‘Pretty Little Liars’ season 3, episode 15 review: Mona the evil genius

When it comes to “Pretty Little Liars,” it never seems to matter if you are in the first or the last episode of the season: you’re still going to have plenty of drama. This week, it was all across the board and in a variety of forms, whether it be an academic decathlon competition or Emily chasing mysterious people through the woods.

The decathlon competition was rather interesting, largely because it showed that Mona had definitely kept up with her studies and then some while she was away … and we also learned in the process that Spencer is going to be very unhappy that this girl is going to be leading the team straight out of an institution. The contrast that is rather interesting about this is largely that while this was going on, Emily was dealing with real danger, as she was chasing someone to the disdain of Paige that was actually Toby in disguise.

For Aria fans, the disappointing this is that there was no Ezra in sight this week. Instead, the story was instead geared all around the continuation of her daddy issues, as she started to learn more and more that Byron was up to way more on the night of Alison’s death than anyone knows. Meredith was at least involved via some communication, and despite her not exactly being the most likable person ever, she still seems to be caught in the crosshairs in her own rather unique way. Who would have expected going into this episode that we would have been seeing Meredith and Aria bond? Both of them realize that they love Byron, but they need to do some work in secret.

The end of the episode brought us some rather interesting revelations not just about the Liars, but about Mona herself. They now realize that she has a new agenda with her no longer having to hide behind her “A” mask, and Hanna’s verbal beatdown on her could be something that she regrets later on down the road. After all, we saw in the closing shots that Mona still has the dark hood, and she is just as vile and wicked as ever.

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Photo: ABC Family