‘Pretty Little Liars’ season 7 return date set

The seventh and final season of “Pretty Little Liars” is going to make you wait a little while longer than usual.

Today, Freeform confirmed that the remaining ten episodes of the series are going to air starting on Tuesday, April 18 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time. This will be followed by the series premiere of “Famous in Love,” the new series starring Bella Thorne, and one that also counts “PLL” creator Marlene King as an executive producer.

We imagine that one of the reasons for the later start is to assist “Famous in Love,” a promising series about Los Angeles culture and celebrity, in getting off to a great start. Freeform as a network is in a little bit of a top spot at present. Their two most-recent summer series in “Guilt” and “Dead of Summer” proved to be commercial disappointments and were canceled after only one season on the air. Meanwhile, they are also losing another one of their landmark series in “Switched at Birth.” This is a business that is being hit hard by the immediacy of other viewing venues like a Netflix or an Amazon, and they have to think of especially interesting angles to ensure that young viewers opt to check out their programming and sit through the commercials and make appointments to watch. It’s so much harder to convince people to do that now than it even was back when “PLL” first premiered.

We’ll stop rambling on now about the current state of the TV industry — just know that the final ten episodes of “Pretty Little Liars” are going to contain many stunning twists, in addition to the return of such former players as Torrey DeVitto (Melissa Hastings) and Vanessa Ray (CeCe Drake a.k.a. Charlotte DiLaurentis.)