Talk about a reveAl! The Pretty Little Liars season 5 finale on March 24 finally dropped the bomb of A’s true identity. Even if we don’t actually know everything about the puppet master torturing our beloved group of Pennsylvania high schoolers, there’s now a name: Charles DiLaurentis.
Series creator I. Marlene King told Us Weekly that the latest reveal in the show’s over-arching mystery is pivotal because it begins to tie up loose ends. The first episode of season 6, which began filming the day of the season 5 finale, is called “Game On Charles.”
“It is the beginning of the end of the this story that fans have been so patiently — and impatiently at times — waiting for,” she said the morning after the reveal. “It’s been a huge puzzle, a puzzle of a thousand pieces, and we’re just a few pieces away from finishing the puzzle.”
As PLL enters its sixth season (the show has already been renewed for seven, though no official end date has been set), King said the show’s main focus is momentum. “The shotgun has gone off and we are racing to the finish line and it’s just non-stop right now,” she told Us. “You know, I have often said we know who ‘A’ is but we take turns along the way so we don’t get to the end of the road too quickly — well, the turns are over! So we’re on the straight line to the end of the road.”
There are still plenty of reveals before the finish line, though. King spilled intel on many plot points left unresolved in the action-packed episode — find out what else she had to say below!
On who the heck Charles actually is, and whether we’ll meet him soon: “You may have met Charles already! We’re not saying that that is somebody you have not met in our world, you may or you may have not met him. But you’ll find out the answer definitely in the next ten episodes.”
If the actor playing Charles knows he’s Charles: “No, the person does not know.”
If Charles is connected to Aria’s old tutor, Andrew Campbell: “You will find that out in the next, I would say, three episodes. How involved is he, who is he?”
Where Bethany Young fits into the story: “Well, the answer to that question is not a simple one but it is a question that we will answer completely this summer in those next 10 episodes.”
Where season 6 will pick up: “We’re still in the dollhouse when we come back. But over the next 10 episodes the girls definitely get out of the dollhouse and there’s a lot going on.”
Whether some fans have figured out the whole mystery so far — and whether she’ll send the signed scripts she promised to fans who tweeted her the correct ending: “Yes! I’ve done two screen grabs already — it’s like 99 percent right. Right enough that they should get the script.”
Pretty Little Liars returns to ABC Family for season 6 this summer.