u/radiohead-girlies

Obviously it’s going to feel different for them because they’re the actors actually playing these characters, and by that point they had spent years working together and becoming attached to certain relationships and storylines. I completely understand Ashley being emotionally attached to Haleb and being upset when she found out they were breaking up.

But at the end of the day, they were also actors hired to play whatever storyline the writers gave them, which is why I find the difference in their reactions so interesting. Troian and Tyler seemed much more open to seeing where Spaleb could go and what it gave them to work with as actors, while Ashley was apparently crying over the decision, calling Tyler, and trying to convince the writers to break Spencer and Caleb up.

I don’t think she was wrong for disliking it, but actually going to the writers and demanding they change the storyline feels a little immature to me lmao. Especially because this wasn’t some completely inappropriate or harmful storyline. It was just a romantic pairing she personally didn’t want for her character. I understand being attached to Haleb after all those years, but trying to interfere with the story because you prefer one ship feels kind of outlandish.

obsessed with how bored she looks lmao bring back facial expressions in photo shoots!!

Nobody will ever convince me that (despite the constant emphasis on it throughout the show) Emily was the “loyal” one out of the main girls. If anything, I would give that title to Hanna. We’ve seen time and time again with Emily how willing she is to choose her weekly love interest over the group without hesitation, and just in general, people who clearly shouldn’t have been trusted. She (like all characters, don’t get me wrong) somehow still manages to make the same decisions through all seven seasons and never seems to learn to the point where it just got annoying and exhausting over time. Emily has done this with Paige, Alison, Nate, the list goes on. A part of me wonders why the same sentiment that people hate on Aria for (choosing Ezra over the girls) isn’t also applied to Emily.

Even if Emily trusts these people because she “wants to see the good in everyone,” it still comes at the expense of the girls who spent years sticking beside her and trying to keep her alive in the midst of all the trauma they’ve dealt with together. Especially in reference to Hanna, who is claimed to be Emily’s best friend? 😭 Emily dropped Hanna at the sound of the hat when Alison came back with zero remorse for her mental wellbeing; it was Ali, Ali, Ali. When Hanna was getting drunk every day and clearly mentally exhausted from Alison’s return and everything they’ve experienced to bring back the dead girl who made their lives hell, she barely cared. She even does this with Spencer, when Spencer follows her unknowingly when she stupidly goes to meet Alison in a dark alleyway alone at night, she immediately believes Alison when she suddenly says Emily is the only one she can trust, turning on Spencer immediately. Yet again, for her to be proven wrong when she thinks Alison is A two minutes later.

I don’t think Emily is this evil mastermind who hates her friends, but she definitely prioritizes people who couldn’t care less about her and, in response, hurts the girls who’d been through everything with her. I wouldn’t doubt for a second that post-finale, her ending up with Alison would mean she’d slowly just distance herself from the rest of the girls if it meant having her.

For context:
Troian Bellisario — she was 24 when Pretty Little Liars premiered in 2010; she’s now 40, turning 41 this year.
Ashley Benson — she was 20 in 2010; she’s now 36, turning 37 this year.
Lucy Hale — she was 21 in 2010; she’s now 37.
Shay Mitchell — she was 23 in 2010; she’s now 39.

I think this is an interesting question to think about. If the show is never rebooted or revisited, do you think something like this could ever happen again? And do you see the actresses continuing to find success on their own, or do you think they won't do as much without the show?

thoughts?

i find the narrative around her career to be honestly very interesting, and i’d love to hear other people’s perspectives based on this clip. she’s making really good points about how hollywood often doesn’t know what to do with women as they age, and how women are constantly typecast into playing younger roles. especially after being typecast from playing a teenager for seven years, i’d love to see her take on more mature roles like “on call”, it was really refreshing to see. i really like that she’s actively developing her own projects and creating more opportunities for herself. i think being on a show like pll puts you in a really difficult box to break out of, and not a lot of the cast has been able to fully move past that. i like that she’s genuinely trying to push through it.

asking because i thought this would be a fun discussion to have! i like how some of them are completely different in terms of style compared to their characters lmao. personally, i love shay’s the most: i think hers is the most elegant, and i’d love to raid her closet lmao. i tried my best to find actually good pictures of them where you can actually see the outfits, so bear with me 🤧

i really like ashley’s too honestly !! she gives very basic rich woman vibes but i like her pieces. usually when she’s in something black, i think she looks stunning. i’d say her style is very boring but chic. i think lucy’s is great as well. my least favorite would have to be sasha, not because she isn’t gorgeous, but i find her looks are usually a hit or miss for me. i think the dark hair washes her out a lot, not brown but specifically jet black. i understand her recent styling choices are mostly tailored to match her hair color but i feel like it doesn’t always look great on her.

