At the prom,
Aria (
Lucy Hale),
Emily (
Shay Mitchell),
Hanna (
Ashley Benson),
Spencer (
Troian Bellisario) and
Sara Harvey (
Dre Davis) meet
Mona (
Janel Parrish), who reveals that she has been following
Alison (
Sasha Pieterse) all night to protect her. Mona locates Alison's phone at the Carissimi Group building, and the girls head to the company's headquarters. There, Spencer breaks into a restricted room after Sara remembers a specific date meaningful to Charles, which is the code for unlocking the door. While the girls enter the room, Sara refuses to accompany them. They discover a hologram which monitors a live feed of the room that Alison has been taken to. As the girls witness Alison discovering Jason and Mr. DiLaurentis's unconscious bodies, they realize she's alone with "A," who is revealed to be
CeCe Drake (
Vanessa Ray). With everyone in the DiLaurentis family present, CeCe begins to tell them her story. She reveals that she was born as a boy named Charles DiLaurentis. When she was eight years old, she gave Alison a bath, but accidentally dropped her in the scalding water. Kenneth saved Alison, but Charles was admitted to Radley as a consequence. According to CeCe, as a child she asked her mother to purchase her dresses, but Kenneth despised his son for being feminine, so he used the bathtub incident as an excuse to send him away. Jessica paid a visit to Charles as often as she could, in an attempt to make him feel less alienated. When Charles was 12 years old, Bethany Young pushed Toby's mother, Marion Cavanaugh, off Radley's roof. However, Bethany blamed Charles for Marion's homicide, and everyone believed her word due to Charles sporting a dress at the time of the incident and refusing to be seen in it. Jessica paid off Darren Wilden (
Bryce Johnson) to make sure Mrs. Cavanaugh's death was ruled a suicide. Charles was diagnosed with
intermittent explosive disorder (IED), although this was actually an accurate diagnosis for Bethany. For the next two years, Charles was heavily medicated with tranquilizers, but he was let out to attend his fake funeral. After the funeral at Aunt Carol's, Jessica finally accepted Charles as her daughter and took her back to Radley, renamed Charlotte. Charlotte dedicated herself to math as a way to escape reality. She did so well in her studies that she was allowed to attend classes at the University of Pennsylvania. She thought going to school would be fun, but it was easy for her since she already knew what she was being taught. One day, she called in a bomb threat to cancel classes. She used the opportunity to go to Rosewood High for yearbook picture day, where she met Jason, whom she began dating under the CeCe Drake alias in order to get closer to her family. Jessica didn't know that CeCe Drake and Charlotte were the same person until the day the DiLaurentises were leaving for Cape May. Although initially angered at her children's incestuous relationship, Jessica allows Charlotte to go on vacation with the rest of the family. In Cape May, Charlotte became close friends with Alison and even planned to tell her they were related. However, Bethany found out about Mrs. D's affair with her father, thus ruining Charlotte's opportunity to tell her sister the truth. On
Labor Day Weekend, Bethany stole Charlotte's clothes and snuck out of Radley to murder Jessica at the DiLaurentis property. This led to Charlotte accidentally bashing Alison in the head with a rock that night, believing she was Bethany. Jessica buried Alison out of panic and paid Wilden to take Charlotte back to Radley. Back at the Carissimi Group, Mona tearfully admits that she hit Bethany that night and mistook her for Alison, since they both had blonde hair and were wearing the same clothes. The medical staff at Radley took away Charlotte's privilege to occasionally leave Radley, but, once Mona was admitted to the sanitarium, Charlotte took advantage of her drugged up state and manipulated her into telling her everything she had done as "A". After Charlotte was released from Radley, she moved to Rosewood, where she purposely met the Liars, and began hating the girls due to their relief over Alison's disappearance. Charlotte kept seeing Alison in the Red Coat and thought she was going crazy at first. So, in order to lure Alison out, she planned the
Thornhill Lodge party. She sent a decoy Red Coat to go in her place and confuse the Liars. The decoy Red Coat unmasks herself as Sara Harvey. Alison and the Liars are shocked by this and Charlotte says Sara was Red Coat when she needed her to be. Charlotte's intentions were to lure Alison out of hiding, but Shana set fire to the lodge. Nonetheless, Sara and Alison rescued the girls, thereby giving Charlotte the much needed confirmation that her sister was alive. She killed Wilden to protect Alison, since he would've never allowed her to return to Rosewood, and sent Sara to his funeral, costumed as the Black Widow, to ensure he was deceased. Before Charlotte fled to New York, she snuck home to say goodbye to her mother, only to find her lifeless body lying in the DiLaurentises' backyard. Following her mother's death, she saw
the events in New York as the perfect opportunity to end the "A" game and begin a new life in Paris, but eventually came back, due to her addiction to power. Sara, dressed as Red Coat, sets a bomb to detonate inside Radley as part of Charlotte's final plan to kill her family and herself. The Liars arrive in time for Spencer to disable the bomb while Emily punches Sara for betraying her. Charlotte runs towards the roof and attempts to commit suicide. However, the Liars arrive in time to persuade her not to do so, and Charlotte, instead, declares the end of her reign as A.
Three Months Later On Labor Day weekend, the five Liars stand outside Alison's house, with their cars all packed and ready to leave for college. The girls hug each other as they say goodbye, not realizing leaving would be so hard.
Five Years Later Alison is working as a teacher at Rosewood High. As she writes the name "Mrs. Rollins" on a classroom board, she is interrupted by Aria, Hanna, Emily, and Spencer, who rush into her classroom to inform her that an unknown male is pursuing her. == Production ==