“Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” bosses dish on finale twists, deaths, and alternate endings

Is Archie really back?

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the season 2 finale of Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, "Final Exam."

Mamma Mia, here we go again.

From the first moments of season 2 of Pretty Little Liars: Summer School (previously subtitled Original Sin in season 1) to Thursday's finale, the horror show had moms on the brain. It was fitting then, that when it came time to finally reveal who was at the gory heart of Bloody Rose Waters — this season's terrifying villain — it was none other than Mrs. Langsberry (Carey Van Driest), seeking revenge on the girls for what happened to her rapist of a son, Chip, who was murdered at the end of season 1.

Like in the first season, though, the ultimate villain reveal was a two-hander. Imogen (Bailee Madison), Minnie (Malia Pyles), Noa (Maia Reficco), Tabby (Chandler Kinney), and Faran (Zaria) learned the hard way that Tabby's boss and theater manager Wes (Derek Klena) was the real mastermind behind Rose and all of the Spooky Spaghetti stuff, and he really, really wanted to make the girls the unfortunate stars of his slasher film.

In the end, Tabby proved to be the ultimate final final girl, and impaled Wes with a pitchfork, foiling his and Mrs. Langsberry's plans once and for all. All's well that ends well for the Liars, who appeared to finally pass summer school, paving the way for junior year. That is, until a final third act twist revealed that season 1's big bad, Archie Waters, cheated death and escaped prison to murder Dr. Sullivan (who, it turned out, was about to try and strike it rich selling the girls' trauma in her book).

What does it all mean for the show moving forward? Ahead, Entertainment Weekly brings all of our burning questions to co-showrunners Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring about the many twists and turns of that finale.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let's start with the most obvious. Will there be a season 3, and what ideas do you have for the future of this show, given the way season 2 ends?

ROBERTO AGUIRRE-SACASA: Listen, you know what we know. We love the show. We think we're just getting started. We're so hopeful for a season 3. I think in our minds, the same way that in season 1 Imogen was the final girl at the end, the way that Tabby was the final girl at the end of season 2 — our dream scenario would be that the show runs five seasons so that each of the PLLs gets one last episode where they're the ultimate, final, final girl. So we're very hopeful and have had a lot of conversations. So we're ready, but living in the moment.

Related: Why Imogen's baby isn't with Ezra and Aria on Pretty Little Liars: Summer School

LINDSAY CALHOON BRING: Yeah, no decision yet. But Roberto and I say this, all Roberto and I do is talk about the show, text each other about the show, call each other about the show, email each other ideas, let each other know what latest horror movie we saw, or what episode of a show roots up an idea. So there's definitely a document going, as there was in season 2, of all the kind of fun things we could be doing for a season 3.

Let's talk about the reveal that Archie, in fact, apparently did not die in prison. Is that how we are supposed to interpret his appearance at the end? Is there any other way to interpret it?

AGUIRRE-SACASA: Good question. I mean, it is funny. We start the season with Archie being arrested, and we talk a lot about Archie having the death penalty and Archie getting the electric chair. Then we talk about an off-camera prison riot in which one of the people killed in the prison riot is Archie. Then we talk about a deputy who is driving up to the jail to confirm that it's Archie's body, really, in the prison riot. And then we don't hear anything else about it. We don't hear word from the deputy. We don't hear anything. And Lindsay and I, we talked a lot about that last beat with Archie Waters, and it was like, we can't not address where Archie Waters is. And Archie Waters can't die off-camera in a prison riot. So once you kind of lay it out like that, it's like, of course Archie Waters isn't dead. Of course Archie Waters escaped. And of course Archie Waters is killing Dr. Sullivan (Annabeth Gish). I think that's our take on it, right, Lindsay?

BRING: Definitely. He's Archie. He broke out, as horror villains in prisons in many of our favorite horror movies are wont to do. Michael Myers has certainly found his way out of a jam time after time, as does Archie Waters. So that prison riot happened, and maybe it was incited by Archie himself as a means to get out of prison and come back and finish off another loose end, which was Dr. Sullivan.

And of course, Archie is not this season's main villain. That would be Wes, and to a lesser extent Mrs. Langsberry. Wes was a big part of both seasons, though obviously was not the villain in season 1. When did you know he was going to be a big bad for this season?

BRING: Well, I would say Wes has always been a villain, but a grounded villain. He is an older guy at a movie theater who preyed on a young girl and tried grooming her and held a flash drive over her head and got her to an apartment and tried to ply her with wine. So I think he's always been not an amazing guy, but it wasn't until season 2 that we were kind of breaking down his character and seeing that there is something to this disgruntled guy who thinks he should be further along in his career, who is angry at a girl who rebuffed his advances in season 1, and angry at a girl who is talented and special and doing well and has a bright future ahead of her. So all those things kind of work together to lead into a heightened horror villain for me.