also happy nine years since the finale aired!

thoughts on this? i think this was in incredibly poor taste and deeply unprofessional. saying the editor “sucks” and that she should find a different job was already bad, but the implication that working at a shelter or selling vintage is somehow beneath her felt weirdly classist and dismissive too.

it’s honestly embarrassing that someone in her position couldn’t handle basic criticism of a show. what makes it even more ridiculous is that the argument didn’t really make sense. shealyn was actually speaking in support of the cast by saying the show would benefit from longer episodes, which would also benefit the people working on it financially and creatively. so acting like she was trying to threaten people’s jobs was just illogical.

will never shut up about how insanely talented these two are, both together and separately on screen 😭 and alongside janel too… like there was genuinely no reason for them to be giving hbo-level performances on an abc family show. all three of them deserved way bigger careers after pll, idc.

this is literally looks like AI LMAO WHAT this is NOT her 😭

In 2016:

Troian Bellisario was 30 (turning 31 that year)
Ashley Benson was 26 turning 27
Lucy Hale was 27 turning 28
Shay Mitchell was 28 turning 29
Sasha Pieterse was 20 turning 21

Now in 2026:
Troian Bellisario is 40, turning 41
Ashley Benson is 36, turning 37
Lucy Hale just turned 37
Shay Mitchell is 39, turning 40
Sasha Pieterse is 30, turning 31

i loved her during the pll era and still keep up with her to some extent. i think she’s really made a name for herself, but it’s kind of sad she’s become such a basic influencer now :/ i don’t expect her to be the most authentic because the whole point of being a celebrity is to be superficial, but she feels so curated now

i also don’t love the way she’s so publicly supportive of drake despite the controversies surrounding him. i know she has ties to him, but the whole thing just feels a bit off to me, especially considering she has two young daughters. i think her relationship with matte babel is really cute to some extent, but they also don’t really seem like they’re in love honestly. they feel more like business partners than a couple, which is completely fine. i don’t really care. clearly it’s working for them financially so who am i to comment. but i do find it a bit odd that they have two children and she’s said marriage “isn’t for them” etc.

i think my only real criticism of shay is that even though she’s an influencer, it often seems like she’s out of the country on “work trips” where she’s mostly just drinking and having fun and it feels like she’s rarely ever home with her kids lmao. i just wish influencers understood that taking your kid to one out of 50 work events a month doesn’t really count as parenting.

i’m not filo so correct me if i’m wrong, but the whole thing on her show last year where she denied being asian just because she tried a spicy drink, and the stuff about her saying her mother was half spanish when she’s actually white and asian is really weird to me. i might be misremembering parts of it, but if that’s accurate it honestly comes off pretty gross. she’s always seemed like she only really brings up her race and ethnicity when it benefits her or is profitable, which feels off considering she has such a beautiful mixed cultural background, but i’m not surprised etc.

her career has always been one that confuses me. it seemed like she was in the spotlight for a while because of pretty little liars, but she fell off massively. the only times i ever hear about her now are when she pops up on my instagram explore page or because of some controversy she’s involved in. it’s crazy to me because she seemed like one of the most popular cast members when the show was running, and she always seemed to be connected to every celebrity, but her career has basically gone nowhere.

for context she has: these include allegedly being involved in onlyfans recruitment discussions, marrying her husband despite his own controversies, being openly pro-israel/zionist, dating g-eazy after his assault arrests and after halsey suggested their relationship was abusive, publicly supporting johnny depp during his trial after a u.k. judge had already ruled he had abused amber heard, making fun of amanda bynes after her mental health hospitalization, etc.

obviously none of the others from the show had their careers skyrocket either, but they all seem pretty chill and well liked from what they’ve shown publicly etc? all she does now is nostalgia bait on snapchat and apparently lives off a constant stream of pap photos, and she’s in that weird space of almost irrelevant but still “relevant” mainly through the people she’s connected to like paris hilton, her husband, emma roberts etc.

