest. Karen and her sister Kelly (also played by Mallory Bechtel) are twins whose father is Sheriff Beasley, who is also in charge of Noa’s community service. We see how the man is condescending to his daughters and his wife while the Beasley family has dinner. That very night, while practicing for her play at school, Faran too has a glimpse of the stalker, as Tabitha and Noa had earlier. Later that night, a janitor doing his night shift at the school notices an unknown person walking the corridors. It is the same stalker that we saw before. As the janitor follows him into a room, the stalker (apparently a man wearing a ghastly mask) slits his throat and kills him.
The next day, as Imogen and Tabitha arrive at school, they find Karen’s Spirit Queen Campaign posters destroyed, and the doubt falls upon Imogen and Tabitha. Meanwhile Karen finds a dead mouse inside her bag, and Mouse is held accountable. Noa’s drug test comes back positive for cannabis. Later on, a razor is discovered inside Karen’s pointe shoes, and she blames Faran for it, which gets her “thrown out” of the upcoming play. Ultimately, all five of our ladies end up in detention. Realizing that all of them are there due to Karen, they decide on a “payback.” “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” Episode 1 also reveals that the five girls we saw at the spot where Angela Waters died are the mothers of the girls who are now in the middle of the plot.
Episode 2: Recap: Summary
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” Episode 2 begins 6 months prior to the present. It shows a party at Karen’s house where she, her twin sister Kelly, and Imogen are having a great time (they were very good friends back then). At one moment, Kelly tells Karen that she saw Imogen kiss Greg, Karen’s boyfriend. Karen, who is hurt and enraged, confronts Imogen without even listening to her and tells her to leave. Imogen, who is very hurt as well, leaves. Apparently, it was Greg who tried to kiss her and not the other way around.
Coming back to the present, Imogen tells the other four girls that she has a “messy” video that “would destroy” Karen. All five of them then go to Imogen’s abandoned house, where she has the phone that contains the video. The phone isn’t hers, but the guy to whom it belongs hasn’t “said anything about it.” They decide to sleep on the thought of screening the video. As each of them returns home, they are questioned by their parents regarding what they supposedly did to Karen. Faran about the razor in Karen’s shoes; Noa about testing positive for cannabis; Mouse for putting a dead rat in Karen’s bag; and Tabitha for the trashed posters of Karen’s campaign. Later that same night, each of the girls receives a video of someone killing a rat, putting a razor inside a shoe, destroying the posters, and tampering with Noa’s cannabis sample, respectively. Thinking that the videos have been sent by Karen who is taunting them, the five girls finally decide to forge Karen’s “messy” video and make it public.
The next day, Tabitha asks Chip (Carson Rowland) to project the video at the theater where both of them work (where Wes is their boss). They decide to show the video to the audience before the screening of a double feature. As the video starts to play, Karen, who was present in the audience, runs out of the hall ashamed, followed by Kelly. Later on, Tabitha owns up to Wes, who holds Chip responsible for playing the video, and says that it was her who told Chip to play the video. Wes lets her go. Later that night, Imogen receives a text from Karen, who wants to meet her. They meet, and we are shown the true context of the video. On the night of the party at Karen’s house, a boy named Tyler was filming her as she was starting to take her clothes off but couldn’t as Imogen intervened. She then snatched the phone from Tyler and took Karen away. However, when Karen questions her as to why she didn’t delete the video, she has no answer. For Karen, this silence proves that Imogen kept the video only so that she could use it against her. In return, Imogen blames her for all the “stunts” she pulled at school (the dead Mouse, the posters, and the razor). But Karen has no idea what she means by all this and straightaway denies her accusations.
The next day, Kelly goes to the principal, posing as Karen, and pulls Karen’s name out of the Spirit Queen contest. With Karen no longer running for the contest, Imogen would naturally be declared the winner of the contest. Both the sisters then chalk down a plan to ruin Imogen’s Spirit Queen moment by dumping slime on her head as she takes the stage wearing Spirit crown. When Imogen is told by the principal that Karen has pulled herself out of the contest, she gets emotional and tells her friends that she will apologize to Karen at the Spirit Queen event.
