There have been five—count ‘em, five!—entries in the Pretty Little Liars franchise since the pulpy teen drama, based on the popular book series, premiered in 2010. That’s 14 years, more than 150 episodes, and countless actors calling their parents to tell them that they got their big break, only for their respective series to get canceled before their SAG card could even arrive in the mail. All of the spinoffs and continuations of Pretty Little Liars have been unsuccessful, failing to generate even an iota of the massive buzz that teenagers heaped onto the franchise’s first televised iteration in the 2010s.

In 2022, it looked as though the curse plaguing Pretty Little Liars had lifted. A new reboot, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, came in swinging, looking to rectify the mistakes that old spinoffs had fallen prey to. Original Sin was edgier, meaner, and filled to the brim with cursing and bloody violence, two things that the franchise was always missing due to the constraints of its home on network television. This new Pretty Little Liars was streaming on Max, and there, the show could go wild. Any restrictions that had previously hindered the franchises’ ambitions were removed, helping the reboot—which fashioned itself as a teen horror slasher—feel more innovative than any of the franchise’s previous spinoffs. A cast of talented young actors, some brilliantly written twists, and a devoted fan base that will follow PLL wherever it goes helped on that front, too.

Original Sin’s supreme quality makes the show’s new, inferior continuation (with an equally substandard subtitle), Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, all the more disappointing. Where Season 1 of this new PLL was saucy and surprisingly brutal, Season 2 is trite and unambitious. Anyone exhausted by horror that uses grief and trauma as the basis for their frightening imagery will be completely drained by Summer School. This season takes that weary allegory and plops it on top of the events of Original Sin, hoping the two will eventually coalesce into something watchable. But despite some decently cheeky attempts at expanding the story and its characters, keeping up with Pretty........

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