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clown-cult · 1 month

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Mon🅰️ & 🅰️rchie — an incoherent theory.

ALSO LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS AND POSSIBLY SPELLING ERRORS. )

Alternatives titles include “How Archie took on the A moniker” OR “the one where Mona accidentally inspired a serial killer” OR “how Alex Drake is possibly even lamer than she already was and got The Game(tm) snatched out from under her” OR “these timelines are so messy as it is and I really suck at timelines so please god just bear with me as I stumble my way through trying to establish a fun little theory”.

So. As someone who’s seen both shows (although I saw the original a while ago), one of the biggest questions I have when watching Original Sin is “how did The Game(tm) go from various young women pulling strings behind the scenes and playing epic games of sabotage and blackmail while calling themselves ‘A’ go to a hulking scary mfer that runs around in a mask and kills terrible people?”.

This is my attempt, inspired by many late night overthinking sessions, at piecing together how the mantle of ‘A’ passed from one group of liars to another, from one town to another and who might have inspired the current ‘A’.

How did we get here? Will this make any sense? Let’s see, shall we?

So apparently the Original PLL takes place from 2010 to 2018. Again, all these timelines and articles I’ve read are a whole ass mess, but like me, they’re just working with what they’ve got. Thanks, Marlene.

First, a quick rundown of our main locations and players.

For locations, we’ll obviously be focusing on Rosewood and Millwood, which are a few hours apart and easy to go between in a few hours. The other most important location will obviously be the Radley Sanitarium.

For our main players, we will be focusing primarily on:

Mona Vanderwaal - the original A.

Dr Anne Sullivan - therapist at the Radley.

Sebastian Sullivan - only child of Dr Sullivan.

Archie Waters - the current A.

Angela Waters - twin sister to Archie. Took her own life at 16.

Rose Waters- mother to Angela and Archie Waters.

Okay. Here’s my attempt at constructing a timeline and assigning details where I can. Please note I got a lot of this from the wikis and used episode dates as dates of events unless dates in the episodes were given.

March 21st 1983, Angela and Archie are born. Rose is a teen mother who becomes heavily religious later in life, a disastrous combination with her untreated mental illness. Angela is subjected to verbal abuse and shaming and Archie, apparently having a face that “only a mother could love” is kept in an animal cage in a room.

The father of the twins is Marshall Clanton, who becomes a teacher and later principal at Millwood High, which Angela later attends.

Mona Vanderwaal is born on October 8th, 1993 in Rosewood where she grows up.

Angela Waters dies on 2000 1st at the age of 16, taking her own life after a year of being bullied and experiencing an assault which led to more bullying.

Her daughter’s death sends Rose Wanters into a breakdown and she goes to Millwood School with a knife, where she is stopped by Marshall Clanton.

Rose Waters is committed to the Radley in January-February 2000 and is treated by Dr Anne Sullivan. During this space of time, Dr Sullivan investigates the Waters house after her sessions with Rose make her wonder about Rose’s son. She finds Archie, who is also 16 at the time and has escaped his cage. Dr Sullivan is alarmed and calls the police, but Archie is nowhere to be found.

June 23rd, 2002, Sebastian Sullivan is born in Rosewood.

Alison Dilaurentis disappears on September 1st-2nd 2009, due to harassment from ‘A’, so therefore Mona has already taken on the moniker of ‘A’ in revenge for Alison bullying her. It is unknown for how long Alison had been bullying Mona to push her to this moment.

June 2011, the original liars (Aria Montgomery, Emily Fields, Hannah Marin and Spencer Hastings) start group therapy with Dr Sullivan to try to process their feelings around Alison’s disappearance and the trauma they’re suffering at the hands of A/Mona’s cyber harassment. Dr Sullivan realises she is being stalked shortly after sessions begin.

August 2011, Dr Sullivan is harassed further by ‘A’ and the original liars are led to believe she has been kidnapped and buried alive. They search but do not find her. Dr Sullivan is revealed to the audience have never having been buried at all, presumably after being blackmailed and threatened by ‘A’. She disappears for a while as a result.

Mona Vanederwaal is unmasked as A and committed to the Radley in 2012 where she is treated by Dr Sullivan, who also reveals that Mona blackmailed her and threatened her son, Sebastian. This was the cause of her disappearance.

Mona is discharged from the Radley in January 2013.

February 2013, Mona visits Dr Sullivan to thank her for her help in treating her. Mona is presumably no longer A but is still involved with and aware of “the game” at points throughout following seasons.

