It had been weeks since Imogen, Faran, Mouse, Tabby, and Noa had last seen the masked man who went by the name “A.” In “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” Episode 3, they see him when they go to the graveyard to pay their respects to their colleague, Karen. The girls still didn’t know what had happened with Angela Waters, and whether her death had anything to do with their mothers. They knew that “A,” the masked killer, had something to do with Angela Waters, but they still needed to gather more evidence to understand his motivations completely. So let’s see what episodes 4, titled “The Fe(Male) Gaze,” and 5, titled, “The Night He Came Home,” of “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” have in store for us, and whether they are able to unravel the mystery or leave more loose ends for us to speculate.
Spoilers Ahead
What Does Noa Come To Know About Her Mother?
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin” Episode 4 opens in the year 1999, where we see Marjorie Olivar and Angela smoking together. A man sees them and comes to inquire if they were smoking. Marjorie instantly says that it was only Angela who was smoking and not her. Angela was shocked to see how comfortably Marjorie threw her in front of the bus to evade any consequences. Marjorie, to make it up to Angela, gave her a stuffed teddy bear, but her actions had spoken a thousand words about her behavior and character already, and there was no going back.
22 years later, Marjorie received the same teddy, with “Mother of the Year” inscribed on it. It was probably the doing of “A,” who, after killing Davie Adams, was going after Marjorie. The girls had now started to think that their nightmare was probably over since they hadn’t received any text from the dreaded killer “A.” But they decided to not tell their mothers anything about Karen’s death unless and until they got to know more about Angela Waters. Imogen was not happy when she came to know that Sidney Hayworth, Tabby’s mother, had already got a prospective buyer who was interested in buying her house, in which she had lived all her life. Imogen went to her house and scared the buyers off by saying that a woman was murdered in it. Sheriff Beasley still believed that the girls were responsible for the death of her daughter, Karen. He couldn’t do anything to the others, but Noa was still serving her punishment, of which he was in-charge. He had the power to search her house in case he felt that she had started using drugs again. He had never made a visit ever before, but now he was desperate to pin the girls down. He made a surprise inspection visit to Noa’s house. He found some pills in the washroom and asked who they belonged to. Without even blinking once, even before Noa could say anything, her mother said that it didn’t belong to her. Noa felt a bit amused at her behavior. She suspected that she might have started using drugs again. She searched her bag and found a bottle of pills that didn’t belong to her. It was the same pills that came with the stuffed teddy that Marjorie had received in the beginning. Noa got a text saying that her mother would throw her under the bus just like Angela Waters.
A peculiar trait of Marjorie came to light. She was in the habit of committing a crime and then falsely putting the blame on someone else. She did that with Angela years ago, and now she was doing it with her daughter. The worst part was that she did this to people who were closest to her. Noa had ordered pizza, and the delivery guy, for some reason, couldn’t come upstairs. Noa went downstairs, but she found the door glass shattered and the pizza lying on the floor. She came upstairs to see that the masked killer was trying to unlock her door. She ran for her life and jumped on the roof of another building. She shouted and asked him what he wanted from her and her mother. He said three words crisply: “Punish the guilty.” She asks him who was guilty, and he takes the name of her mother. Noa knew that he would definitely kill her mother, so she called Millwood General Hospital and informed the security that her mother had been stealing drugs. She asked them to check her purse for evidence, as she had earlier seen the medication of someone else in her possession. Noa gets her ankle monitor removed, but she breaks the news to the other girls that “A” has returned.
What Was Bothering Tabby?
Nobody knew what Tabby did with all the footage that she recorded from the hidden cam, placed in the boys’ locker room. It was her secret and she never told anyone about it. She had gotten an assignment to recreate a scene from the film of any one of the directors from the list provided by her professor. She brainstormed with Chip and came to the conclusion that she wanted to recreate the famous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” Before filming it, the students had to explain to the whole class the relevance it holds in contemporary times. While explaining, Tabby said that she wanted to make the killer a female and the victim a vulnerable young male. There were power dynamics that existed in a patriarchal society that leaned in favor of males, and she wanted to change that. She wanted to show horror from the point of view of the female gaze. Faran agreed to be her modern-day Marion Crane, and now she only needed a guy who was soaked in toxic masculinity. She thought that Greg, Karen’s boyfriend, would be perfect for the role. She approached him and he agreed to do the part immediately. She had warned him to maintain decency on her set, but Greg, being Greg, didn’t listen to her. She took off all his clothes before the scene and started pestering others to shoot him as is. He was an overconfident and extremely narcissistic lad who didn’t shy off from any opportunity where he got to put his toxic masculinity on display. Tabby lost her temper, and she went outside to get some fresh air. When she came back, she found that because she was taking a lot of time to come back, Chip had already shot the rest of the scenes. He tells her that he did exactly as it was mentioned in the mood boards. But it agitated Tabby so much that she walked out on him. The Female Gaze was the essence of her project, and with Chip shooting it, she thought that the whole idea was destroyed. Though she had a point, she had been overreacting and losing her temper quite a lot, especially when it came to dealing with men.
