Entertainment

This A.D. Theory Could Change Everything On 'PLL'

by Kaitlin Reilly

If your nerves are still shot from watching the Pretty Little Liars Season 7A finale, "The DArknest Knight," you're not alone: I'm still reeling from pretty much everything that happened at that excessively creepy abandoned school for the blind. Obviously, the Liars accidentally kicking Noel Kahn's severed head down the stairs was enough to stop anyone's heart temporarily (seriously... Pretty Little Liars actually decapitated Noel Kahn) but it was the reveal about Spencer that changed pretty much everything we thought we knew about the show. As revealed in the Season 7A finale, Charlotte's biological mom Mary Drake is Spencer's mother, which means that we can finally put the "A.D. is Mary's other kid" theories to bed... or can we? Spencer might be Mary's second child (granted Mary isn't lying, of course), but there's always the possibility that Mary had a third kid — and that Mary's third kid is Spencer's identical twin, and also A.D.

Plenty of fans thought that Mary being Spencer's biological mother was farfetched, but the Season 7A finale reminded all of us that literally anything is possible in Rosewood, especially when it comes to twisted family trees. Though Mary declined to give any details about being Spencer's mother (she was too busy crying over gunshot-victim Spencer) there's no reason to believe that Spencer was her only other child. In fact, if Spencer had a twin, it might finally make everything on this show make sense — and explain the bouts of weirdness we've seen with Spencer this season.

The most convincing scene that would suggest Spencer has a twin is from the Season 7 premiere, "Tick Tock, Bitches." Hanna has a "dream" that Spencer visits her in the cell where A.D. is keeping her... but is this Spencer really a figment of Hanna's imagination? During that scene, Spencer refers to Uber A as "A.D.," the term that the Liars only learn after Hanna is abducted — it's not like her dream self would know who that is. Could this hint that Spencer isn't actually Spencer, but A.D. trying to get information out of Hanna?

Now that we know that Spencer is Mary's child, it would make a lot of sense for Spencer's potential twin to be A.D. If the Original A was after Alison, then Spencer's twin would be connected to two Liars. It would explain why A.D. seems so invested in hurting not only Alison, but all of the Liars as well: Hanna and Emily are friends of their relatives, and got to live a life that Spencer's twin perhaps never was able to.

One of the biggest clues that Uber A might really be Spencer's twin, however, comes directly from a quote from showrunner I. Marlene King. Here's what King told Alloy Entertainment when asked about whether we've seen A.D. before:

Uber A is the smartest of all the As, the most intense of all the As, the most driven to win the game of all the As. And I can’t tell you if you’ve seen the person before or not because that might spoil something a little bit later down the line.

We may have "seen" A.D. before in the sense that we've seen Troian Bellisario as Spencer, so that could potentially be what King means by that careful wording. However, what really got to me in this quote was how this A is "the most driven to win the game." When Spencer hallucinates seeing Alison before the girls realize she's alive, her vision of Alison says almost the same thing about Spencer. Alison says: "I miss that fierce look you get in your eyes when you had to know the answer, had to win the game." Could that be King hinting that someone a lot like Spencer is in on the A game this time around?!?

This theory would change everything we think we know about PLL, but we'll have to wait until the new episodes air in April of 2017 to find out if we're really seeing double of Spencer.

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