June 2015, Pam Fields makes an appointment for Emily Fields to see Dr Sullivan after her experiences in the dollhouse. Dr Sullivan is therefore still in Rosewood at this time.

The time jump in the OG series happens soon afterwards. This is where things really get dicey as what happens in this space of time is anyones guess. I’m just going to go with what we know for a fact aka what has been stated by other characters and we’ve seen after the time jump.

Post-time jump, Dr Sullivan is not seen again in the OG series so we can assume she moved to Millwood at this time with Sebastian.

The Radley also closes during the time jump and is converted into a hotel. The function of the building may have changed, but its dark history cannot be hidden and so going forward we will also be looking at evidence of an accessible paper trail. This will involve the Radley, the people it held for treatment, the people who worked there and how easy it would be for an outsider to find information.

The purpose of this is to show how easily someone could find out about the events of the original A incidents, what the liars went through and the various identities of A.

When the Radley is closed and turned into a hotel, Rose Waters is discharged and returns to Millwood. She is homeless but among her person belongings are her medical records from her treatment with Dr Sullivan.

October 14th, 2018. Sebastian Sullivan, while out on a jog in the forests of Millwood is killed presumably by Archie Waters. Sebastian’s body is found positioned over some three logs that have been assembled in the shape of an A. In the flashback, Archie is also already wearing his mask with the stitching in the shape of an A.

Depending on the timeline, in either July or October 2018, Alex Drake (secret twin to Spencer Hastings) is revealed to be “A.D”, the latest in a line of A’s who took on the mantle that Mona created, so it’s suitable that Mona is the one to mastermind her unmasking.

Later in October 2018, Mona kidnaps Alex and her mother Mary and takes them to the dollhouse.

Depending on when exactly Alex is revealed, given that Archie has already started targeting Dr Sullivan in the same year, it’s possible that The Game(tm) has already been taken from Alex by Archie and is about to twist into a new deadly form.

At some point between 2018 and the start of Original Sin in 2022, Marshall Clanton, now school principal, reunites with his son, Archie, and they set plans in motion to take revenge on the women who bullied Angela to her death by using their daughters.

In 2020 at another point, Mona returns to work at BHU with Alison DiLaurentis after it’s implied that Alex and Mary managed to escape her.

August 20th 2022, Davie Adams, one of the original bullies, receives a flier from the Y2K party where Angela Waters died. On the back of the flier is a threatening message with a single red A in one of the words. Davie takes her own life shortly afterwards and leaves an A in her blood on the bathroom wall. The red ‘A’ moniker is already being implemented on the poster.

September 28th 2022. The new liars (Imogen Adams, Tabitha Hayworthe, Farran Bryant, Noa Olivar and Minnie Honrada) all receive their first ‘A’ texts. This new form of The Game(tm) has now begun.

November 3rd 2022. Imogen Adams and Tabitha Hayworthe, investigating a lead on Rose Waters, drive to Rosewood and stay overnight at the Radley Hotel to meet with Eddie Lamb, a former orderly at the Radley, the next day.

November 4th 2022. Eddie Lamb shows Imogen and Tabby his old logbook of people who came for visitations, including the people who saw Rose Waters. This proves that even though the Radley is not an asylum anymore, there is a paper trail from when it was and the names of people who were patients and who visited. Eddie now works at the hotel, but he still has evidence of his time at the Radley and it’s previous history.

December 15th 2022, Archie’s identity as ‘A’ is revealed, along with Principal Clanton’s involvement and the fact that he is Archie and Angela’s father.

Principal Clanton is arrested the same night and Archie is hospitalised after being stabbed in self defence by Imogen.

He escapes shortly afterwards and goes on a rampage.

January 1st, 2023, Archie Waters is captured and sentenced to death for the Millwood Massacre.

June 11th, 2023. The new liars, now being stalked by a new killer calling herself Bloody Rose Waters, locate the real Rose Waters and are able to search her belongs enough to find that Dr Sullivan treated her at the Radley. This proves more of an accessible paper trail to Radley records.

June 12th 2023. Imogen and Tabby are able to break into Dr Sullivan’s office and steal their patient files. If two sixteen year old girls could break in and easily access this information, it’s safe to assume anyone could. As the girls flip through files, the names of the original liars are clearly seen. There is an identifiable paper trail dating years back to the events of the original show where Dr Sullivan was treating the original girls for their trauma and anxiety around what happened to Alison and the original ‘A’; Mona Vanderwaal. This information can also be accessed with relative ease.

Imogen says these don’t seem to be files from the Radley and could be from a private practice, but they would still likely contain information about the original A incidents with Mona.

