You Haven’t Seen A Bad Finale Until You’ve Watched ‘Pretty Little Liars’

ICYMI, Game of Thrones came to a dramatic end this week after eight seasons.

The ending of the show divided fans and critics, with gazillions of upset tweets (IDK, I’m not good at maths but this seems right) and many, many articles, threads, and opinion pieces being published.

There was even a petition for the show to remake the whole goddamn season.

OK so maybe Bran, he of the non-working dick, first of his name, shouldn’t have ended up as King. Maybe Jon shouldn’t have been banished back to the Night’s Watch for no… real.. purpose.

Maybe we should’ve gotten a shot of Gendry and Arya sailing west together. And maybe my beautiful queen, Dany should’ve killed her sad sack nephew/boyfriend instead of vice versa.

SURE, things could’ve been different.

Sansa in front of absolutely everyone: “Bran’s dick doesn’t work.”

— Rachel Fisher (@TheRachelFisher) May 20, 2019

But moving on, the characters’ arcs got wrapped up nicely enough even if everyone didn’t get the ending we truly wanted. We, as fans, at least got a form of closure and while there were plot holes and some shoddy writing involved, it’s definitely not the worst finale that’s ever aired.

Now sit down and strap yourselves in, because Game Of Thrones fans… you have no idea what it’s like to be betrayed by a finale unless you’ve seen Pretty Little Liars.

For those of us who have watched BOTH finales, we know what’s up.

The floor is a finale episode with no plot holes

Marlene: #PLLEndGame pic.twitter.com/jmQsR6lvlw

— Berta (@BertaV19) June 28, 2017

Pretty Little Liars debuted in 2010 and wrapped up in 2017 after 160 episodes. It followed the storylines of five teen girls whose lives were forever changed when the leader of their clique Alison DiLaurentis went missing. The four others – Hanna, Spencer, Aria and Emily – struggle to make sense of what happened, who’s responsible and start getting harassed by an anonymous person called A who threatens them via text, and sometimes tries to run them over or sends them weird dolls and shit.

Now we’ve got the background, here’s some hard, cold proof as to why the Pretty Little Liars finale was a way bigger letdown than the Game of Thrones one.

Fact #1. PLL fans watched a show for seven years to find out the final reveal/plot twist was all centred around a character we’d never heard of.

The first A reveal turned out to be Charlotte, who was born Charles and was the first child Alison’s aunt, Mary Drake, gave birth to. But that’s barely even the point of anything, because once A was revealed as Charlotte we learned after a time-jump in the show that a NEW person would be introduced to torment the girls.

That person went by A.D. and was revealed in the season finale to be Alex Drake — the hidden twin sister of Spencer Hastings. Turns out Mary Drake, who gave birth to Charles/Charlotte, also gave birth to Spencer and Alex. While Spencer was adopted out to their biological father, Alex’s existence was apparently unknown to anyone because Peter Hastings (Spencer and Alex’s biological dad) had already yeeted out of the hospital with Spencer for some reason.

So, Alex Drake, the unknown twin, spent a few years harassing her twin sister, cousin and their friends and that was that.  That was the ending. Seven years later, that was our closure.

Suddenly trying to understand Cersei and Jaime doesn’t seem that bad.

Fact #2. There were no beautiful symbolic shots to save PLL.

Game of Thrones is a beautifully shot show, there’s simply no denying it. Scenes were often deeply symbolic and even in the darkest moments you couldn’t help but admire the cinematography surrounding the show.

Pretty Little Liars’ idea of being symbolic was just using the same goddamn yellow shirt all the time.

Fact #3. The bad scriptwriting was not saved by the acting.

So you may not agree with the final season of Game of Thrones or the way it was written. That’s totally cool, I get it. But the acting from the cast throughout the eight seasons was nothing short of phenomenal.

Take Emilia Clarke’s portrayal of Daenerys. As we watched Dany morph into the “Mad Queen”, Clarke’s acting took it to a whole new level. You can feel her disgust and hate towards Cersei during Missandei’s beheading scene.

And then! Episode 5! Watching Dany on her dragon when the bells start to ring at King’s Landing was an absolutely powerful scene. You quite literally see her battle her emotions until they boil over, and she decides to burn the whole thing to the ground.

The Pretty Little Liars final season gave us a fake twin of Spencer with a terrible British accent and, well, take a look at the real Spencer here. She barely even looks distressed at being held captive or really looks that phased about the wellbeing of Ezra who was also captured.

To be fair to the actors on the show, they did have to deal with this dialogue. Nothing was going to save it at this stage.

Fact #4. If you thought GoT was appealing to fan theories, you’ve clearly never watched PLL. 

Pretty Little Liars fans will get it when I say it seems like the writers lurked Tumblr and Reddit to come up with their endgame and it still didn’t make sense or satisfy the long-suffering fanbase.

Fans of Game of Thrones, all I’m saying is, OK maybe your fave characters died. Sometimes PLL fans would’ve preferred that then, oh I don’t know, a storyline about how Emily’s frozen eggs were fertilised by Wren, then used to impregnate Ali with twins.

Fact #5. There’s enough evidence when watching GoT to predict how it’d end and why it ended that way, even if you don’t agree with it.

Regardless if you loved or hated Dany’s storyline, there were hints of her fighting against becoming the “Mad Queen” the whole time.

Drogon flying over King’s Landing to burn that shit down was foreshadowed in Season 4 in one of Bran’s visions. There’s a lot more that we could spend all day discussing but, honestly, just read Reddit if you don’t believe me.

PLL may as well have chosen their ending by spinning a wheel and seeing which character it landed on to see who ended up as the villain. Which, tbh, I think that’s exactly what they did.

I didn't watch 7 seasons of this show for A to be someone who wasn't involved in the first 159 episodes #PLLEndGame #PLL #PLLFinale pic.twitter.com/luGd9FdhZO

— cammie. (@theblxckestday) June 28, 2017

Fact #6. If you thought the ending of GoT felt rushed, then you’ve never been left asking “Wait, what about Spencer and Toby?”

Emison, Ezria and Haleb fans:
"Omg thanks so much Marlene, the finale was so great"

Spoby fans: #PLLFinale #PLLEndGame pic.twitter.com/LTbPKbbBMM

— rhiannon 🦕 (@colleenftdodie_) June 29, 2017

This was answered eventually, two years later in the Pretty Little Liars spin-off, The Perfectionists. We finally found out they did end up together, but at this point in our lives, who cares?