At the event, as the Spirit Crown is put on Imogen’s head, Mouse notices Karen up in the rafters with a bucket. She shows this to the other girls, who then start yelling at Imogen, telling her to watch out. As Imogen looks up, she sees Karen as well as the ghastly figure standing behind her. No sooner does Karen realize that there is someone behind her than the figure pushes her off. Karen falls to her death. As the crowd goes erratic in panic, the five girls who knew her are stupefied and keep staring at Karen’s dead body covered in blood; her cold eyes staring back at them. The very next moment, Imogen, Tabitha, Noa, Faran, and Mouse receive a text on their phones at the same time, that says, “One bully down. Five more to go. Keep quiet about me, or you’re next. “The message is from “A.”
Episode 3: Recap Summary
The masked man raises doubts in the minds of the girls as to what if Karen didn’t really frame them but this “A” guy did. However, they decide to keep quiet about Karen’s death at the hands of A, as warned. Imogen tells Tabitha that her mother wrote the letter “A” in blood on the bathroom wall the night she died. It seems that the flyer was a warning for Davie, but the only way to know more is to find out about the Y2K party that the flyer addressed.
While at school the next day, the five girls are asked to report to the principal’s office, where they find Sheriff Beasley, Karen’s father, waiting for them. He holds them responsible for her daughter’s Karen’s suicide, which was a result of them screening her compromising video for the public to see. Back at home, each of the girls is questioned by their mothers, who are not at all happy about what all their daughters have gotten involved in.
The five mothers meet up to talk about their daughters. It cannot be a coincidence that it is their daughters who are facing the situation that they five faced while at Millwood High (Angela Waters’ death). But for the time being, they have to focus on the disciplinary committee meeting that will be held to decide the proper action that needs to be taken for their daughters.
Imogen visits the library, where she looks up the 2000 yearbook and finds that her mother, along with many others, was a member of the Y2K Survivors Club, which reminded her of the flyer that also had the mention of Y2K. She researches further and finds out about Angela Waters’ death at the Old Harbor warehouses. She visits the warehouse and enters it only to find a shrine dedicated to Angela Waters. As she searches for clues, she hears someone entering the warehouse. She hides inside a dilapidated car just before A, our man with the ghastly mask, arrives at the spot. Luckily, he isn’t able to see Imogen, who somehow manages to escape from the place.
Sheriff Beasley gives Noa the chance to walk away, along with Mouse and Faran, if only she tells the disciplinary committee that Imogen and Tabitha intended to harm his daughter Karen. Meanwhile, Imogen tells Tabitha about Angela Waters and her experience with “A.” The next day, Tabitha decides to “stake out” the warehouse with Imogen. Meanwhile, at school, Noa approaches Mouse and Faran and tells them that they should tell the disciplinary committee that the plan was by Imogen and Tabitha. While at the warehouse, Tabitha and Imogen come across the former’s mother, Sidney, who has come there to pay her respects to Angela. Sidney tells them that Angela Waters was a damaged soul. Her death was ruled a suicide, which it was. Imogen then shows her the flyer that her mother, Davie, got. She asks Sidney if she can ask her friends and see if any of them sent her mother the flyer.
‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ Episode 3 Ending Explained-What Are the Mothers Hiding?
At Karen’s funeral, after her mother’s outburst at Imogen (who was invited to the event by Kelly), Imogen decides to tell the disciplinary committee that screening the video was her idea. But the other girls decide that they are all equally responsible for whatever has happened, and they will all accept it together. At the Beasley’s, Sheriff Beasley tells Kelly that he will have Imogen and her friends expelled. Kelly is visibly shaken, and the next day, before the disciplinary committee hearing, the girls and their mothers find out that Kelly has approached the principal and admitted that Karen was in the rafters with the intention of harming Imogen at the Spirit Week Dance. So the girls are saved from expulsion. Imogen mentions her doubts to her friends about their mothers and that they are hiding something, something that connects Angela Waters and Imogen’s mother, Davie’s death.
Later on, Kelly meets Imogen and apologizes to her for the way her mother behaved with Imogen at Karen’s funeral. “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” Episode 3 ends with all the five girls standing in front of Karen’s grave and paying their respects. However, as they turn around, to their utter disbelief, they find the ghastly masked man staring at them from inside a car.
It seems that Angela Waters’ death has more to it than revealed by Sidney, Tabitha’s mom. And it is something that they are all involved in. The letter “A” might stand for Angela, in which case, the ghastly figure might just be someone related to Angela or someone who loved Angela and was back all these years later for revenge. It remains to be seen how Davie died; whether she killed herself out of fear or did someone else kill her. The identity of the masked man is the answer to all these questions. “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” Episode 4 will hopefully shed light on the past and reveal more about Angela Waters and what the mothers know about her.
