Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin Season 1 Episodes 8-10 Review: Bad Blood / Dead & Buried / Final Girls
The final three episodes of Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin Season 1 make just as little sense as the rest of the season.
While the pacing of these final three episodes keeps the intrigue going at a breakneck speed, it feels like the show gets to its last act only to realize how many things they needed to tie up. As a result, the events make very little sense and eventually come to a conclusion where we ultimately say, “that’s it?”
Tabitha, Movies, and Sexual Assault
First, let’s talk about the sexual assault storyline. Imogen and Tabitha’s assault has been one of the pillars of the last half of the season and has been handled well overall.
Plus, the way that the story continues to make references to scenes in horror movies that remove a female character’s agency is an interesting parallel, and I am glad they were able to get there without any shoe-horned references.
Tabitha’s fight to get her short film made with a story only she could tell is compelling, but it doesn’t have any payoff. Given that Tabitha is working so hard to create these pieces and putting so much critical thought behind them, I want to see her take on the Psycho shower scene and what her short film ends up becoming.
It’s the absolute least that Tabitha deserves.
While it’s clear that Chip’s arrest and the decision to press charges brings a little bit of closure to the storyline at the end, it’s not going to make everything that Tabitha processed go away.
Imogen and the Baby
The conclusion of Imogen’s pregnancy and the birth of her child also felt like a natural conclusion to the season. Given the way the timeline was originally positioned I figured the baby would be born in December and as the season hurtled towards the end of the semester it seemed more and more likely.
The final chase scene between A and Imogen where Imogen stabs A feels like the triumphant moment they needed to close out the story. It brought together all of Imogen’s flashbacks and expanded on them in such a way that we got to see her mother as a teenager and her mom.
Imogen’s announcement that Ezra and Aria from Pretty Little Liars were going to adopt her baby on the other hand was a detail that the story could have done without.
When Pretty Little Liars ended by teasing that they still weren’t sure that Ezra and Aria would make it down the aisle on Pretty Little Liars Season 7 Episode 13, “Til DeAth Do Us PArt,” I just felt so done with the will they or won’t they of their relationship. While I am glad that they’re alive and well in Rosewood that detail served as little more than an Easter egg for fans.
Faran Finds a Way to Keep Dance in Her Life
Faran’s acceptance of her injury and determination to dance again feels like a natural progression from the revelations on Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin Season 1 Episode 6, “Scars.” The way she decides to create an independent study to continue her love of dance by creating a new ballet also feels like a good compromise and shows a healthy way to keep dance in her life.
Zaria Simone’s performance as Faran has been outstanding this season. I think her character development is handled really well as she tries to come into her own within a rigid system like ballet with the parental pressure from her mom.
This growth feels like a natural progression and I mostly just hope that we can see the ballet in a future episode.
What Happened to Angela
The final three episodes do a good job of answering our burning questions about Angela Waters and what happened to her. The moms each finally confess and add context to the flashbacks we’ve been seeing. It doesn’t add anything to what we know but it leaves the mothers and daughters on the same page for once.
The context that the finale tries to add to the plot doesn’t really work. We’ve seen how things played out on the surface and the only new information is Davy’s. The insidious nature of her attempts to erase Angela are terrifying and depicted through a truly cruel lens, but all the attempts to go beyond that fail.
Even when the girls try to find answers in the Waters house nothing is really added to the story. They want to add something richer to the plot revealing that Angela had a sibling but the result only kills time to get to the final reveal.
It isn’t even that surprising that Tom Beasley is involved since the series sets him up to be a villain as early as Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin Season 1 Episode 1, “Spirit Week.”
The Clanton Reveal
The reveal that Principal Clanton is behind A is maybe the most shocking part of the finale. In the end, it makes a lot of sense especially when you consider that janitor that was murdered, but it also feels like a cheap choice for the big bad.
Mostly, it feels like it robs A of any agency. Instead of getting answers from A, and finding out their motivations, we get everything through Clanton’s filter and it becomes unclear who was really in charge.
Similarly, the sins of the mother need to be visited upon the child because Davy killed herself feels forced and contrived.
It feels like if that was the primary motivation there would have been something more menacing that should have been going on to get that point across. If this was all coming from Clanton why weren’t the girls being sent messages to make them suspicious of their moms?
At the end of Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin Season 1 Episode 10, “Final Girls,” I am left thinking of A, aka Archie, as a character similar to Lenny in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. The evolution of this character is now what I am invested in. Leave the girls behind and let’s examine how Angela’s twin brother became his father’s puppet.
Final Thought
At the end of ten episodes, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin seems to have answered its original moniker. The “original sin” appears to have been answered for and while there’s potential to continue it doesn’t necessarily connect to the bigger mystery. Unless the series continues to tread the same ground and continuously change the answers it doesn’t feel like there’s a way the show can continue.
In the end, the two parts of this show feel so disconnected that the finale is the only thing tying them together. Much like the original series it never feels like the girls are in any danger until the end, and even then it seems like A is toothless where the main characters are concerned.
Stray Thoughts:
- Dee casually telling Shirley that she can track their daughter is one of the best mom lines of the season. It’s the matter-of-fact-ness for me.
- I gotta say that if we don’t see the products of some of these girls’ hobbies it’s really going to feel like whole sections of this cast are here to kill and waste time. I really want to see Tabitha’s vision of some of her film assignments, and I want to see Faran’s ballet. I’m invested in them as whole characters doing these things and I feel like they’re not actually doing anything other than serving as plot devices in their own story.
- Was anyone else just waiting for Rose Waters to say “dirty pillows” in the opening scene to the finale?
- The Thanksgiving Blood Drive on Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin Season 1 Episode 8, “Bad Blood,” feels so contrived, and the science doesn’t hold. Not to mention the legal trouble that Marjorie’s friend could get into.
- Martha Beasley is the MVP of this episode. She says the most she’s ever spoken between the penultimate episode and the finale and when she gets up and silently walks out during dinner I really hoped that she was going to come back with something to knock the Sheriff out. She did not disappoint.
- The one line about how girls were meaner in the 90s holds no weight when you consider how much time is collectively spent on Angela’s storyline compared to the muck of the rest of the show.
- I want to know who had the diary pages and how they got into Davy’s mouth. In the midst of everything else it feels like either the coroner isn’t doing their job or A has a special interest in taxidermy. If it’s the latter, I want to see how that developed.
- So, Rose Waters was hanging around Millwood? What happened to her?
What did you think of this episode of Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin Season 1 is now available to stream on HBO Max.
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Lauren Busser
Lauren Busser is an Associate Editor at Tell-Tale TV. She is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose work has appeared in Bitch Media, Popshot Quarterly, Brain Mill Press Voices, and The Hartford Courant.