Girl, this is not the multiverse of madness that the original Pretty Little Liars cast and all their many A’s deserved. In a new interview with TVLine, executive producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa confirms that the PLL spinoff Original Sin, the 2010 PLL series by showrunner I. Marlene King, and Riverdale are all part of the same television universe. Hmmm. Let’s recap these choices. In Original Sin’s August 11 episode, the girls (played by Bailee Madison, Maia Reficco, Chandler Kinney, and Malia Pyles) travel to the OG Liars’ hometown of Rosewood to track down the new A. There, they learn that after the infamous Radley Sanitarium was transformed into a (chic) hotel during the seventh season of PLL, patients were “sent to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy over in Riverdale.”
Asked about the “Easter egg” implications, Aguirre-Sacasa tells TVLine, “We kind of just wrote that line in.” “I assumed that we wouldn’t be allowed to reference Riverdale, since it’s in a completely different universe, but it stayed in,” the showrunner continued. “So, yeah, I guess it does exist in the same universe.” Aguirre-Sacasa next tries to make this idea more believable, referencing a rivalry between Original Sin’s high-school football team, the Millwood High Steppenwolfs, and … surprise! … Riverdale’s Bulldogs. “I would love for there to be a football game between them,” he says. “Who knows, though. If we did push it further, I don’t even know how far we’d be allowed to push the shared universes.” Taking this stupid concept even further, you might ask, “What of Lucy Hale?” She stars as Aria Montgomery in the original PLL and as the title character in the now-canceled 2020 series Katy Keene, also created by Aguirre-Sacasa. And per PLL:OS EP Lindsay Calhoon, Hale might find herself in a world where she’s playing both characters at once. “[I would] love a world where all of the shows come together, and Lucy Hale is in duplicate playing Katy Keene and Aria,” she told the site. Okay, no, stop!!!
Finally, in response to one-quarter of Original Sin’s Liars, Kinney’s Tabitha, saying Ash (Jordan Gonzalez) looks similar to a “teen Cole Sprouse” in episode six, Aguirre-Sacasa declares, “It’s a multiverse!” Not sure that’s how multiverses work. Regardless, one thing fans no longer need to be confused about (for now) is the renewal of Original Sin. Stans freaked out after A (a.k.a. HBO Max’s graphic-design team) tricked everyone on Twitter by labeling the last episode of this premiere season the series finale in a trailer. However, TVLine reports it was just a “copy error.” Let’s all hope and pray to Warner Bros. Discovery that these Liars don’t end up like the moms in the original, stuck in a basement forever.