June 18th 2023. Imogen confronts Dr Sullivan about whether or not she is Bloody Rose, demands proof, and to know why she is so eager to treat the new liars while not disclosing her connection to the Waters family. Dr Sullivan reveals she treated Rose, found Archie and believed that he followed and stalked her for years before killing her son. Her motive for trying to help the new liars is to try not to fail them, as she believes she failed to protect her son and that she believes Archie targeted her because she didn’t do enough to help him or his mother.

June 19th 2023. Dr Sullivan gives Imogen proof of her story by taking her to see Sebastian’s grave.

July 4th 2023. Dr Sullivan is ambushed and murdered in her office by Archie Waters, who has escaped jail, again wearing his ‘A’ mask.

Okay. That was the timeline I cobbled together with duct tape and tears. It’s the best I can do.

So, piecing together what we know of both shows, the fact that there is an ‘A’ in the original show doesn’t remain a secret for long. Several people take on the title and work for the A team.

There is a long list of material evidence on both the OG show and OS for people being in the Radley, along with who treated them, what was discussed and who it involved. Both shows are full of twists and turns involving investigating and blackmailing by various characters.

I point all this out to say that there’s a not insignificant chance that, if Archie Waters really was following and keeping an eye on Dr Sullivan over the years as she believed he was, and if he really did hold a grudge against her, Archie could have gained access to information her private life, her son, the people she treated and ‘A’.

Now, I’m about to point out some stuff while also doing a little speculating. Keep bearing with me here. We’re almost done.

It wouldn’t have been hard for Archie to find Dr Sullivan. She has frequent therapy sessions with his mother, after all. It wouldn’t have been hard to find her office as a result.

It wouldn’t have been hard to find out about A, given that Dr Sullivan still kept detailed files on the original liars even years later. Given that A was a large factor in their lives, it wouldn’t have been hard to find out that A was stalking and blackmailing the girls, just as Archie began to do in Millwood.

It wouldn’t have been hard to find out about Dr Sullivan’s son, given that Sebastian was used by A to threaten and blackmail her to the point she disappeared for a while. The same boy Archie killed after taking on the ‘A’ title.

It wouldn’t have been hard to find out about Alison DiLaurentis, the girl who disappeared. The original liars were in therapy to talk about her as well as A. It wouldn’t have been hard to find out that Alison was the typical, manipulative, popular girl who was also a bully. Everyone knew it. Not dissimilar to Karen Beasley, the popular bully of Millwood High that Archie murdered at the Spirit Week dance.

It wouldn’t be hard to find out that when the identity of A was revealed it was a young woman named Mona Vanderwaal, pushed to her action by the ceaseless bullying she endured at Alison’s hands, while the original liars did nothing to help Mona. Again, there’s one or two passing similarities to Angela, who was bullied by some of the popular girls while others turned a blind eye until it was too late.

Mona didn’t meet Angela’s fate, however. She did things a little differently. So differently that she started a ripple effect that inspired several shadowy figures behind the scenes with mysterious texts and their own agendas. Mona herself played a part in uncovering several of them.

So, in conclusion and to return to our question at the beginning, how did The Game(tm) morph so drastically from original show to reboot, and how did the persona of ‘A’ go from belonging to a cyberstalking mastermind bent on payback from the girls who bullied her to being attached to a vengeful serial killer who targets abusers and bullies?

“Whacky ass writing lmao who tf cares” is one answer, and tbh probably the right one…but then there’s the answer I came to instead; that Archie Waters in his stalking of Dr Sullivan discovered the whole ‘A’ mess and was inspired by the original A, Mona.

There are enough similar notes hit that the A that Archie would have found out about would have had to have been her, not Cece or Alex (right down to them both targeting Sebastian who’s really the true victim here lmao), and maybe have even become obsessed with Mona to the degree that he decided to adopt the ‘A’ persona that she created and take over The Game(tm) that she started, only to turn it into something far darker and more deadly.

Bonus points if Alex Drake’s big dramatic ‘A.D’ reveal as the secret twin gets undercut by the fact that someone else’s secret twin already pulled the rug out from under her and took off with the title of being the new ‘A’ while the original ‘A’ locked her in a basement in France. Because that’s incredibly funny.

Anyway…this is barely coherent and A Lot and I apologise. I just have a lot of thoughts and had to get them out somehow.

Please don’t come for me 🫠

#my content #my writing #fan theory #pll #pll original sin #pll summer school #pretty little liars #mona vanderwaal #archie waters #tw sensitive content #Reddit is fucking me over soooo YOU get my theory!!

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