We Were Liars, based on E. Lockhart’s novel, was a fairy tale about a mythic place where, in the words of the protagonist, the summer never ended. The king and the queen; the prince and the princess, lived under that illusion for a very long time until the day came when their bubble burst and they realized that, in the real world, summer did end, and it got quite cold and uncomfortable. That said, I think if you are a fan of drama as a genre, you’ll get invested in the story. The pace and the length of the episodes might be a bit too much for some, but I personally liked the fact that things unfolded so slowly, and the way it led to that crescendo that I had been waiting for for the first 7 episodes. Another reason why I liked the series was that there was something really nostalgic about it. I think it took me back to the good old days, when life was perfect, when we seized every moment, and when we didn’t care about the future. So, let’s find out who the Sinclairs were, what familial problems they were facing, and what was that tragedy that changed their lives forever.
Spoiler Alert
Who were the Sinclairs?
Harris Sinclair, the patriarch of the family and one of the most powerful men in the United States, according to Forbes magazine, was a man who believed in traditions and who could do anything for his family’s reputation. The Sinclairs were called royalty for a reason; their lives were all about their customs and traditions, and they had literally no idea (especially Harris’ children and grandchildren) how the real world functioned. And how would they? How could a person born with a silver spoon have any clue about the daily struggles of the common man? Harris had a lot of expectations from his daughters, Carrie, Penny, and Bess, but eventually he was terribly let down by them. I don’t blame the sisters for what they became when they grew old. Harris controlled their lives; he didn’t let them have any real-life experiences. He brought them up like they were delicate dolls, but then one day he expected them to be all mature and grown up and make decisions like pragmatic and judicious people. The sisters, apart from dealing with their own issues, just wanted to make an impression on their father so that he would leave his property to them. The sisters called it healthy competition, but it was nothing of the sort. I felt that they would have gone to any extent in order to win. Their children, on the other hand, were nothing like them. Penny had a daughter named Cadence; Carrie had 2 sons, Johnny and Will, from her first husband; whereas Bess had three daughters, Mirren and a pair of twins named Liberty and Bonnie. Penny was going through a divorce as her husband had cheated on her (at least that’s what she said at first); Bess’ husband had lost all his money due to certain bad investments, and so even she stopped talking to him after a point in time; and Carrie lived with her partner, Ed, who was a genuinely nice man (i.e., nothing like the older Sinclairs), but still she didn’t marry him because of certain reasons that we shall discuss later. Every summer, the Sinclair family came to Beechwood Island and stayed together. It couldn’t be denied that the place was indeed like a mythic land, where everything was just about perfect.
How did Cadence and Gat develop feelings?
After Carrie started dating Ed, the latter’s elder brother met his fateful end. Though outsiders weren’t allowed during the summer stay at Beechwood, that one time an exception was made: a young Indian kid came to the island and became a part of the liars’ team forever. That young kid was Gat, who happened to be Ed’s nephew. Ed brought Gat with him, because apparently he and Johnny got along well, and Carrie was happy about the fact that her son benefitted from that company. That was the first summer Gat met Cadence, and as it happens in the fairy tales, it was love at first sight. The first thing that Cadence asked Gat was if he was real, and very innocently the boy replied that he believed that he was. Since then Gat became a part of the Sinclair summer ritual, and he met Cadence every year. Gat had to literally stop himself from making it obvious that he was head over heels for Cadence. He waited for her until the summer she turned sixteen, but then Gat realized that the real world was nothing like his Beechwood fairy tale, and he accepted that Cadence would never see him the way he saw her.
But guess what? Life had plans to surprise him. That summer, Cadence felt that something had changed between her and Gat. His presence made her feel something inexplicable, a kind of feeling she’d never felt until then. She tried stopping herself, but she couldn’t, and then one day, the inevitable happened in that mythic land. The princess finally noticed her Prince Charming the way he wanted her to, but by then there was a third person who had come in between them. Gat had started dating a girl named Raquel, but he refrained from telling Cadence about her. Gat wanted to be a good person, but he was just too scared that Cadence would take a step back the moment she found out there was a third party involved.
There were moments when Gat flirted with Cadence, made her feel special, and got intimate with her, but then he felt guilty and started ignoring her. Cadence, for the longest time, didn’t know what Gat was up to. The worst part was that she found out about Gat’s girlfriend before he could tell her. Cadence felt cheated and betrayed, and she stopped talking to Gat for a brief period. That’s when Gat realised that he needed to listen to his heart and do what he felt was right. So Gat went off the island to meet Raquel, and he broke up with her. Gat knew that Raquel deserved to be told in person why he didn’t want to be with her. Meanwhile, there were a bunch of outsiders invited to a party at Beechwood, and Cadence, for the longest time, assumed that Raquel, too, came to the party, as she saw Gat talking to an Asian girl. Later that night, when everybody sobered up, Gat revealed to Cadence what he had done. He expressed his love for Cadence, he told her that he broke up with Raquel, and the latter couldn’t stop herself from jumping with joy. That was the beginning of a beautiful relationship, but little did they know that tragedy was going to shatter their dreams, and life was not going to turn out the way they had imagined it.
