Pretty Little Liars season 4 episode 9 review: Into The Deep

This review contains spoilers

4.9 Into The Deep

Despite this week’s Pretty Little Liars featuring a Red Coat-sighting, a near-death and Mona going back into Radley, it still feels as if too much time is being spent on the personal lives of the girls, with only Spencer really trying to solve any of the mysteries that have been plaguing them. To be fair, Hanna has a lot on her plate with her mother’s arrest, but what are Emily and Aria’s excuses?

Starting with the former, Emily has a contender for Worst Birthday Ever when Paige tries to arrange the perfect day for her girlfriend. Sending her for a meeting with an Olympic-level swim coach in the day and putting together a surprise party at night, both turn disastrous when Emily’s told she probably won’t be able to apply to swim scholarships for at least two years. This means that the dream of attending Stanford with Paige is over, and it’ll be state school or nothing next year. It also probably means that ‘Paily’ are heading for a breakup, and Caleb might not be the only Liars-beau leaving the show.

Speaking of Caleb, he’s not in the episode, but he does try to sell his car for the $100,000 bail money to get Ashley home. Two teenagers obviously aren’t going to raise the cash and, when Hanna’s dad refuses to cough it up its left to Pastor Ted (welcome back!) to save the day. Where’s he been? And, more importantly, does his return mean that he’s back on the suspects list for Wilden’s murder? It’s likely that someone on the A-team did it but, then again, Maya’s murder (annoyingly) turned out to be nothing to do with the show’s established mysteries – would they go there again?

Despite the meticulous coaching Hanna got last week, Mona’s confession apparently conflicts with some of the evidence and she thus ends up back in Radley rather than in jail. This slight forgetfulness was probably intentional so, now that she’s in her old digs, will we see her interact with Wren or Eddie Lamb again? We never did get the full story of her arrangement with Radley and its employees, and it can only help Toby in his investigation into his mother’s suicide/murder. I like Mona being on the Liars’ side and it opens us up to lots of new answers should the writers fancy sharing.

As well as Pastor Ted, the episode saw the return of another long-missing player – Jenna. Jenna and Shana are clearly still in cahoots and, when Aria and Spencer overhear them talking about some ‘truth’ regarding Alison, they figure their enemies are hiding the fact that Alison’s alive. She’s not, attests Shana, and the person they’re actually terrified of is Cece Drake. Remember, we’re three weeks from the finale so the constant naming of Cece as some kind of evil mastermind has to be a red herring. Was it Cece who tried to drown Jenna in the lake, or does the Alison-is-alive theory still have some merit?

We do see Red Coat breaking into the DiLaurentis house, however, and this is another clue to her identity that’s probably best to ignore. [BOOK SPOILER WARNING] If Alison’s dead, of course, that doesn’t mean we discount her twin sister from the books – Courtney. It would be a major anti-climax if this turned out to be the answer, since it’s been going around online since the first Halloween special, but clues in that episode confirm that she did indeed have a sister that looked remarkably similar [BOOK SPOILER WARNING ENDS]. Maybe we need to get Jason back to explain a few things about his highly dysfunctional family (or the recently returned mother?!).

The promo for next week seems to grant two of my wishes, with the presence of creepy Wren (watching Hanna and Caleb snog, for some reason) and an offer from Mrs. DiLaurentis for Emily to stay in Alison’s old room. That place must be crawling with clues, so hopefully there’s something mind-blowing to break the monotony of pre-finale water-treading. See you there!

Read Caroline’s review of the previous episode, The Guilty Girl’s Handbook, here.

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