In “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin,” episode 5, we saw that Tabby confronted Tyler, Greg, and the gang at Imogen’s party. Tyler was pestering Mouse to have a drink, and that’s when Tabby came in between. She started shouting at them. She told them that she was done being intimidated by guys and dealing with their misogynistic ideologies. The argument gets heated up, and she punches Tyler in the face. Later, Chip came and calmed her down. He told her that he had requested the professor to give them extra time so that they could reshoot the bits and pieces that he had shot in her absence.
Tabby had been getting flashbacks of this bonfire party that she had attended in the past. What had happened at the party, nobody exactly knew. But one thing’s for sure, that either she was molested or intimidated by some guy, which had traumatized her. She could no longer stand the misogynistic views of these progenies of patriarchy. Sometimes the recurring visions got too much for her to handle, and sometimes she lost her cool and became agitated. In the end, Imogen came to talk with her as she had been subjected to a similar circumstance. She was carrying a baby, and maybe their stories did have some similarities.
‘Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin’ Episode 5: Ending Explained – What Happened At Imogen’s Halloween Party?
Faran was becoming more and more suspicious about the fact that it was Kelly who died at the hands of the masked killer and not Karen. Firstly, she saw Kelly putting all her stuff in Karen’s locker before the ballet practice. Karen was seeing a lot of similarities between their style of speaking. used to address Faran as “queen” a lot of times and even Kelly did it unknowingly. Kelly had also improved drastically when it came to her dancing. Nobody knew how this change had happened overnight. Even Henry, Faran’s dance partner, said that sometimes he felt that he was dancing with Karen and not Kelly. After getting all these clues, Faran couldn’t resist. She told Henry that she has a gut feeling that Kelly is, in reality, Karen. She convinces him to check her feet for any marks, as Karen had gotten hurt when the masked man kept a blade in her ballet shoes. Henry, under the pretext of giving her a foot massage, checks and finds out that Kelly indeed had a scar on her foot. Faran goes to Madame Giry and tells her about everything. Madame Giry asked her to stop making baseless allegations and told her that Kelly had a history of inflicting self-harm. She warns Faran to stop spreading conspiracy theories without rhyme or reason. Later, at Imogen’s party, Faran saw Kelly and Greg, who used to be Karen’s boyfriend, getting close to each other.
In episode 5 of “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin,” Faran confronted Kelly and told her she knew about her dirty secret, but Kelly shunned her accusations and called them baseless. Kelly also complained to Madame Giry the next day. Faran was removed as the Black Swan, and Kelly was given the opportunity to lead the ballet, something that Karen had always wanted. Kelly’s mother calls her Karen in the end, when the former was giving her news about her getting the lead part. Though Kelly once again corrects her mother, who was always in a partly unconscious/zoned out state, you are inclined to believe that she is hiding the truth, maybe to gain sympathy, or maybe some other leverage.
Mouse had been chatting online to a stranger named Steve for quite some time now. She approached him a while back. They decide to meet on Halloween night. It seemed from the conversation she had at the end with her mother that she had been through a lot in the past due to a certain catastrophic event. Maybe that was the reason her mother never allowed her to be out till late. What exactly happened to her is still unknown, but she says, “he is not coming back.” It is possible that Mouse had lost her father because of that fateful event. On the other hand, Steve probably had a missing daughter named Rachel Bowers, and somewhere he blamed himself for her disappearance. It was a strange meeting, where Steve pretended to be her dad, asked her about her report card, and took her trick or treating. Mouse didn’t tell anyone about this meeting. Though she does click a picture with Steve, where she is wearing a mask, and keeps it in her collection.
The masked killer was back. He was living in the basement of Imogen’s house. He had an iron trunk that had “United States Army Reserve” inscribed on it. Maybe “A” was an ex-army official. He had kept all the belongings of Angela Waters in it. He wore the Halloween mask, which once Angela was forced to wear by the mothers of the girls. He roamed in the house, and because it was Halloween, everybody thought that he was one of the guests at the party. After Tyler was punched by Tabby, he started bleeding and went to the washroom to clean up. “A” killed him and put his body in a carrier outside the house. “A” was maybe punishing only those who were guilty of some crime. He probably found Tyler guilty of aggressive harassment, and that’s why he decided to end his life.
Faran was no longer playing the black swan. Mouse was meeting strangers and felt that she was being punished for no mistake of hers. Noa had informed the authorities about her own mother and nearly escaped the masked killer. Tabby was still traumatized because of something that had happened at the bonfire party, and Imogen was still not able to cope with the loss of her mother. There was a lot left for the girls to figure out, but the torn pages from the diary of Imogen’s mother pointed out one fact: the key to this mystery lay in possession of the mothers. They might have tried to forget about it, to erase it from their memory, but the past had come to haunt them.