Why didn’t Carrie marry Ed?
Carrie, Penny, and Bess, as stated earlier, had their own set of problems, but I believe that Carrie’s was the gravest of the lot. I believe Carrie’s first husband physically abused her, because of which her eldest son, Johnny, developed certain mental health issues. Johnny had this really violent side that came out when he got really triggered. It so happened that he assaulted a fellow student so badly that the poor chap had to be admitted to the hospital. Carrie had to bribe the school authorities in order for them to allow Johnny to study in the same school and not let the media catch a whiff of what had happened. The incident had a grave impact on Johnny’s life too, and deep down he knew that he had caused a lot of trouble for his mother. Carrie had to use the money in the trust fund her father had set up for her to bribe the authorities. She didn’t tell Harris about it because she knew the repercussions it could have. Also, Carrie couldn’t say anything to her partner, Ed, about what she was going through, as she knew that her father wouldn’t appreciate it. Carrie knew how sensitive the matter was, and how it could tarnish their reputation if the people came to know about it. But now Carrie needed money, and she didn’t know how to ask her father for it. She was extra sweet to him all summer, and it didn’t take long for her old man to tell that his eldest daughter wanted a favor from him. Then finally, one day, during the summer stay, Carrie told Harris about what had happened. Meanwhile, Ed proposed to Carrie, and the latter stated that she couldn’t marry him because she needed to look after her boys. But the truth was that Harris had told Carrie that if she married a brown man, then she wouldn’t get a single penny from him. Carrie knew that her racist father’s money was all that she had, and she decided to do as he asked her. It broke Carrie’s heart to see Ed leave, but she didn’t stop him. And now the million-dollar question: why was Harris so rigid about Carrie not marrying Ed? I believe it was Cadence who confronted her grandfather later in We Were Liars and told him that he was an extremely racist person. Harris looked down on people like Ed and Gat, even when they hadn’t done anything to anger him. As Harris said quite pompously, the Sinclairs had blonde hair, and Harris didn’t want his lineage to look any other way. He was fine till the point his daughters married white men, even if they were liars, cheaters, or the most pathetic human beings in the world. We saw what Bess’ husband did with her and how he kept her in the dark and kept siphoning money from her trust fund to pay his debts. Harris was still fine with her daughters being foolish, but he couldn’t accept them having offspring that were of “mixed race,” to put it bluntly.
Why did the Sinclair mothers hate each other?
For the longest time, Harris felt that Bess was the one who would become the heir to his empire, but after that summer, his views about her changed drastically. Bess had always been the most pampered child of the family, as she was the youngest one (there was a younger one named Rosemary who died when she was around 10 years old). Penny and Carrie always babied their sister, but after a point in time, they just refused to do so, as Bess started taking advantage of that fact. Bess never approved of her daughter, Mirren’s actions, and the latter, for the longest time, just wanted to be validated by her. Penny was the Miss Perfect who, just like her mother, refrained from showing any kind of emotion, as apparently that was the Sinclair way. After Tipper Sinclair, Harris’ wife, passed away rather suddenly, the sisters entered into an unspoken competition to impress their father. All three of them were ready to go to any extent to win his approval. They were feisty in their approach, and they did not refrain from getting their hands dirty in order to defeat each other. During a family dinner, all three of them started arguing with each other, and they did everything they could to tarnish each other’s image. Harris came to know about Bess’ affair with Salty Dan, the boatman who delivered stuff to the island. Shots were fired from all sides, and nobody was spared. Bess made it a point to make it clear that Carrie wasn’t a good mother, as she had failed to keep her boy in check. Penny just sat on the sidelines as she wanted her sisters to indulge into a bloodbath and spoil their own cause. It showed the kind of selfish person Penny was and how desperate she was to get the largest share of her father’s property.
All the fight did was make Harris realize that none of his daughters were worthy or deserving of being made the heir to the empire. He was disappointed in them, and he made sure that they all knew that.
What happened on the night Cadence lost her memory?