(This isn’t a rant LMAO I’m not angry, just curious!)

this is a genuine question, and i’d really like to hear people’s thoughts on it. does anyone else think there’s a decent chance that marlene has already pitched a reboot and it just wasn’t picked up?

i feel like people often act as if all she has to do is come up with an idea and a reboot would automatically happen, but that’s not really how television works. a network or streaming platform still has to want it, and they have to believe there’s a strong enough concept to justify bringing the franchise back.

that’s part of why i wonder if marlene may have already tried. while pll was obviously a huge success, the finale was heavily criticized, the perfectionists didn’t last, and the franchise hasn’t exactly had the strongest track record outside of the original series. because of that, i sometimes wonder if platforms are hesitant to invest in another project from her, regardless of how recognizable the pll name still is.

i also think people underestimate how difficult it would be to get the cast back together. even if some of them have said they’d be open to returning, they all have their own careers, businesses, and projects now. shay is running a massively successful business while also working in television. troian has been developing and creating her own projects. lucy has multiple projects in development. sasha has a major film coming out and her own ventures outside of acting. everyone is at a completely different stage in life than they were when the show ended.

then there’s the question of what the reboot would even be about. most of the ideas i see from fans feel like versions of stories that have already been done. after all this time, i imagine a platform would want something stronger than “their daughters are being targeted by a new a.”

personally, i find it harder to believe that nobody has tried to make a reboot happen than i do to believe that it’s been discussed behind the scenes and never moved forward. after almost a decade, i wouldn’t be surprised if marlene has pitched something before and the people with the money just weren’t convinced. what do you think? is marlene and the creative side of things the biggest obstacle, or is it everything else that comes with actually getting a reboot made?

this one was genuinely a little hard to make but i did it based off years and mathematical boring accuracies 😭 the only one i had real trouble with was shay because she has no public presence before 2010, i included a photo that looks like a year-book photo? so she would have been maybe 17, possibly 18 but i think the point still stands lmao this might be an unpopular opinion, but i don’t think the liars (minus sasha) looked **that** old playing the characters. i saw someone say troian looked like a grandma in s1 and its like…? i think the issue was more on the styling and makeup they were given, i never thought any of the girls looked older than maybe early-to-mid 20s, imo i think over exaggerated the age thing LMAO i’d rather have a 24 year old (or anyone over than 12..? she’s literally a baby in this photo it makes me so ☹️) play a character like alison than a literal middle schooler 💔 this is no hate to sasha, i think she did STELLAR but i just can’t imagine being exposed to that much when i was 12 (as someone whose 20) 😬.

i just made this because ive seen a lot of inaccuracies (no hate!), i saw one the other day where troian is like 20 in one of the photos 😭.

For reference:
• Lucy — Was 16 in 2005 | Age in 2010: 21 | Turning 37 in 2026
• Ashley — Was 16 in 2005 | Age in 2010: 21 | Turning 37 in 2026
• Troian — Was 16 in 2001 | Age in 2010: 25 | Turning 41 in 2026
• Shay — Was 16 in 2003 | Age in 2010: 23 | Turning 39 in 2026
• Sasha — Was 16 in 2012 | Age in 2010: 14 | Turning 30 in 2026

bring back having cheek fat 🥹

Troian Bellisario (Spencer Hastings/Alex Drake):
She’s stayed busy on both sides of the camera, most recently leading Prime Video’s On Call in 2025. She’s also been developing her own original series with The Rookie creator Alexi Hawley, a project that’s been in the works for years and still doesn’t have a release date. At home, she and Patrick J. Adams recently welcomed their third daughter, Imogen.

Shay Mitchell (Emily Fields):
She’s still juggling acting, producing, and business. She’s set to return to network TV as a series regular in Fox’s upcoming Baywatch reboot, while continuing to grow BÉIS and launching her kid-focused skincare brand, rini, in 2025. She also shares daughters Atlas and Rome with longtime partner Matte Babel.

Ashley Benson (Hanna Marin):
She’s been focusing more on film lately, recently signing with Strand Entertainment and joining the upcoming indie drama Pretty Babies after appearing in McVeigh. She is also married to Brandon Davis, and the two share their daughter, Aspen.

Lucy Hale (Aria Montgomery):
She’s staying booked in film, with the romantic comedy Princess recently wrapped, the sci-fi thriller White Mars on the way, and a Pretty Little Liars reunion with Ian Harding in the upcoming holiday rom-com The Twelve Dates of Christmas. She has also been open about her sobriety journey, and has not publicly announced a marriage or children.

Sasha Pieterse (Alison DiLaurentis):
She’s taking on a major new role as Rosemary Kennedy in the upcoming psychological thriller Rosemary. She has also recently starred in A Carpenter Christmas Romance and The Image of You, while continuing to expand her work as a producer. She is married to Hudson Sheaffer, and the two share their son, Hendrix Wade.

i love making posts like these and updating people on their current things going on, adore these girls 🥹🌸

it will never not bother me seeing people to this day ranking her the ugliest liar or saying she had no reason to be cast because she doesn’t fit the “look”, it’s sad that she had so much imposter syndrome irl because of this and saw all of those hateful things like y’all ntm on here