AGUIRRE-SACASA: Echoing that, and it is funny, on the contrary, I think one thing — and this speaks to how much we love the actor who plays Wes, Derek — if anything, I think the conversation that kept coming up in the writers room was, can we redeem Wes from season 1? Is there a redemptive arc from Wes? And a couple of writers would throw that out there and we'd be like, there's no redeeming Wes, little knowing that we would in fact push him in the opposite direction, even villainize him more. But again, I think as Lindsay said, he was always sort of Tabby's antagonist, and he, like Tabby, was intimately tied to Chip and Mrs. Langsberry and Tabby. So that when we sort of landed on the idea that Tabby would be our stealth final, final girl for season 2, the stars started aligning where Wes was the villain.

Related: Pretty Little Liars cast: Here's where Shay Mitchell, Lucy Hale, and the other liars are now

I will say a fun thing that happened is, obviously we shot season 2 during the strike and we'd written all of the episodes before the strike, even before we started shooting. But after the strikes ended, we were able to go back in and add a couple of scenes, like the scene where Wes says he's moving to California and he's got an internship at A24. That was a scene that we added towards the end, and there were a couple of things like that that we got to do. But no, I think Wes kind of crystallized as a villain, as Lindsay said, halfway through the breaking of season 2, but yet he's always been a creep in our minds. This is just pushing him even further.

There was a Riverdale connection in season 1, and this season had another Easter egg, with Greg (Elias Kacavas) revealing he's the cousin of that show's Kevin (Casey Cott). Are you keeping the door open for a Riverdale crossover or cameo?

AGUIRRE-SACASA: Well, it's so funny. It was Lindsay who was the mastermind behind the Kevin Keller is cousins with Greg thing. Listen, who knows. Anything's possible. It does feel like if more connected tissue were built between shows, it would probably be between our version of PLL and the original PLL more than between our version of PLL and Riverdale. Though, could there be a football game [between the schools] potentially or something like that? I certainly was delighted when that line popped up in the script. It was really fun.

You guys mentioned changing things because of the strikes. Were there different endings or villain reveals you seriously considered?

BRING: I mean, there may or may not be an alternate ending to the finale out there as far as our death goes of Dr. Sullivan. But as we were kind of in this, it just felt so right that Archie would show back up, that he would kill Sullivan. That everything that Dr. Sullivan amazingly monologued about in episode 7 about the boogieman, that all of that was true, and all of that was real. Archie killing Dr. Sullivan answered kind of a season-long story for us about what are all of Dr. Sullivan's motives for being here, for being in with these girls. We love the delicious villainy of her writing a book and calling her publisher at the end and saying, the girls are narcissists, but we do feel it's true that she is connected to the girls, connected to the Millwood massacre, connected to Archie and was tragically trying to find an answer to something that she never got.

Do you guys keep up with fan theories at all? Did you see anyone call the twists?

AGUIRRE-SACASA: We're on a pretty active text chain with all of the girls and they're constantly posting theories for sure. It's fun to see theories of things that we entertain but ultimately didn't do. It's always chilling when people start getting close to the truth and we're like, no, no, no, move away. But we're on a pretty muscular text chain with all the girls about all the theories that are out there. In fact, we have to give a shout out to, on YouTube, there are these two recappers, the Petty Pumpkins, who we're obsessed with who do recaps of many, many pop culture horror movies and TV shows. They've been recapping PLL, and they're very dialed into the show and it's a running commentary, but they're frequently getting very close to the flames. We are tracking the fan theories 100 percent.

BRING: For sure. Those Petty Pumpkins are savvy viewers, and we get excited because they're such savvy viewers. Anytime they don't land right on it, we're like, "Okay, good. We're good." The one thing I think either the girls shared with us or we saw online, that was a good theory because it's one that we had investigated ourselves for a long time in the writer's room, was that Christian might be working with Bloody Rose. And the theory was, the specificity of it was Christian was friends with Chip. They both were kids together making movies together. They went to a summer camp together, became best friends, and that's how all this was born. And that was definitely something that we had investigated as a group of writers as well. So that was fun to see.

Related: Pretty Little Liars: Summer School adds Antonio Cipriano, more guest stars

I was convinced maybe Wes and Dr. Sullivan were actually mother and son, and she was using her psycho-analysis of the girls to help Wes torment them for his movie. The actors look like they could be related, too.

AGUIRRE-SACASA: By the way, we talked about variations on that. I think one of the blocks was, we couldn't get the timelines to make sense. But we did talk about it, and they do look alike. We did talk about that.

BRING: We may have even investigated Johnny as Sullivan's son. I mean, we, much like Tabby, much like all the Pretty Little Liars this season, we investigated every character in the show. Could it be Sullivan and Johnny? Could it be Mrs. Beasley and Kelly? Who could it not be? So we had our own murder board of really investigating every person on the show for sure.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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All episodes of Pretty Little Liars: Summer School are streaming now on Max.

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