Image via Complex Original
As if Pretty Little Liars fans didn't have enough to obsess over, tonight at 10 p.m., ABC Family is premiering its spinoff series Ravenswood. Brought to you by the creators of PLL, the series will follow PLL's Caleb Rivers (Tyler Blackburn), better known as Hanna's (Ashley Benson) doting tech-savvy boyfriend (for now), as he tries to undo a fatal curse that's holding him and four other teenage strangers captive in the gloomy town of Ravenswood. Unlike its parent series, Ravenswood promises spooks and supernatural occurences—not just attractive people with knives running around trying to kill each other.
Don't assume any barriers to entry, new viewer—you don't need to catch up on four seasons of PLL to get started on Ravenswood. But if you're curious as to how the show set the stage for its spinoff in the first place, we've got you. This is The Pretty Little Liars' Road to Ravenswood.
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Like any good story, it all starts with a parrot. To one of the liars, Spencer, the bird chirps a phone number. As any sane person would do, Spencer thinks, "I better call. This bird seems legit."
Turns out the number is to a sorority house, Gamma Zeta Chi, formerly run by house mother Carla Grunwald. Spencer and her BF Toby track her down to Ravenswood and lure her out with a bagged lunch. Just kidding.
This is Carla Grunwald, a.k.a. the star of your nightmares. Her significance? She's got ties to Ali, the dead girl who set PLL into motion. Grunwald also has a regular role on Ravenswood.
All four of the Liars end up back in the town when A (an anonymous masked murderer) sends them a threatening message, suggesting they watch a magic show in Ravenswood. Which, when you think about it, is a pretty cute invitation that A probably picked up on Pinterest. Vintage saw? Adorbs.
The magic trick turns out to be a distraction for the Liars, as one of them is kidnapped and placed on the chopping board of a saw mill by A's accomplice, Red Coat. (No relation to the Revolutionary War.)
Before she's sawed to bits, another Red Coat (potentially a live Ali) shows up and stops the nastiness. Side note: How do the Pretty Little Liars not have post-traumatic stress disorder yet?
Good Red Coat leads the Liars to A's lair, and suggests that she'll be at the Ravenswood Founders Day Celebration that night. And that there'll be caramel apples, so they should totes come.
On their way there, Mrs. Grunwald stops the girls and explains her connection to Ali. As in, that's her hand pulling Ali out of the grave where she was buried alive.
Grunwald took Ali to the hospital, where she disappeared. Yep, Ali's been alive this whole time and the Liars have spent their high school career looking for her murderer. Sucks for them. You can't exactly put this under "Extracurriculars" on your college app.
As per Grunwald's warning that A is watching them, the girls are instructed to leave Ravenswood. They don't. Because of course they don't.
And this is where Caleb, the star of Ravenswood, comes in. Hanna's (another liar) hacker boyfriend, Caleb gets on a bus to Ravenswood to meet the girls and help crack into A's super computer system. You'd think the NSA would pick up on all this murder talk about teenage girls.
In Ravenswood, Caleb meets Miranda, a fellow foster kid whom he has an unmistakable connection with.
That connection being they both notice their portraits on tombstones in the Ravenswood Cemetery. Ah, modern romance. Considering this shit is bizarre as hell, Caleb decides to get to the bottom of it.
Curiosity gets Caleb and Miranda trapped in the town and makes them two of the five unwitting subjects of a fatal curse that's plagued it for centuries. Enter: Ravenswood. Now you can start watching.