There were basically two timelines running parallel in We Were Liars: one when Cadence and Gat turned 16 (which the show and its protagonist calls summer 16), and the other was of summer 17, after Cadence lost her memory and met with an accident. Cadence wanted to go back to Beechwood in order to remember what had happened. Also, one very strange thing was that nobody was willing to tell her anything. She begged her cousins and Gat to tell her everything, but they refrained from doing so, as apparently Penny had asked them to not talk about what had happened on that fateful day. When Cadence got really frustrated and ended up fighting with her mother, the latter told her that she had told her everything before, and every single time Cadence had a seizure when she wasn’t able to digest the truth. But being around Johnny, Mirren, and Gat helped her cause. Bit by bit, Cadence started remembering what had happened. Cadence was not happy with Harris, especially because of the way he pitched his daughters against each other and how he made sure that Gat was sent away from Beechwood Island under the pretense of giving him an opportunity to get selected in a scholarship program. Harris accidentally slipped at the end of We Were Liars while having an argument with Cadence, and he had to be admitted to a hospital. Gat, who was about to take his flight to attend the interview, saw choppers going towards the island, and he decided to go and check if Cadence was doing fine. Gat had made up his mind to stay with Cadence even if it meant leaving that scholarship program. It so happened that for the first time all four liars were alone on the island (as everybody else had gone to the hospital). In an inebriated state, they decided to burn the place down, as they saw it as a symbol of capitalism, greed, racial hatred and everything else that was wrong in their family. They felt that they would be able to press the reset button and start afresh. While trying to set the place on fire, they got a bit distracted, and they were not able to make it out of the house on time. Gat, whose duty was to keep the boat ready, also went inside as he felt they needed his help. Apart from Cadence, who just managed to come out on time, everybody else lost their lives in the fire. What this means is that all this while, Cadence has just been hallucinating, as none of the other liars still existed in real life. Carrie also saw Johnny a few times, as she too had started taking Tipper’s medicine. Cadence was shattered, to the point that she didn’t know how to make peace with her past and move ahead in life.
What happened between Mirren and Ebon?
Mirren was a very intuitive person, but I felt like she got overshadowed by her cousins, and nobody really understood what she was going through. Everybody focused on Johnny after he messed up, making things difficult for his mother, and Cadence, well, was considered to be the most sensible of the lot, so everybody heard her out whenever she said anything. Also, Cadence was the eldest grandchild of Harris Sinclair and the heir to his empire by default, because of which she got a lot of attention. But amidst all the chaos, there was Mirren, who had the heart of an artist and was pretty talented too. Mirren was searching for Blake Beaumont (one of Johnny’s classmates, who came to Tipper’s funeral just to take revenge on him) when she bumped into Ebon, a boatman who took people from the mainland to the island. Ebon saw Mirren, and he realized that she was somebody who suppressed her feelings and never exposed her true face to people whom she felt would judge her. Ebon and Mirren got quite close with time, and she was quite surprised when she got to know that the former actually liked her. Ebon made it very clear that he wasn’t there just for a fling, and that he wanted something substantial with her. Meanwhile, Bess was having her own secret affair with Salty Dan, and she gave in to her impulses, not caring about the consequences. Ebon was one of the few people who saw Mirren’s paintings, and he told her that she had the potential of making it big in the creative field. Unfortunately, Mirren was not able to do anything of that sort, and her paintings got displayed in an art gallery only posthumously, after she met her fateful end. At the end of We Were Liars, Ebon saw her paintings displayed in the art gallery, and I believe he felt a strange sense of longing. Their affair was brief, but still, they both had left an indelible mark on each other. Probably, Ebon would never forget about the moments he spent with her at Beechwood, and he would treasure them until his last breath.
Did the tragedy change the Sinclairs?
Harris told Cadence that he wanted her to succeed him, but something changed inside her after she fully remembered what had happened that fateful night. Cadence had gone back to get her grandmother’s necklace after the fire broke out. She still, till the very end, felt as if, if she wouldn’t have done that, then Gat probably wouldn’t have come searching for her inside the burning mansion. She didn’t know what made her risk her life for a mere necklace, but it did scare her. She felt that maybe one day she would become just like her mother and aunts, and she wouldn’t be able to overpower her materialistic side and escape the allegorical cage. I believe the tragedy brought the three Sinclair sisters—Bess, Penny, and Carrie—a bit closer to each other, though for them to completely change was not possible. Obviously they had reached a stage where, even after knowing everything, they felt compelled to give in to their father’s demands, as they knew that only then would they be able to afford the kind of lifestyle they needed. Penny loved the fact that her daughter could do what she never could, i.e. break free and live her life on her own terms. Bess, who always belittled Mirren, made sure that an art gallery displayed all her paintings, though she bore the guilt of not telling her how much she loved her when there was time. As for Carrie, she just couldn’t let go of her past, and her addiction made everything even more difficult for her.
As for the patriarch, he was disappointed in his granddaughter because he felt that, after everything, she would listen to him and do whatever she was told. He did call Ed for the family photo, which was his way of showing that he too had changed and that he was trying to be inclusive. Though Harris Sinclair let Cadence leave and then compromised and resigned himself to his fate on a few occasions, I believe he was still the same old man, and it was a bit late for him to change his approach completely.
