Pretty Little Liars: Summer School has Riverdale connection

Pretty Little Liars: Summer School
Photo: Max

If there’s one thing that Pretty Little Liars: Summer School seems to love at this point, it is a shared overall universe.

After all, consider the following: The series already has Dr. Sullivan, which is a clear tie to the original series that aired on ABC Family / Freeform. Meanwhile, Original Sin included a nod to Riverdale … and now another has surfaced.

Through this week’s installment of Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, we ended up learning that Greg is the cousin of one Kevin Keller. Why create another connection? Well, mostly for fun. Also, remember here that showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa worked on Riverdale before dipping his toes into the PLL world, so why not continue to have some fun here?

Now if we wanted to extend things further with this universe, know that Pretty Little Liars had its own spin-offs in Ravenswood as well as The Perfectionists. Neither had incredibly-long runs, but they each certainly existed. Meanwhile, Riverdale had Chilling Adventures of Sabrina as well as Katy Keene — meaning effectively, that Lucy Hale has played two different significant parts. This is basically a shared universe of more than a half-dozen shows. It’s a lot!

Are there any long-term things to consider here?

Well, let’s just say that the possibility is out there for characters from any of these shows to appear down the road, not that it is something that anyone should feel confident about as of right now. The big intention here appears to be mostly to just have another way to stir up conversation and build excitement that someone could theoretically turn up.

Also, let’s not forget that a huge chunk of this entire franchise is built at this point on nostalgia; Summer School has a dedicated audience, but let’s not even pretend that it is anywhere near as possible as what we saw with the original PLL, which dominated cable once upon a time.

What have you thought about the story of Pretty Little Liars: Summer School so far?

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