Pretty Little Liars spin-off: All you need to know

From Digital Spy

The story of Pretty Little Liars finally drew to a close in June, after 7 years and 160 episodes featuring a whole host of wild twists.

But there was one last surprise in store – less than two months after series finale 'Till Death Do Us Part' went out, plans were announced for a new spin-off.

This new series, subtitled The Perfectionists, will be the third instalment in the PLL television universe (after 2013's short-lived Ravenswood) and we've got all the goss on what to expect.

Pretty Little Liars spin-off series: What's happening?

On September 25, 2017, Freeform announced plans were afoot for a new pilot, set in the Pretty Little Liars universe and based, like that series, on a novel by Sara Shepard.

A synopsis for the pilot reads: "Everything about the town of Beacon Heights seems perfect, from their top-tier college to their overachieving residents. But nothing in Beacon Heights is as it appears to be. The stress of needing to be perfect leads to the town's first murder. Behind every Perfectionist is a secret, a lie and a needed alibi."

"Pretty Little Liars was a cultural phenomenon so it's no wonder fans wanted more," said Karey Burke, Freeform's executive vice president, programming and development. "We can't wait to continue [writer / showrunner] Marlene King's rich and revolutionary storytelling with a new crop of leading ladies from Beacon Heights who will hold just as many secrets and lies as Rosewood did."

King herself said: "I can't wait to introduce our fans – and Sasha and Janel – to a new world of thrills and chills in Beacon Heights."

King, who was also showrunner on Pretty Little Liars, has written the Perfectionists pilot and will serve as executive producer with Leslie Morgenstein (Pretty Little Liars, The Vampire Diaries) and Gina Girolamo (The 100, The Originals).

They'll be joined by Charlie Craig, who served as co-showrunner alongside King on Pretty Little Liars and will fulfil the same role on The Perfectionists.

"Tonally, it's very similar [to Pretty Little Liars]," King told TVLine. "There is a big mystery, and there is a murder, and there are some characters who are a fractured group at the beginning of our story, and through a murder they become friends.

"We're meeting four new characters who are Perfectionists - and one of them won't make it to the end of the pilot.

"So it's similar in that regard, but it's a whole new mystery, a whole new murder. We also have Alison and Mona coming from PLL to Beacon Heights, and that'll all make sense when you see the pilot."

The Perfectionists cast: Who is starring?

As King revealed, Sasha Pieterse and Janel Parrish will reprise their Pretty Little Liars roles for the new pilot.

Pieterse is back as Alison DiLaurentis, the former queen bee whose mysterious disappearance rocked the small town of Rosewood, while Parrish will return as Mona Vanderwaal, Hanna Marin's best friend, who was unmasked as the mysterious tormentor "A" at the end of PLL's second season (and ultimately beat uber-villain AD at her own game).

Will we see any other PLL veterans reprising their roles? Possibly - King has promised we'll "eventually" see more familiar faces dropping by Beacon Heights - just "not in the pilot."

Shay Mitchell confirmed that she'd "spoken here and there" to showrunner Marlene King, but added that scheduling difficulties might make it tough for her to reprise her role of Emily.

"Never say never," Mitchell said. "I'm so excited to see Sasha on that. It's something that they were talking about before we even finished [Pretty Little Liars], and all of us were so supportive."

Lucy Hale also has pretty much crushed our hopes of a Aria cameo. "I don't think I will be in the spin-off," she said. "I will definitely be supporting and watching. I think they're actually going to film in Vancouver, so I might go, like, stalk the set a little bit."

"The fun of a spin-off is getting to take a couple characters from your show and creating this new experience for them, but you can't take everyone," King has said.

"It's bittersweet in some ways, but I think also awesome in others and I think our fans will appreciate the journey that these two characters, Mona and Alison from our world, are going into this new world."

Pretty Little Liars season 7 ending: What happened in the finale?

Need a refresher course on the events of 'Till Death Do Us Part' before The Perfectionists begins? We've got you.

The series finale episode revealed that Spencer (Troian Bellisario) had an evil twin sister named Alex Drake, who was in fact AD / Uber A.

Alex wanted to avenge Charlotte DiLaurentis's death – but that wasn't enough. Her ambitious plan would end with her taking over Spencer's life.

You see, Alex was adopted and raised by a British family, and found out about Spencer through Wren Kingston. Alex bonded with Charlotte and was so enraged by Charlotte's death that she felt she had to do something about it.

But she became driven by jealousy of Spencer, believing that her twin sister had the "luck of the draw" and the better life out of the two of them – hence the 'taking over her life' part of the plan.

Alex went all-in with her twisted scheme, to the point where she even killed Wren, turning his ashes to diamond and wearing it as a necklace. Standard.

(As an aside, Wren is the father to Emily and Ali's baby twin daughters.)

Of course, Alex was taken down before she could fulfil her plan. Despite trapping Spencer and Ezra in an underground bunker, she was foiled by the Liars and taken in by police.

Aria and Ezra married, and the final scene showed a new group of teen girls discover their friend Addison Derringer (Ava Allan) is missing. (Fans had speculated that a PLL spin-off / sequel could pick up from here, with Addison set up as the next Alison.)

The Perfectionists release date: When will it air?

Just to be clear, The Perfectionists is currently only at pilot stage, so there's a possibility that Freeform might not pick it up to series. (They wouldn't dare!)

As such, there's no official word yet on a premiere date. Though, all being well, we shouldn't expect a series to launch till late 2018 at the earliest.

In January, showrunner King revealed, "We were scouting for a location to film our pilot in Portland over this last weekend. And yes, the script is written and we're in the process of rewriting it just to fine tune it perfectly… we're super excited about it."

The Perfectionists book: What are the novels about?

Shepard's Perfectionists book series launched with The Perfectionists in October 2014, followed by a second book, The Good Girls, in June 2015.

The books follow Ava, Caitlin, Mackenzie, Julie and Parker – all driven to be perfect, no matter the cost. At first the girls think they have nothing in common, until they discover that they all hate the same person: handsome womaniser Nolan Hotchkiss, who's done things to hurt each of them.

They come up with the perfect plan to murder Nolan – jokingly, of course. They'd never actually go through with it. But when Nolan turns up dead in the exact way they'd discussed, the girls suddenly become prime suspects in his murder. Only, they didn't do it. So who did? Unless they find the real killer, and soon, their perfect lives will come crashing down around them.

Back in June 2017, King confirmed she was working on a Perfectionists adaptation, but it wasn't until three months later that it was confirmed Freeform would be retooling the stories as a Pretty Little Liars spin-off.

We can expect some changes from the source material, with King explaining that the series will focus on major male characters as well as the girls. "I felt like just as we were getting sort of into season five and six of Pretty Little Liars, our guys became such an important part of the show," she explained.

"I wanted to explore the relationship between guys and girls who can be friends and not necessarily boyfriend-girlfriend."

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